I feel like I must be doing something wrong: done by lunch - Page 2

[Martha_2sons]

Just to put another perspective on it... While traveling a couple of winters ago I met a Canadian family whose children (ages 9 & 11) went to school, but took three months off each year to travel together. The school gave the family all the work that the children needed to do to keep up with their classmates. The mother told me that they spent one hour, every other day doing school work in order to keep up. So, instead of spending about 30 hours per week in school, they finished in about 3-4 hours.

[TightwadMom]

Oh my gosh.....

after reading this thread, I really feel like I really MUST be doing something wrong.

I just started homeschooling one this year (third grade daughter), and she's pretty good about buckling down and doing her work. We're doing the Virtual Academy with the state of Ohio. We're doing schooling from 9:30 a.m. to noon and then from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and sometimes we STILL don't get everything done that's on her schedule.

[Smithie]

Every family is different, so you're probably not doing anything wrong at all, TightWadMom. But in MY family, if we don't finish formal academics by lunchtime I have seriously messed up, because that is the amount of mental energy that my ds has to spend on schooling. He's intelligent. He's enthusiastic. But he's 5.

As he gets older, I hope to have "lessons" in the morning and some assigned reading and independent work in the afternoon.

[TightwadMom]

My daughter is...

almost 10, so she is older.

I find it is harder for both of us to get re-motivated as much after lunch.

We usually do piano practice, spelling, math, and language before lunch. After lunch, we do literature and then a combination of History, Art, and Science (depending upon the day of the week). She's also required to participate in Study Island (15 minutes a day), journaling (15 minutes a day), and Spanish (supposed to be 15 minutes per day.....but sometimes we just don't get it in). She also need to phys ed for one hour per week.

It just seems like the curriculum is a LOT sometimes. We're required to put in 25 school hours a week, and sometimes I cannot get her curriculum finished even within that time frame.

Maybe it's more her curriculum than anything? It just seems like a lot sometimes.

My mom (who was a teacher for 35 years) came to stay with us overnight and decided to stay and help teach my daughter for a day. She made a couple of comments about the large amount of work that was listed on the curriculum for the week.

[MissRubyandKen]

Originally Posted by TightwadMom

almost 10, so she is older.

I find it is harder for both of us to get re-motivated as much after lunch.

We usually do piano practice, spelling, math, and language before lunch. After lunch, we do literature and then a combination of History, Art, and Science (depending upon the day of the week). She's also required to participate in Study Island (15 minutes a day), journaling (15 minutes a day), and Spanish (supposed to be 15 minutes per day.....but sometimes we just don't get it in). She also need to phys ed for one hour per week.

It just seems like the curriculum is a LOT sometimes. We're required to put in 25 school hours a week, and sometimes I cannot get her curriculum finished even within that time frame.

Maybe it's more her curriculum than anything? It just seems like a lot sometimes.

My mom (who was a teacher for 35 years) came to stay with us overnight and decided to stay and help teach my daughter for a day. She made a couple of comments about the large amount of work that was listed on the curriculum for the week.

Are you with OHVA? From our prior experience- Your dd can test out if she already knows the material, supplement, and skip activities that aren't needed to master the material. Take a highlighter and assign half the math problems on the worksheet. If she is good at Spelling try just having her copy the words one day and test another. If she doesn't need to do the extra activities to master them, that's fine. The whole program is mastery based (unless they've changed it?). As long as she grasps the content you're good to go. How you achieve that is up to you. Seriously, they should have told you this. No one does all of the curriculum. Pick and choose and supplement with activities, games, hands on, etc as you see fit. Make your own related activities, use library books, field trips, etc. You get to log so many supplemental hours a week as school hours too. Just her reading for leisure can fit that bill.

[MissRubyandKen]

Ha! Before lunch, how about before 10am? No, seriously, here lately ds has been a real go getter. He wakes me up to ask if his written work is ready for the day, most days at 8am. He generally has hygiene, written work, and chores done by 10am these days. A complete turn around from a few months ago, let me tell you. And all on his own too. After breakfast we generally do together things like art, science, history, reading, or games depending on the day, for maybe an hour tops.

[kittie313]

I spend 3 1/2 to 4 hours a day on lessons with 2 kids, but I do our time 100% one-on-one with each kid and am trying to keep a 2yo and almost 4yo occupied at the same time lol We are strict school-at-home types, and with my doing each kid solo without trying to go back and forth juggling, it should take me 7 1/2 hours according our our virtual school. Obviously that doesn't happen lol If I spent more than 4 hours on lessons with both girls, I'd go nuts. And I only anticipate it getting easier as they get older, as we add the little sisters to the mix, because I can see the oldest girl already starting to become more independent (she already does her math with me giving a little explaination and help on the first one or two problems, then she is off on her own for the rest of the lesson and the assessment)

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by TightwadMom

after reading this thread, I really feel like I really MUST be doing something wrong.

