What is your 6th grader doing for school and how long does it take them?

[LilMamiBella]

My 6th grader is currently in a virtual school. I may/may not take him out of it and was wondering what others are doing with their 6th graders.

[Dillpicklechip]

I do a Charlotte Mason style of education with my 6th grader, following for the most part the free curriculum at Ambleside Online. This style of education is fairly laid back and doesn't involve any textbooks or workbooks (other than math). Mostly it's reading good books, poetry, enjoying art and music, and nature study. And the lessons are kept short. All together her school work is about 2 hours per day, with more of that being reading than seat work.

I find that her attention span is rather limited, so the short lesson style of CM really works for us. Also, I don't require very much writing of her because she just can't seem to handle that either. It's hard for her to sit still too long.

[LilMamiBella]

We did AO for a few months last year. Because we didn't do any of the religious stuff, it didn't take very long at all to get done. I felt like maybe I should've added something to replace those books. Some of the stories were way over his head using words he didn't know or just being really long. I like the Charlotte Mason style I just worry if it's enough, yk?

Eta: we did year 1 or year 2 (can't remember) so that I could do it with my then 7 yr old.

[moominmamma]

My 11yo is unschooled. Today she woke up, did some Singapore New Math Counts Level 1 for about 45 minutes. Then she went to her violin lesson, and on to community choir soprano sectional rehearsal for a couple of hours, and then to a cross-country running meet out of town. Now she's home and reading "Peeps" by Scott Westerfeld. She's planning to "do some science" a bit later. That will probably involved either reading from a high school science textbook we have or watching an episode of the "Life" series of DVDs. She's big on biology.

Miranda

[AAK]

How about a fifth grader. We are technically through a virtual school too, but ours is different as I choose my curriculum and method--not them. I consider us to be eclectic homeschoolers and we usually are done by lunch.

We do something fun for thinking skills/logic/etc first thing in the morning. This can be a game or a logic puzzle, sudoku, brain teaser, whatever. She works on math nearly everyday, and reads everyday. She chooses most of her reading and then there are some books that I choose. She makes very good selections, but sometimes I want to expose her to something else or I want a book to tie in with something or sometimes we take turns selecting books for us to both read. Keeps it interesting and varied. We try for social studies/history 2x week and science 2x week. She can do more if she wants, but this is my goal. History is without curriculum. This year we are exploring US History/Culture/Life from Post Civil War to modern times. We use a lot of books from the library including both nonfiction and historical fiction, hands on activities, multimedia, etc. We are also briefly looking at the presidents and because she thinks it is fun to memorize things--she is memorizing the order. For science, we are focusing on life science this year--but she loves to experiment so it is supplemented with whatever suits her fancy. We are doing Meet the Masters for art, she has been playing piano for the past 4 years but recently broke her wrist. This broken wrist has been creating a few challenges, but we are being flexible and working with it. For now, handwriting, writing, typing, etc are postponed. Some of her art projects are postponed too. We are using MCT for language arts and she picked sequential spelling to work on spelling. We do something from them daily.

Overall, she is done with "school" by lunch time. She continues to learn throughout the day since she loves hands on stuff and reading. But, we don't count legos as school unless it ties in with something specific. Well, maybe for our "thinking" skills in the morning, but then I would give a task and have her try to accomplish it rather than inventive/imaginative play.

She also goes to a gifted pull out program once a week.

Amy