I am a BRAND new homeschooler (well, I will be in 1 year) and I am preparing, collecting and learning all I can. Would any of the seasoned homeschoolers share what a typical daily schedule is like? How many hours do you spend on each subject and how many subjects in each day? Do you alternate subjects on different days of the week? I am looking for Grades K thru 3rd currently. Your feedback is MOST appreciated! ~Nicole~
Hi Nicole and welcome. First off everyone's schedules vary according to lifestyle. I have three dds K-3rd this fall. We spend about 3-5 hours on school. I do history and science 3 days a week. Reading, math, spelling and english, 5 days a week. that is about as regimented as I get. I have been playing with schedules for 5 years now and it changes every year. There is some great advice here though. Search old threads. Once again welcome.
I base my schedule on how many days per week do we need to do each subject to get through the material in the year's time. For example, our math curriculum has 30 lessons. Each lesson has 6 pages and a quiz. In addition, there are 6 unit tests. For it, we are doing about a lesson a week. This fits in great for a 36-week year, and gives us wiggle room for days off or if we need to spend more time on any given concept. For ours (Math-U-See), I have my son watch the lesson and do one practice page the first day. The second and third days he does two pages each; we generally skip that last page or pair it with the test on the fourth day. Voila - we do math 4 days/wk, for however long it takes to complete the 2 pages. Here's my 9yo's schedule: Reading - free hour every day Vocabulary - 3 days/wk, usually 2 pages/day English - 3 days/wk, a lesson a day Math - 4 days/wk, 2 pages/day Science - 2 days a week plus a weekly co-op Health - 1 day/wk History - 4 days/wk according to a scheduled curriculum I purchased Bible - 3 days/wk generally, sometimes more if it's also our history lesson I don't set times - English is from 10am to 11am - or anything like that. We have a task to complete each day, and we work until it's done. If it's taking too long, I'll divide it up at that day's discretion, or I'll change up what we're to do for that lesson, or something like that. I don't like for a subject to last longer than about 40 minutes. For my K-er, if you'll see the Kindergarten thread (I just bumped it, actually), I have our tentative schedule on there. Basically, we're covering some phonics and math from guided curricula, and then following a theme. With each theme, we'll cover 4-5 skills each day and also read a book (or several books) to go with it. The theme skill tasks generally look to take 10-20 minutes, sometimes a craft takes longer.
Nicole--does your state have any requirements regarding this? I.e. my state, up until last year, required 180 days of instruction. Homeschoolers did some litigating and now there is no minimum requirement. I know some states have 'hours' too. Our schedule--I'm going into my 3rd year of HSing, with a 2nd grader and a preK/K this coming year. We start at Noon and work until finished (usually anywhere from 2-4 hours depending on how motivated--or lack thereof--my DD is. We always get math, reading, spelling, handwriting, and grammar done, and we do this 4 days a week (Tues-Fri). I usually do science, hx, music, and art on the off days (Sat-Mon), as these are our 'funner' subjects, and almost not like school at all. My DH reads a bible story to them every nite, so I really don't have 'Bible' as a subject yet. We school year round, going about 6 weeks on and 2 weeks off, but this varies too. I ordered Abeka for 2nd grade, and it looks like most of the lessons are 170 days, so I'll do some adjusting as we go. Always adjusting!
I agree about always adjusting. It's a constant thing around here, too. My oldest especially needs a change in schedule every few months; two or three times a year we change up the way he does things. Sometimes we're more structured, sometimes less. Our K is more structured than I'd planned on it being, because my SIL is living with us and is just starting her homeschooling journey as well. They'll be out soon (I hope :lol: ) but she and I will work together on our school, and the structure helps her feel like things are getting done. (Plus, I've never schooled for K before either, and I feel better this way too!) Anyway. It is always changing and what works for one might not work for another... and what works this month might not work next month! If it doesn't work, shrug and change it. No big deal.
We school 4 days a week, year round, taking a week here and there throughout and about 4-6 weeks in the summer. My son will go to an enrichment program for the first time this year, 2nd grade. It's from 10-2:30 once a week. We won't do any other school that day. My son is easily distractable and does best when there is some structure to our day. Last year I started out trying a very rigid schedule though, and it just didn't work....for me. I had each subject in a certain time slot beginning at 9am and ending at 2pm, including meals, snacks, and play breaks. After about a week, I was done. It was too easy to get off schedule. We ended up mostly unschooling the rest of year, but it turned out to be a great year. So for the coming year, we're going to try keep some structure, but not so rigidly. Our day will look something like this: 8:30-9am wake up, dress, eat breakfast 9-10am Bible, praise, prayer, manners 10-11am 3Rs, snack 11-12noon My Father's World (geography, science, missionary and character studies, vocabulary, etc.) 12-12:30pm lunch 12:30-1pm alternating Spanish, Music, Art 1-1:30pm read aloud, book basket Bible, etc daily 3Rs daily MFW daily Spanish twice a week Art once a week Music once a week We use the Explorers Bible Study, Copybook of Manners by Queen homeschool Singapore math, Language Lessons for the Very Young by Queen, Wordly Wise, Getty-Dubay Italics MFW Exploring Countries and Cultures Discovering Great Artists and MFW art The Story of the Orchestra and MFW music The Easy Spanish and The Fun Spanish
Yes Nebraska law requires: 1032 hours for elementary and required subjects are: language arts, math, science, social studies and health.
