Homeschooling Ideas to Occupy Younger Siblings

When you have a large family, trying to homeschool all the kids at once is a daily struggle. This can be especially difficult when there are younger siblings involved. 

A technique for younger siblings which I used for many years is this: Have certain activities put aside for the younger siblings, which can only be used while you are homeschooling the older kids. This helps the younger siblings look forward to the lesson time rather than getting upset by it. 

If you teach subjects separately, you can make the activities for the younger kids relevant to what the older kids are learning so they feel that they are included in the homeschooling activity. This also gets them interested in each subject, in an age appropriate way. 

Teaching Literacy?

Let the younger kids do a relevant jigsaw puzzle, look through a book, or practice their fine motor skills with a handwriting practice book.

Teaching Maths?

Let the kids play with blocks (just like the older kids may use manipulatives for their lessons), use pattern blocks to create pictures, or solve a puzzle (because Maths is really just a full subject dedicated to solving puzzles!).

Teaching Science?

Let the younger kids explore the backyard with a bug viewer, flip through a book about animals, play with some sand and water fine motor tools, do some safe early childhood experiments, or dig for fossils using a paleontology kit.

Teaching Technologies?

Let the younger kids learn the basics of mechanics by playing with an early childhood gear building set, create a unique marble run, or create shapes and animals using a Clixo or CONNETIX set.

Teaching History?

Let the younger kids play with a Playmobil set, flip through a book, do a relevant jigsaw, or colour in a relevant colouring page.

Best All-Rounders...

One of the best investments we've made for this aspect of our homeschooling journey is a decent sized set of magnetic tiles (such as CONNETIX). Our younger kids have played with this set of magnetic tiles over and over throughout the years without ever getting bored. It's possible for these sets to be used with guided instructions to create specific pictures or objects, or they are also a wonderful free-play activity, meaning our kids could find new ways to play each time. Our older kids would also happily wander over and play with the set if it was ever left out as well. To this day, over ten years after purchasing this set, it is still one of the most requested activities for the kids' friends to play with when visiting our house. Investing in an excellent quality, fun activity, with true replay ability, which suits a wide range of ages, is something I strongly recommend for all homeschool families. For us, Magnet tiles have been a standout winner, closely followed by a marble run, and a large Playmobil set, as our our most used activities over the years.

Brain Spice sells a large range of handpicked, fantastic quality resources which would suit a homeschooling program with younger siblings perfectly. To help you browse through the relevant resources, we've created a collection dedicated to this exact situation. 

Click to view our range of Homeschooling Resources to Occupy Younger Siblings.

Homeschooling isn't one-size-fits-all. These are our handpicked choices, however there are so many others which may suit your family perfectly. Think of this collection as a first stop for home education inspiration. But as you can imagine - everything at Brain Spice can be used for learning in a homeschool setting!