How long do you spend with a 1st grader each day?

[jemommyof3]

I am new to homeschooling and just started with my almost 7 year old daughter this Jan. It feels like we get through with our work too quickly each day. I would say we spend 2 hours at the MOST. Sometimes we are finished in 1 hour. Each day she reads one short book to me, we review the calendar, work on spelling a few words, do a page or 2 out of a math workbook, she writes 3 sentences and does a learning activity on the computer. Some days we also add something extra like geography. Tomorrow I am going to start adding either a poem to discuss or some vocabulary words each day. But still I worry it isn't enough and she isn't getting everything she would get in "real" school.
Are these just normal homeschool mom doubts or do you think 1-2 hours/ day is too little for 1st grade?
Thanks,
Jen

[AAK]

I have a first grader. We also spend about 2 hours on school. Our days are like this:
practice piano, on Mon we do a pretest for spelling, then we do a math lesson, she will work on her math assignment by herself usually, she will read to me for about 20 min. and I may read to her as well and then she works on explode the code and one day a week we will work on cursive writing.

Fridays are the "post test" for spelling. If the words aren't from her explode the code books, then I will have some spelling activities during the week. We also work in science, social studies, and art--but I don't really quantify them as we do that in more of an unschooling format. So, in short, we work on school for 1-2 hrs a day, but we are learning beyond those hours--just not quite as explicitly.

Amy

[Daffodil]

That's more time than I spend with my first grader on that kind of thing most days. (There are plenty of days when she doesn't do a single "schooly" thing.) Remember, in "real" school, kids spend a lot of time lining up to go from one place to another, waiting for the class to settle down, getting distracted and daydreaming or fooling around, listening (or not) to the teacher explain stuff they already understand, listening (or not) while the teacher explains stuff they totally don't understand that might as well be "blah blah blah", doing pointless crafts and busy work that doesn't involve real learning, etc. etc. One of the big advantages of homeschooling is that your kid can learn what she would learn in school (and more) in a fraction of the time it would take in a classroom setting.

[moominmamma]

I have a 1st grader working at a 3rd grade level and we spend about 2.5 hours a day. However, 1.5 hours of that is just music practicing -- something she's passionate about. (Two instruments, fairly advanced in both.) So her music theory, reading, writing, math, science and social studies stuff all fits into an hour. It's plenty for us. My older kids have done considerably less at this age/stage.

Miranda

[theretohere]

About an hour seems to be plenty.

[akwifeandmomma]

My 1st grader typically spends 30 min to 1 hour, if that, on what I would call "schooly" stuff, 3-5 days a week. That doesn't include the hours he spends reading to himself, he's plowing his way through one more book in the Boxcar Children series as I type.

That's more time than I spend with my first grader on that kind of thing most days. (There are plenty of days when she doesn't do a single "schooly" thing.) One of the big advantages of homeschooling is that your kid can learn what she would learn in school (and more) in a fraction of the time it would take in a classroom setting.

Ditto the above!

[Eli&SkyesMom]

My third grader only spends about that much time on "school work" even on the days when we add in the history and or science.

[meetoo]

Our days do go over two hours a lot of times, but that includes read alouds by me, science experiments, messy art projects, etc. We do not spend more then 2 hours on the basics and even 2 hours is pushing it. It is more like 1 hour. HTH

[elizawill]

yes, it sounds normal me too. no worries.

[GoBecGo]

I'm not a homeschooler but i am butting in to remind you that all the OTHER stuff she will be doing but you haven't mentioned (observing you shop on a budget perhaps, or cooking, or spending time playing in the garden, or helping identify weeds/veg or colouring in or WHATEVER she's doing the rest of her day) is so so valuable long-term to her learning and would NOT be happening at school. Not to mention all the "field trips" like the shops, museums, zoo, whatever you guys do. I always think it's sad when i over-hear mama's bemoan how their (sometimes HS, often NOT) kid is "behind" in spelling or whatever, meantime their kid is handing out the cookies they made almost without help! I think in any schooling situation if the Big Picture is one of a happy, eager-to-learn kid, then sweating the minutes or hours or grades is a bit pointless. (hope it's ok for me to butt in with my No Experience! )

[dotnetdiva]

Sounds about right to me. We are doing K-1 work and do probably one hour of sit-down lessons (reading, spelling, math) and another hour of lessons where I might read history stories, do science, art, watch educational videos on science/history... My schedule averages out to be 2 hours a day Monday - Friday.