We tend to "do school" from about 10-2 (less lunch) but that doesn't include independent reading and "fun learning". My oldest (4th grade this past year) often works until 3 or 3:30 depending on her other subject. The above is probably 3-4 days per week. Tuesdays we have a 2 hour co-op and not a whole let else happens because I'm on the steering committee and have to setup/cleanup sometimes. And then we often have a field trip or something else come up every now and then. My K'er basically just did the 3 R's this year for about 1 hour per day. He joined his sisters for various science and history things but I didn't "track" his time spent per week for those because I don't have an hourly req'ment. And my 2nd grader was somewhere in between on time spent. We use different thing for different kids and different subjects so it really does vary alot. I don't get stressed out if we don't accomplish everything in a certain day. Generally we're ahead of schedule on the req'ments of VA law (math and lang arts) and if we're not "ahead" in the others subjects....that's fine. We probably strayed off to explore something further....that's just a benefit of HSing.
when my kids were in K we did half days. Mostly because they needed nap time as much as I did because of the older child/children would need more help. So k did 9-noon, but it was not all workbooks. We did 20-30 mins at a time I remember and I always had legos out for if things required them to play with something tangable to stay focused. Then in 1st we went to 1:30 ish. Mostly because 1st grade work went so fast! So I had them finish thier day with a book and when it was done being read they were done with school. Of course when they were that young they often went thorugh a couple books on thier own after that to enjoy the picture book stories. starting with 2nd grade we went full time 9-3 or 8-2 Math always has been an hour class. English too ( lang arts, spelling, reading, phonics all in one hours time not always at one time) I gave them half hour break for recess.( still do with ds10) Science and Social Study( history and geography) alternated every day for half hour to forty five minute classes. So one had 2 a week and then 3 the next week. ANy othe class went from 30-45 mins at those ages.
Welcome! I homeschool three kids. We are up at 6:00 AM, because we have breakfast with Daddy before he goes to work (public high school!). By 7:30, we have had breakfast, had devotions/prayer with Daddy, kicked him out the door, brushed our teeth, made the beds, are dressed, and have breakfast cleaned up. At 7:30, we start with a praise song (my oldest on the piano), and then 10-15 minutes of individual Bible reading (depending on how much time we have). We usually follow this with history. I teach hisory to all three together. We read from from a "living book" dealing with the time period, or a biography. We will also either read from the textbook, or do our workbook page, or work on our timeline. After history, I go over individual stuff with the kids, giving them more or less a "list" of what assignments for the day. This is mostly math, language, and copywork, possibly more history for my older one to do on her own, science for my older one. On Monday, we also all three do "English from the Roots Up", which deals with Latin and Greek roots. On Tuesdays, we have staff meeting at church. My kids take their assignments with them and do it there. On Wednesdays, we my oldest has speech. Again, my other two take their assignments with us, and work while she's in her class. We also have piano lessons and they will work on assignments when it's not their turn. Usually, they are done with the bulk of their assignments by 11:00 or so. We will break until after lunch. About 12:30 or 1:00, my kids go upstairs for 30 min. Silent Reading time. This is Mom Time...I do NOT do any school work or housework during this time!!! VERY IMPORTANT to get this time for yourself!!! When the 30 minutes is up, I read aloud to the kids. Sometimes it's historical fiction (to go along with our history), or a missionary biography, or a classic such as Black Beauty. Then we might do science or something that we missed. We stop around 2:30 or 3:00.
Well, we have done everything!! I tried a "rigid" schedule that was a certain subject at a certain time. It was a disaster, it just didn't work out well. Then we tried a "relaxed" schedule, which didn't work either . So, now we are doing something in between This is what we do. DD7 is just finishing 1st/2nd grade. What has worked out really great for us is a 4 day schedule with a 2-4 week break every 2 months or so. We school throughout the summer, mostly getting done things I want to see accomplished. Our daily schedule is like this...we start school between 8:45 and 9:00. We do Bible, History, corrections from the previous day, and Science (which right now is a lapbook). Then we take a break (10-20 minutes with a snack) and do Language Arts (spelling, handwriting, First Language Lessons, vocabulary or phonics) and Math. By this time it is usually lunch time and DD has work to do on her own (I write what she has to do in a notebook for the remainder of the day). My DD loves to read so I rarely assign reading because she reads on her own for 1-2 hours a day without being asked. Now I also have to say that between over the last two years (her K and 1st grade years) we have basically finished through 3rd grade in all of Language Arts (or will by the end of the summer). We will slow down come September. I also wanted to add that we are typically done by 1 (sometime 2).
