Is anyone willing to share an example of your HomeSchooling shedule and curriculum? As every knows this will be my first year HomeSchooling and I'm curious to know how much time is spend on each subject. I have been thinking something like this...... One hour a day on reading, math, spelling/vocabulary (together). Two to three days out of the week science (my children love science) for one hour. History for thirty minutes, three days out of the week. Thirty minutes a day on writing and phonics. Am I missing something? Too much or two little? Advice. Sorry for all the questions.
Looks great. Your kids will help you figuring out what time schedule works best as you get into the actual day(s). Somedays, my boys (2 six year olds) have more and some day less attention span. Most days though, we do lessons for 3 to 4 hours, doing lessons with each one individually. I guess that is actually 1 1/2 to 2 hours for each child. We do math, reading, Bible, and language arts right now, but in the Fall, will be adding science and history. One suggestion may be to do a language arts type class that combines spelling, handwriting, phonics, grammar, punctuation. We use Christian Light. I'm sure there are others out there that do the same. It really cut down on our time trying to do the individual lessons. Just a thought. Happy homeschooling.
Looks perfect to me! I'm not doing anything formal with my little one yet. The one who's doing 3rd this year works for appx 2 hours in the morning, and that's about it. We do language arts, math, and Bible every day. Things like science & history are 2-3 days/wk.
I'd like to see a few schedules from those with Jr High age kids. Including whatever "homework" you give (like, book reports and such). Anyone?
My children are in 3rd and 5th grade but here is the homework I have come up with. Spelling words; write ten times each. Spelling and vocabulary words; write one sentence for each word. Read for thirty minutes out loud to me every night. Math homework; every night. Once a year; science project. Once a week; write a one paragraph report. Also for local history I plan on taking them to historical sites. Do you have any ideal/ideals as too what you would like to do? (homework and/or homeschool work wise) If so I would love to hear them:love:.
I don't do homework. I'll assign research at some point in the distant future, but nothing right now.
I don't really worry about how long we do each subject (but we don't have to track our hours here in Michigan either); instead we just complete the subjects for that day and when we're done, we're done. We do Bible, Math, Reading and Language Arts daily and art, history, and phys ed weekly. In the fall we'll add science twice a week. Some days we spend a lot of time reading and breeze through the math lesson or vice versa...just depends on the assignments and the kids' (or teacher's) patience! As far as schedule, we start around 9:30 with calendar, Pledge of Allegiance and weekly Bible verse review. Then we begin with Bible and go from there. I try to vary the order of subjects depending on the assignment for each...that way it isn't too much seat work or reading at one time. My kids are young and therefore very squirrely! We're usually done by lunch or shortly after.
Now we do all of our subjects daily. This way nothing gets skimmed on too much. We school 4 1/2 days a week. Mon-Thurs we do all subjects. On Fri. we only do LA and Math. Here is our day (now some days it doesn't work out perfectly, but we try) Start the day with our calendar. It is a magnetic one on the wall that he puts on the day of the week, month, day, what season it is and the weather each day. Apx 5 minutes daily. Then off to Math. Which covers a bit further in calendar work, so it is a great jump off point for the day. Apx 1 hr-1 1/2 hrs daily. Quick drink break and to stretch his legs a bit. Apx 5-10 min. LA (phonics, spelling, reading, grammar all of it). Depends on the day, some days there is less copy work then others. Also some days my son fights on reading his books and drags his feet a bit. This takes us any where from 1 hr to 2 hrs daily. Another break for a few minutes. During the breaks we get drinks use the restroom, put away books and get out new ones. Then on to Geography. This only takes us 15-30 min. Depends on how much map work or if there is a project to do. History takes us any where from 30 min to 1 hr. Depends on how much reading and projects that day. We end our days with science and art. I keep them for last so we build up to it and it is something to look forward to. Also they can be messy which means more time cleaning up and my son loves to drag them out to be tons more. He loves Science and Art so if it was up to him we would do only those and they would last all day. Depending on what we do these can be any where from 30 min each to 2 hrs each.
I don't really time it out either. I do one lesson for each child- in whatever depth/length I think will hold their attention. I try to have a paper trail right now- I'm still new and nervous. But often a subject can be discussion-based only, which honestly seems to be MUCH more lasting to my kids than the paperwork. Here's an example of our day (with dd (7).. still work in progress for ds): Phonics- every day. Flashcards/wordlist. She reads to me. Math- every day LA- copywork and discussion of something, usually a worksheet on word families. Everyday Sci (wed/thur) or SS (mon/tues) Health (tues/thurs) or Gym (mon/wed/fri) Art (friday) or Music (thurs) That is the order dd does them in, as well. Day generally ran 1.5 hrs for her, and 2-2.5 for ds (9). But a lot of that is up to her. If we get caught up in a discussion on something, I don't cut the discussion short to move on. We tweak as we go- I had originally wanted to do spelling with dd last school year but that resulted in a breakdown from her... my huge mistake. And I HAD done sci/ss on alternating days but I didn't like that at all. You sort of have to.. jump in though. Nothing you learn can really completely prepare you for the experiences of teaching your children. One last thing.. and this isn't ps bashing but... if you are pulling your kids out to homeschool, be prepared to overcome some things they learned/didn't learn there. For us, that was eye-opening (and to a certain extent, heartbreaking).
We run errands and do chores in the AM. After lunch we start school work. My older daughter will be starting 11th grade, she does all of her work on her own with the exception of some Science projects. My younger daughter will be starting 1st grade. We will start after lunch and tweak it time wise from there. If we need more time, then we will start with a subject or two before lunch time. She does the calendar and pledge of allegiance first, then we start on her workboxes. I sit with her and do a lot of her work with her. She is getting much more independent then she was at the start of last year, but I still need to help with a lot of her work. She does CLE Math, CLE Language Arts, Horizons Spelling and Handwriting, and CLE Bible each day. This fall we will also do science (with hands on experiments) twice a week and unit studies on each of the States for history twice a week. She also does ClickNkids phonics and spelling on the computer, but that is more of a reward to her, she doesn't realize it's teaching her.. shhh... It's not something she does every day, usually on days we don't do school work. We don't have to track hours, just number of days.
We use Sonlight and it is pretty much all laid out. Our day usually goes something like this: (before I am up, dd gets up early) Math ,Handwriting, health (for only 10 weeks),grammar After breakfast Bible Reading Spelling History Latin Snack time/Read aloud (around 10am) Science LA finish up Handwriting, health, grammar if they did not get done earlier Art/Music(alternates days) Most days we were done with everything but art and music by 12:30. We then did art/music after lunch and were done by 1:30 at the latest.
Our day generally looks something like this: My boys wake up early a couple of hours before I get up. I write down an assignment for them to do independently that takes about 30-45 minutes. They do this before breakfast. They usually have some free time afterwards to pursue anything of interest. Breakfast @ 9 or so. Around 10 we head downstairs for school. Everyday is different. We spend about 2-2.5 hours on academic related work and then they run around and get sweaty to music for 30 minutes. They then do a chore before lunch. After lunch they have 30 minutes free time on the computer. We then do about another 2-2.5 hours of academic related work before the kids go outside to run around for 1.5 hours. They have a shower, do another chore, have another 30 minutes of computer time, and eat supper.
I pretty much include any "homework" as part of our school time. I think you will find that you will be able to accomplish all of the required work and have plenty of time left over for any additional assignments without extending beyond the time a child is in public school.