The rest of the day she plays, although sometimes she'll choose to do readingeggs.com or something else educational.

[prairiebird]

I think you're doing fine. I kind of thought the transition was weird too because they'd be done sometimes in under an hour. I still kind of feel weird about it. I have 2nd and 3rd graders. We don't have any music practice, but we do some of their cub scout and 4 H project stuff after their more book-lesson things too. Another thing I had to get used to is that sometimes my boys will want to go ahead and finish all their math in two days. Then I don't have anything else planned out for the week and I am flailing on Thursday or something! So I'm still trying to adjust to that too!

So really, sounds like you're doing great! It's just odd to get out of the mindset of school = 8 hours or whatever it is your local PS is going. But you have to remember that school tends to be set up to match the average working day of adults. They don't really need all that time to learn. Plus, once your child gets older, you'll start adding longer and more complicated activities. That adds up time too.

[PGTlatte]

1-1.5 hours. That is just to hit the basics of the 3 Rs. He is struggling a bit with reading and writing and that ends up taking most of our time. I would like to spend more time with him exploring other subjects (science, social studies) but his younger brother is making it almost impossible, and too difficult to be worthwhile. 1-1.5 hours seems to be enough for him to continue making progress though.

[Smithie]

1.5 hours/day is the goal time here - because if I natter on for any longer, I lose the kid's attention!

We are hemmed in by the K12 curriculum right now, (1st grade level Math, Phonics and Language Arts, kindergarten History, Science, Art and Music, plus at least 5 documented hours/week of offline "synch" activities - homeschool zoo class, theater group, notebooking, educational movies etc etc). For as much of a pain as this curriculum is, it sure has reassured me that YES, the amount of material covered in public school can be covered at home in WAAAAAAAY less time, at least in the early elementary years.

[One_Girl]

My dd spends about three hours a day, but that is because I am trying to move her into completing a lot of her practice work independently and she sometimes plays around a lot.

[~Boudicca~]

Originally Posted by GoBecGo

I'm not a homeschooler but i am butting in to remind you that all the OTHER stuff she will be doing but you haven't mentioned (observing you shop on a budget perhaps, or cooking, or spending time playing in the garden, or helping identify weeds/veg or colouring in or WHATEVER she's doing the rest of her day) is so so valuable long-term to her learning and would NOT be happening at school. Not to mention all the "field trips" like the shops, museums, zoo, whatever you guys do. I always think it's sad when i over-hear mama's bemoan how their (sometimes HS, often NOT) kid is "behind" in spelling or whatever, meantime their kid is handing out the cookies they made almost without help! I think in any schooling situation if the Big Picture is one of a happy, eager-to-learn kid, then sweating the minutes or hours or grades is a bit pointless. (hope it's ok for me to butt in with my No Experience! )

I am homeschooling my almost 7 y/o and we finally found our groove this past month. She is doing mostly 1st grade work and we do maybe about 1.5 hours of actual sit down max per day (which would consist of some math worksheets, practicing some cursive, phonics). Today she walked around the house practicing on an old trumpet we found in the back of the closet a while ago and I think she is getting the hang of it. She also helped me make brownies. We have been watching "Dances with Wolves" which has lead to some great discussion about relations between white people and Native Americans, which somehow meandered into learning about wooly mammoths, the last ice age. So there are so many opportunities for her to learn in our every day lives and it is this kind of natural learning that I love to her participating in. She is the kind of kid that I think would wither away and die if she was stuck at a desk all day.

[dannic]

We're usually a bit over an hr on academics, but like gobecgo said, there's lots more going on...we work on core items a lot (learning responsibility, family routines, ect).

also keep in mind that this is all one on one (or two or three...) and so things go much quicker than it would if you had to manage 30 kids. Engaging one in learning is so much quicker.

I was HSed when it ws extremely unpopular in CO. My parents had me on a waiting list for a private school and hsed while waiting. they had me tested after a yr or so and I scored way off the charts. My dad said he thought, "If she's doing so well with just the 30 min/day we're working with her, then what are those kids DOING in school all day?"

IMO, in a home with a loving parent, learning is much more easily achieved in a much simpler manner.