Addendum to the mid-year progress report

I absolutely love this post from Confessions of a Homeschooler addressing the question of what the toddler(s) do(es) all day while you homeschool.

That's the million-dollar question, folks!  How do you homeschool with a toddler at home?  I'm pretty sure if I figured out the answer to that, high school trigonometry would be no problem.  And also world peace.   

Lizzy turned three in October.  She tags along when we do kindergarten, and after that she spends a lot of time coloring with Ada in their room.  She also enjoys drawing people on the whiteboard:

And portraits of Caleb:

Math manipulatives are always hot items.  Here, Lizzy is putting Jed's pattern blocks on templates to form letters.

Here, the girls are playing with geoboards while Jeddy does his math.

A three-year-old is one thing, but what about the really wee one?

Actually, Caleb has napped through most of school so far.  When he's up, he works together with his siblings toward complete and utter chaos a mostly workable school day.

He plays with toddler Legos.

He chews on plastic forks under tables.

Big Sister shows him how to play Little People.

He plays with Bendaroos.

He falls victim to dress-up.

He steals our demonstration clock while we're doing math and runs away with it.

He sits in the high chair and takes extra-long lunches.

He sits on the floor and rips napkins into tiny little shreds.

Sometimes Big Brother takes a little break to help him watch the garbage truck go by.

And of course, he works diligently on his schoolwork.

My favorite part of the aforementioned post is this:

And what are the advantages for your older kids of having the Teeny Tot roaming around while they try to concentrate and do their school work?

First, they’ll learn independence as they keep on reading while you re-roll the toilet paper your teeny tot likes to drag around the house with her. They’ll learn team-work as they organize how one will hold the teeny tot while the other removes the scissors from her hands. They’ll learnmulti-tasking as they do their math while at the same time keeping the teeny tot from choking to death on manipulatives. And, best of all…they’ll learn a great character skill called patience.

Though we all at times drive each other bonkers, we live and love together.  

And occasionally even learn together.