In the comments, from mandamum:
Hey, when you get a chance can you post about house rules for schooling together with other families? I’d love to hear your thoughts/experience.
Sure. There are three other homeschooling families we get together with regularly. When all the children were small, we moms regularly spent 2-3 full days at one another’s houses per week: working, talking, taking turns with the kids, etc. As the oldest child in each family has entered school age and started to do higher-level work, we’ve had to experiment with scheduling and the like.
Right now, on "tribe days," we do some of our curriculum at home before we leave or before friends arrive; some while we’re together; and some more in the evening (that my husband oversees). The work our families do together is usually the parts that the children can do quite independently, like math worksheets. We pick the best time of day, often after lunch when smaller children are napping, and we start them off at the same time, sitting together at a table. We started off aiming for a very short time period (10 min) and have worked up to maybe a half hour or so.
One family prefers to do all schoolwork without the distraction of other kids. The child from that family, an 8yo boy, knows that the kids who are working shouldn’t be disturbed, and he often plays with the younger kids in another room or listens to read-alouds while they’re working.
As long as I can muster the self-discipline to tear my own self away from cups of tea and the like to start school, I find it’s even easier on "tribe days" because the moms can take turns with preschoolers and school-agers. Hannah can easily supervise my son’s schoolwork. I could do some supervision of her son’s schoolwork if needed, but not quite as well — just a matter of the boys’ different temperaments.
I’ll write more on this later.
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