homeschool for about 4-6 hours a day. I was always under the impression homeschooling was to be far shorter than regular school, and the average time spent was 3 hours. How long is your homeschooling day with OUT breaks? I have a 1st and 2nd grader and we work until its done. We use Calvert so it's pretty structured. I will leave out a few things here and there that I feel are not necessary. I'd say it takes about 3 hours for us not including breaks. I hope I'm not screwing up!
I'm sure you're not screwing up - that sounds like plenty for that age group. We are sometimes finished in about 3 hours, although it is very variable here, and is heavily dependent on how well the kids apply themselves to their tasks.
No...I'd say our AVERAGE day goes for about 3 hours. Our LONG days go for 4 hours. I find that if we start by 9 and are done by 12 or 12:30. Now...TV does not go on in this house until LATE in the day. So even "rest" time is used to read, do crafts/art, fun stuff. While I count that as school for the state, (because in PS they get "quiet reading time", art time, music time, etc). I don't really consider it "school". I want my kids to realize that learning happens when you're not doing school, too. That LIFE is a process of learning. My kids do some of the most amazing things when we are no "doing schoolwork". For example, our co-op is teaching the kdis about stained glass in art right now. They made these mock-stained glass windows using black paper and colored plastic celophane. My daughter, during her free time the other day, made one (we have to get the celophane to fill it out) it's beautiful. Now...that's ART. Was it assigned work? NO? Did it reinforce what she was learning in her art class? YES.
Without breaks, we probably go less than 4 hours depending on the child & grade. My 1st grade son spends probably an hour on "seat work" and reading. He'll occassionally have longer days when he joins his sisters for science or geography. My 3rd grade daughter spends the longest but she is a very slow writer and in OT for some motor/writing/spelling issues so we have to remediate a few things and work on specific things that aren't related (always) to her curriculum for a given subject plus she requires more breaks. My oldest is 10 and doing primarily 6th grade work (but some 5th which would be her grade in the ps system). She spends probably 4-5 hours on a long day but as little as 3 on a shorter day....this includes her Sonlight and personal reading.....not including what she reads at bedtime. To me, a 1st and 2nd grader should easily be done in 3 hours of less esp. if you teach subjects like history & science together.....unless you do alot of extra crafts, lapbooks, etc........that can eat up time but are still fun and the kids usually don't care how long it takes. On the days, we make clay creatures for Apologia Zoology, my kids wouldn't care if it took until bedtime because they enjoy it. Our days would be shorter if mine were more able to do subjects together. We just haven't found a good way given their different levels, learning styles, writing abilities, etc. It's working for Zoo 2 and Geography though. I should add that we go longer M, W, Th, Fri because we don't do much schooling on Tues except for their co-op classes....which are "extras" like cooking, drama, pe, etc. Rhonda
My 2nd grader's academic stuff takes about 2hrs/day. Mon to Thu is: Phonics workbook (15 min) Spelling workbook (15 min) Math workbook (15 min) - he's loves workbooks Cursive practice or copywork (20 min) 2 or 3 readings with narration, and maybe some mapwork and wall timeline (30 - 45 min) Wednesday is also: Nature study in the afternooon (1 hr usually) Friday is: Spanish (15 min) Latin (15 min) Artist study (15 min) Art project (30 min) Composer study (15 min) Science experiment (20 min) Spelling test (very informal, he actually threw this one in himself) We also do a trip or 2 each week with the homeschool group or by ourselves.
We definitely go more than 3 hrs. However, part of that is because dd will often spend 2hrs just on Math. She only has to do 1 lesson a day & it shouldn't take more than an hour, but she whines, fights, or stares at the wall for a while before starting. It's her least favorite subject (although one of her best), so it always takes longer than it should. Plus, she's in 5th grade & doing jr. high level work & 2 foreign languages. So, 3 hrs wouldn't be enough time. My ds (4y.o.) does less than an hour of 'schoolwork' each day. For 1st & 2nd grade, 3 hrs sounds fine.