Hi, Im Melissa, single mom to Madison(8 in sept, 2nd grade). Our schedule is very flexible, I work part time at a hospital as a secretary and we do school whenever we can. Even if its 5 minutes to talk about a bug or whatever. Our sit down time is normally from 9-12 on the days I work at 3pm, my earlier day she does her assignments at my sisters house. On my days off, we do school on and off, we do alot of unit studies, book reading, math projects-both mental and writing. I have a white board that we do math on, makes her think mentally about answering the question. Good luck on finding your schedule/rountine..somedays Im not sure I even have one lol. and I agree with Being Flexible..
We have a shedule, but we are really flexible when using it (more of a guide for me) We school Sun-Thurs here (Fri + Sat are weekends for most here) SUN: Maths, English, Science, Spelling, Comprehension, Music MON: Maths, English,History, Science, Spelling, Islamic studies/Arabic TUES: Maths, English, History, Science, Spelling, Creative Writing, Geography WED: Maths, English, History, Science, Spelling, Art THURS: Maths, English, Spelling, Vocabulary, Nature Journals. We dont stick to time frames though, but roughly school from 9 am- 12.30-1.30 .
I am a relaxed Charlotte Mason homeschooler. I despise rigid schedules - they just don't work for me. My oldest is a 7th grader and she spends anywhere from 3 - 6 hours per day depending on her attitude. Some days she is quick and some days she drags things out. We have in the past saved Fridays for art, music, Shakespeare, and field trips but I think that this next year will be a heavier load for her and will require all 5 days. We shall see in the fall. With my K student and I even more relaxed. My focus is phonics, begining math and tons and tons of time outside playing, growing gardens and studying nature. I dont' have a set time for things or a certain number of days per week spent on a specific subject.
hi we only officially HE one and this is a guide mon - phonics, writing, reading, maths, science, history, music, bible stories, literature. tues - phonics, writing, reading, maths, geography, ict, spanish, pe, literature. wed - phonics, writing, reading, maths, science, history, bible stories, art and design, literature. thur - phonics, writing, reading, maths, geography, pe, ict, music, literature. fri - phonics, writing, reading, maths, science, spanish, pe, latin, art and design, literature. sat - phonics, writing, reading, maths, science, art and design. sun - phonics, writing, reading, maths, bible stories. she is only 5 but her younger brother who is 2.3years loves joining in as well! some days more is done than others but its very relaxed and we go with the flow!
This will by DS's first legal year. He'll be registered as a K, but we'll be doing 1st gr work. Our schedule will be close to this: 3 days a week: 3 R's, PE 2 days a week: Science, health/PE and SS Fill in all the days with misc. subjects such as guitar lessons, educational computer games, misc skills books and open reading time. We also have field trips that we'll do, about 1x a month. I expect we'll spend about 2 hours a day, but we'll see how it all works out. I haven't gotten in all of my curriculum yet, so I'm sure I'll have to adjust some things to make sure we get it all in. I am also looking into a 4-day week with a week off every 6-8 weeks, but I'm not sure when we would have to start it in order to finish up by the end of our association's school term... something else I've got to check out.
Where do you find time to do housework and errands? It seems I can only get one things focused on during a week. Either the house is in good shape and I'm on top of my work but the schoolwork has been neglected or we've accomplished alot of school stuff but the house is a disaster and I haven't gotten any errands done.
Schedule????what's a schedule???:lol: seriously I plan everything in the lesson planner as to what to do each day and then just do it! We don't have a set time for school or even a set order to do subjects. We just write down our goals for the day and do as much as we can and sometimes we even do more.
Yeah, I tried the old this hour we'll do this subject thing last year - didn't work for us. I have to do a bit of work concerning my husband's business, including running errands for it, so I just write down what lessons in what subjects I want to get covered that day and we do them as the day goes by. It's still fairly easy I think right now, compared to how it will be when he has to do so many hours per day for highschool credits. Of course, he'll be able to read completely on his own then, too. Right now I still read most to him, with him learning as we go. I don't know if you were talking to me specifically about housework, but for us we keep it clean, but messy, if that makes sense. It is rarely oh-so-clean and orderly - only when we're expecting company! It's not dirty, just messy.
Thank you all for sharing your schedules with me. I appreciate being able to hear what others are doing. This gives me some ideas to roll around and things to think about. Greatly appreciated.