I just started homeschooling one this year (third grade daughter), and she's pretty good about buckling down and doing her work. We're doing the Virtual Academy with the state of Ohio. We're doing schooling from 9:30 a.m. to noon and then from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and sometimes we STILL don't get everything done that's on her schedule.

Oh wow, don't feel bad about it! I'm using OHVA also, and another mom in my hs group uses it with her kids. She and I talked about OHVA last school year before we enrolled our girls for this year, and she said that her kids usually start spending a lot more time on schoolwork around 3rd grade because they do more and more online without me directly teaching and guiding for every subject. Plus, we don't do ALL the activities and suggestions, we aren't as hands-on as k12 materials are so far so it turns us off to make a model of a fish when we studied fish in science (or make a spider and insect during the insects and spiders section of the same unit lol) I finish so quickly with lessons because we skip 90% of the fluff and focus on the actual meat of the lesson. It works for us now, and I hope that by the time dd1 hits 3rd grade and starts going more independent that she figures out how to do the same.

[annettemarie]

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

Ha! Before lunch, how about before 10am? No, seriously, here lately ds has been a real go getter. He wakes me up to ask if his written work is ready for the day, most days at 8am. He generally has hygiene, written work, and chores done by 10am these days. A complete turn around from a few months ago, let me tell you. And all on his own too. After breakfast we generally do together things like art, science, history, reading, or games depending on the day, for maybe an hour tops.

That's awesome! My oldest has done this a couple time. One night, he did all his next day's work except his time one-on-one with me between 8 and 9, LOL!

[MissRubyandKen]

Originally Posted by annettemarie

That's awesome! My oldest has done this a couple time. One night, he did all his next day's work except his time one-on-one with me between 8 and 9, LOL!

Yeah, it is pretty awesome! At the beginning of this school year there was some resistance, attitude, and dragging out of things going on. I think he gets now that he was wasting his own time. Before we went on break for Christmas he was three days ahead on his written work because he was asking to work ahead on something most days. Who am I to argue with that, yk? So he actually took a few easy days after break just doing together activities. We'll see if he takes it up again. I think he will.

[darcytrue]

I'm with some of the others on this. I think it sounds like you are spending enough time on school. My youngest school-aged child, age 7.5 might do 90 min to 2 hours each day and my oldest in 8th grade will do anywhere from 3-5 hours but only because his lessons are more rigourous and he is just the type of kid that wants to do more school work, plus he's trying to get in to the early college program in our area. There are a few days of the week that my children attend art and PE and music so those take up time and their other stuff is cut back on those days.

I've always heard it's a lot less time for home schooled children since you are only working with one or two children vs. a whole class of 15-20 kids. Plus, we know our kids since we're "mom" and that helps the learning process (I think so anyway).

[darcytrue]

Originally Posted by TightwadMom

We're doing the Virtual Academy with the state of Ohio. We're doing schooling from 9:30 a.m. to noon and then from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and sometimes we STILL don't get everything done that's on her schedule.

wow. If I had to do all of that every single day then my children would have had to go back to school. I couldn't handle it. I took them out of school so we could have our own rules and do things the way we want.

[RiverSky]

Annettemarie, I think you might be spending TOO much time schooling.

( was looking for a smiley that cracks a whip, but couldn't find one)

Originally Posted by Martha_2sons

Just to put another perspective on it... While traveling a couple of winters ago I met a Canadian family whose children (ages 9 & 11) went to school, but took three months off each year to travel together. The school gave the family all the work that the children needed to do to keep up with their classmates. The mother told me that they spent one hour, every other day doing school work in order to keep up. So, instead of spending about 30 hours per week in school, they finished in about 3-4 hours.

Very good point, Martha. They do similar things for children who have to be out of school for injuries or illness for extended periods of time. Sometimes they send a tutor for like 2 hours a week and that's it. Obviously, they know that one-on-one time is way more valuable than classroom time.

[Aeress]

We spend from 8:30-11:30 roughly, and 3-4 a few days a week plus lots of reading, playing, outdoor time. We also go on field trips and spend time with friends, dance and church- they are getting more time than you realize because if we only counted seat time it would be less then 2-3 hours a day and that is not at all accurate.

[Stugroupie]

Thanks for this thread! I was feeling worried this year, too. We didn't do much for PreK and K, so this is our first year really getting "structured". We average 2hrs per day (with a child that needs ALOT of redirecting) and sometimes take a day off if there is something else more fun to do! We don't always do our work in the morning, sometimes it works out better to do it in the afternoons. I keep thinking that maybe I am missing something since we get everything done so quickly. Sounds like we are on track, though. Yay!