I've never kept track. I am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl. We usually start later than I'd like and finish sooner than I want because we have to stop 3 days a week to go to band for DS at the school, and another day they have both piano early afternoon. There's something to be said about outside activities being disruptive...Sometimes I have them do math or something we should've fit in late at night. We are very much night people and not morning people. I can barely drag my butt out of bed before 8:30.
I would say seat work for my son (2nd grade) takes close to 2 hours. We do 15-20 minute lessons like NYCitymomx3 does. I need to count more than seat work as school though. I'm suppose to have 875 hours of school (reading, language arts, math, science, health and social studies) each year. I'm not suppose to count Music, Art or PE as those aren't required. I'm also not suppose to count activities that are open to more than one family.
I think it will all depend on the age of the child. My dd is in 7th grade so it can take 6 hours some days. My youngest will begin 1st grade in February and I do not expect it to take much time at all.
I'd say 4-5 hours for us. We are required to do 4.5 per day, but nobody is checking. It just depends on the workload and the kids attitudes that day. Sometimes we just get really into something we are learning and decide to keep going.
Well, our average time seems to be 6-7 hours but that's with lunch, breaks here and there and 1 hour for p.e. (playing outside)...so without all of that, probably about 4-5 hours. But that's with ds taking an hour for math. read aloud to mommy time and reading lessons on computer and then quiet reading time where they just sit for 20 minutes "reading" books (aka...looking at them, occasionally reading). It just works for us to be able to get in all that I want us to cover. But it varies greatly from family to family! One family could cover the same exact stuff as us in 2 hours, etc. That's what's great about hs'ing, you do what works for you! I'm sure you are covering what you are needing to! ps...we also take a really short friday with just about 2 hours.
I think we spend about 4ish hours... two before band and two after. Band itself...at the ms takes two hours because he walks there and back and stays for lunch. Because this is our first hs year, not seeing his friends was an issue. (mainly for dh) I just found out that he is eating fast so he has time to go back in the band room and practice! So I do think we could cut it down by an hour if we were just to get after it. without the interuption at 1040 to 1230 every day. We just count days, not hours, and thankfully...not specific subjects. ugh.
Sometimes school takes a few hours and other times longer. I will not school more than a couple of hours without giving Ems a break.
It depends on the day and the work load. For example - Friday - 1 subject... Math.... long division.... took from 10-3. Not because he didn't get it... but he wouldn't DO it. My throat STILL hurts from yelling!! But on the other hand about 3-4 sometimes 5 hours per day - again - depends on the workload. My 3rd grader sits down does her work and gets it done in 2 hours usually including me reading to her. This of course doesn't include the "need to get up and sharpen my pencil 50 times"
Right now it takes us about 2 and a half hours.Thats mostly because my oldest like to stare out the window,doodle on her paper,pick at an imaginary spot on her desk,etc.Untill finally she is ready to work.Her actual work only takes about 20 minutes each subject.Its just hard to get her started. My youngest is just doing pre school work,so she works when she feels like it.
It depends on my sons mood for the day lol. I'd guess it usually takes us 3 to 5 (or more) hours.. including breaks. We are starting a whole new program for school this week so I'm curious to see how long school takes us now. We are doing Abeka DVD'S for the first time... so that alone will take longer than my teaching took. Then we are adding in Writing With Ease, Apologia Zoology, Harcourt science 3, and Winter Promises history program. The reading and hands on projects for W.P. can take us 2 hours or more each day.... if school takes us too long we will just drop Abekas history program and maybe some more of the classes on the DVD. My other programs are too nice to drop lol.
My daughter is in 3rd grade. We are typically done with our structured work (math, grammar, reading skills) in about 1 1/2 hours. I spend about 1/2 to an hour doing our unit study (history, science, reading), then she works on her own doing any projects, crafts, computer review, etc. Some days we will spend several hours doing a unit study, and then work on the other subjects the following day. We sort of just go with the flow.
