How to Plan Multi‑Age Family Subjects in Your Christian Homeschool
As a homeschooling mom of a large Christian family, I’ve learned that teaching every subject separately to every child is simply not sustainable—or necessary. Over the years, we’ve embraced family-style learning for our shared subjects like Bible, history, science, fine arts, and read-alouds, and it’s made our homeschool life more peaceful, connected, and Christ-centered. In this post (and podcast episode!), I’m sharing the exact resources, routines, and tips we are using in term 1 to make family subjects work in a real-life, multi-age homeschool.
This year I be teaching a 10th grader, 5th grader, a 3rd grader, preschooler, and a almost 2 year old. Even though we homeschool year round I like to take about 6 weeks off from memorial day until the first or second week of July. It gives my children the feeling of having a break when the neighborhood friends are around and it gives me time to refocus on the house, clean out bookshelves, read inspiring homeschool books, and pray and plan for the next school year. I have a whole podcast episode and blog post about our year round schedule.
Every school year I pray, evaluate the previous year, and make plans for our large family homeschool. I love pulling out my new planner and and a year at glance. I aim to make a general plan for our whole year even if we may not get to every thing I plan. Looking back on the blog post about our curriculum choices for 2024-2025 I realized that there were quite a few things we didn’t get to that just rolled over into this school year for term 1.
Why We Use Family Subjects
- It builds sibling connection and shared experiences
One of my goals is to train my children to have discussions, to patiently listen to others as they share, to feel confident to engage no matter their age. The discussions we now have with the various ages I have are richer than when I was just homeschooling one child. If you have mostly young ones keep them together as much as possible. You are laying the foundation for the little ones to one day join in and add to the discussion.
When we listen to stories, discuss ideas, enjoy art, and break bread together we are forming bonds and creating memories. I like to imagine these are the traditions that will be continued even after the children are grown and married. If not the in-depth discussions about books at the very least they will prefer each others company. For this reason I bring them all together for as many subjects as I can. Even if they have some independent work we are still working in the same room.
- It saves time and energy
Even with interruptions, we all know there will be interruptions, I am saving time. For instance History is a subject we do all together and it takes us about 20 minutes of reading. Compare that to spending 20 mins per kid if I was reading history with them individually. That adds up especially if history is done 3-4x a week. Now remember that interruptions will happen even if you are not all sitting together. So don’t let the idea that it may seem like chaos if you try to teach all the kids at once keep you from trying it out. Which brings me to the following reason….
- It allows us to stay focused on discipleship and conflict resolution
When we are all together things come up. We get frustrated with one another and we all benefit from learning how to trust in God, lean on the Holy Spirit’s help, and learn how to practice various habits. Especially the habit of self- control. Which is the habit we are focusing on this term. In this way of learning together we are able to help each other and use the shared language from our habit training book.
How this works in our home.…
I begin with our family subjects over breakfast and continue some time after. Then we break for chores and independent work. We pick back up over lunch. I have found food works very well to keep everyone, even the toddler together.
Subjects We Do Together (and What We Use)
1. Bible:
Each of my children has their own bible and devotional. My goal is to have my children develop the habit of meeting with God and getting into the word for themselves daily. I am not legalistic. I know some days wake up times vary and they didn’t do this on their own.
We also read the word together. We are studying the book of Ephesians, reading through the Psalms with the book WonderFull Ancient Psalms Ever New, and on occasion a proverb.
I am using the book Every Moment Holy Vol. 1 for prayers. We pray without the book but the book has so many beautiful prayers that I like to pull one or two out a week.
2. Memory Work: We are using The New City Catechism and are just going through the questions slowly and moving on once my three oldest kiddos have memorized the question. Then we review previous questions for a week and then start a new question.
The hymn we are learning is All Creatures of Our God and King. I am using this book, Then Sings My Soul and enjoying the song by JJ Heller.
Apostle’s Creed
We are memorizing Philippians 4:8-9
3. Character/Habit Study: I love 24 Family ways and Laying Down the Rails. For term 1 we are using Laying Down the Rails and focusing on Self-Control. This study has poems, bible verses, and short stories to support the habit. Self- Control is a habit everyone in the family needs practice in so its a perfect habit for us to focus on. I like to remind my children that we can train in habits but the Holy Spirit changes hearts. So what we cannot do on our own we need to ask for His help.
Having this time to disciple them altogether is helpful. Then I can reinforce these habits individually throughout the day.
4. History:
The way I make history work for a variety of ages is to use a living books approach with Story of Civilization Vol. 1, reading aloud and discussing the book. This is the spine we use for history. Side Note: I also assign my 10th grader historical fiction and biographies to enhance her studies. We started Story of Civilization last school year and we are continuing until we finish which I believe will happen by term 3 for us. I do enjoy taking my time with History. I like to slow down and bring in other resources. Last school year I pulled some lessons from the Good and Beautiful History 1 (1st edition) and Precious People . My plan is to bring in G&B History 2 (1st edition) and Precious People in term 2 and 3. I enjoyed adding these in for the copywork, extra stories, and activities.
5. Science: Nature study, Nature Lore, and unit studies work best for us. I didn’t do a great job at reading The Burgess Bird Book last school year and have focused on reading it at least 3 times a week. I have been able to maintain that this term so far. I also pull a few stories from The Big Book of Science Stories: Fields and Flowers. This resource says it is for preschool-2nd grade but all of my children enjoy listening. I have many Science Unit Studies from the Good and the Beautiful and will use those as a supplemental resource for anything we are curious about this term. In the future we will dive into a a few different studies.
6. Fine Arts: This school year I have brought back Marvelous Mondays. That is my name for our enrichment day. On Mondays we focus on our Artist Study (Constable), Music Appreciation, The Taming of the Shrew both the adaptation and the play. We are reading Christina Rossetti’s poetry.
I have planned for Monday afternoons to include nature hikes but that has not been the best fit for us. So instead my children have worked on art projects and other interest led projects.
I am including a poetry tea time to our week. This was originally planned for Mondays but somehow it gets moved around to other days. We just read from different poetry books and enjoy some baked goodies or other pastries.
7. Read-Alouds:
We read together during morning time, over lunch, and listen to stories on car rides. This builds family culture. I love having these shared stories. For term 1 I have chosen Beyond Mulberry Glen.
Tips for Success with Family Subjects
- Choose curriculum that’s flexible and open-ended.
- Let older kids go deeper with extensions or assigned reading
- Don’t stress if everyone doesn’t grasp everything.
- Keep Christ at the center and enjoy the learning journey together.
That’s a wrap for our 2025-2026 Curriculum choices for Family Subjects
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