Others must have ideas they used (or not, like me). Give your ideas a spin here and maybe someone can adapt them to their homeschooling needs . . .. Having a bit of the academic in me, I think now that I should have homeschooled my daughter. It would have been difficult after her sainted and brilliant Mom died when our daughter was but ten years old, but we would have managed, somehow. Now, however, maybe I have some advice to give. Your already clever older student of, say, math can teach younger siblings math better than you can. You just watch, have a cuppa, and enjoy the interplay. You referee frustrations and irritations, and moderate what can become a bit too playful. Teach rhetoric and language skills by holding some testing by voice instead of paper and pencil. By watching and noting your child's expressive skills, you can begin helping to teach body-language, assertiveness and vocabulary skills in further lessons off the beaten path. Incorporate community-service lessons that get your kids out to meet others very different in numbers of ways from you and themselves. Besides, in later years they will have a background of service that really impresses college-entrance examiners. Call in a new face to teach a specific seminar-like class about a very specific topic in which 'New-Face' is experienced. For instance, nothing inspires the whole American Revolution learning experience as does a firing of a musket (OUTDOORS!) to 'awaken' the senses as well as the mind. Relatedly, for another example, when teaching the science of the human heart, address the health of the human heart. Have a heart patient you know talk of his medical experiences with his heart. Maybe, he can even take on helping your kids learn all that can be said to help keep their hearts healthy. And, just maybe, when your daughter accepts the Nobel Prize for Medicine decades hence for her highly effective treatments of heart patients, and she mentions 'Mom's heart classes' as her inspiration - well, you know what that would mean to you and her; that as once you touched her, she can now touch you so lovingly back. Besides, a new face teaching your kids lets them know how important their learning is: ('even others lend a hand.') A new face also gives you and your kids a break from each other. You know that both of you need that. Teach prayers as so very personal. 'When I say a 'Hail, Mary', it means . . .' Even yon Mater of a Methodist household can tell what the prayer means to her, and open minds, hearts, spirits and even a suddenly very curious spouse's eyes to something about his wife he never heard before. And, even here, I remain your obedient servant, but God's first, Pristinus Sapienter (or, do you prefer 'Prissy Sap'?) (wljewell @mail.catholicexchange.com or ...yahoo.com)