I was home educated from the age of 11, until the age of 18. I knew about 50 - 150 home educated children, among those I knew of only a couple that couldn't read or write.

The one, couldn't read or write until the age of 8 or 9, when his mum found books under his pillow he had decided to learn because he liked the subject matter, she left him alone and provided help when he asked, and within 7 months he could read and write and was completely and utterly fluent, moreso than some adults I have met who have a complete schooling.

The other, was not much of a reader, and was barely fluent, picked up reading and writing at around 9. He read lord of the rings at around the same age (10 or 11) and ripped through the series in a handful of months.

A lot of people treat learning as something you have to sit the child down to do, but that cannot be further from the truth were they removed from the exposure of school.

Personally for you I would look up Autonomous Home Education, and Unschooling. Children are extremely gifted at learning -- I mean, they're built to learn -- and if left to mostly their own devices (which is extremely terrifying at first), and occasional passive action (like say, buying interesting books, not communicating it, and leaving it on the shelf to be discovered -- brains are good at picking up when the environment changes C: ), they will find interest in learning and discovering subjects of their own accord.

(Do note, however, that many parents find that you have to give them a rest from learning and allow them to recover from the stress of school and discover their own rhythms! the average is 6 months, in my case because of a mathematics teacher that got me so stressed out I was unable to perform the act of adding up numbers in my head, it was 2 years!)

And even if they don't, a lot of people treat childhood as the absolute holy grail of learning -- if you don't understand it as a child you are doomed! However think about how much adults could learn if they decided they wanted to make a concrete effort, muted the distractions, and sat down for 2 hours total a week? They cannot because they find learning to be a chore! Ultimately your job as a parent is to make sure the adult that forms is capable and able to continue to learn. At best, schools fail disastrously at this, at worst, they actually hinder and set the resulting adult against learning forever more.

To clarify: By "Barely fluent" I mean to say that the second child mentioned was barely fluent at reading and writing, not that he was barely fluent in English as a whole.

In order to be successful with multiple children, you need to find a balance between self study (worksheet) and teaching. The younger the children, the more hands on you need to be. You need to figure out a good rotation so they are not all waiting for time with you.

It takes some adjustment because they may be used to having you full time. You can also start your 3 year old doing "school work". They can look at books, play with toys, watch leapfrog letter factory, color a page, etc.

The other thing to remember is that a 5 year old with attitude is always better than a 15 year old with an attitude. If you don't deal with it now, you are just going to push it off till they are older.

Note: we homeschool our 5 kids.

We had kids aged 2/5/7 at home while we were working in recent weeks; schools stayed open here in South Australia but many who could work remotely pulled their kids out as a precaution.

The 7yo is fine. 5yo is learning to read and can look after herself with some programs but needed help now and then - she also learns better with teachers. The 2yo disrupts everything unless you put her in front of an iPad for hours on end. The older two went back to school today and the 2yo back in childcare a couple of days a week. Depending on your work situations, I'd suggest leaning on formal schooling and get the 2yos in childcare a day a week to get a break for work or even just catching up around the house.

I think it'd be difficult to do the 5yo's homeschooling justice with 2yos helping.

I'm in this situation too; in VIC, Australia with 3/5/8 year olds. It's the 3yo who's hardest to deal with by an enormous amount. Given that the situation in Australia is about as under control as it's possible for it to be, I'm quite confident that schools will re-open within six months. And my gut feel is that we as a family would be better off (mentally, emotionally, and quite possibly even educationally) by treating this as a holiday from formal schooling rather than trying to make this work across such varied ages.

Schools are open here and I would've thought they'd open sooner than six months in Victoria?

The problem with treating it as a holiday holiday is that campgrounds are closed, restaurants and attractions are closed. So it's a home-bound holiday heading into winter. Otherwise I'd happily get the kids out of school again and drag them around AU or even just SA.

That said, you could just do 3-6 months of mucking around at home. Cooking, gardening, stay up late, informal learning, projects. I don't think kids would be catastrophically worse off from something like that.

I don't have any advice on homeschooling but I can sympathize with your kiddo situation (ours are 12, 10, 10). It can be rough with 3 that close in age, sometimes you just do what you need to so you can get through the day. You've probably already learned this but making loose plans with plenty of flexibility built in is key. At any one time 1 kid may be doing what they're supposed to (if you're lucky), 1 kid will be wandering off randomly, and 1 kid will be possessed by Satan. Hour two, they rotate. Good luck brother, you'll get through it and make sure to enjoy the crazy, chaotic, awesome times along the way cause before you know it, you'll be shipping them off to college.

I feel your pain. We have a 5 year old and twin 3 year olds. Our 5 year old will be entering K this fall too. Though, who knows what exactly that will look like. Right now the school which our 5 year old attends is having 45 min zoom calls with each pre-school class twice a week. It's not the same as having a whole day of activities and socializing but I respect what they have managed to do with the constraints that they are dealing with. Outside of that we've been reading to them a lot. But, there is a special force of nature weight that the twins somehow wield. And that is just tough. The way we've tried to spin that is to attempt to inspire them by feeding whatever their latent interests seem to be at the moment. And get that momentum in a productive direction. It does not always work.

That’s been the hardest part for us the last few weeks. The older 2 you can manage and get them to sit down to learn something, it’s the 1yo running around being distracting that makes it hard. 9, 6 and 1.5 = children with very different needs.

You don't have to wait until a certain date to try — there is nothing magical about August or September that makes it a good time to start learning.