a question about hours per day - Page 2

[MyCalling]

I estimated 1 1/2hrs before we started this school cycle on Monday, but after the first 2 days I can accurately say about 2 1/2hrs. Mind you, that's condensing all of our structured subjects down to 112 days instead of the usual 180 days.

[lovin'leo]

The principal of the homeschool board we're registered with says that 1-2 hours a day in elementary is more than enough. When you think about how much time teachers spend getting kids to settle down & move between classes, get out books & pencils, etc, etc, they probably don't actually do much more in school.

We're mostly unschooling, but I have been getting my just turned 7 year old to do some reading & math most days. We maybe spend 45 minutes total, usually less.

[mommy68]

Thanks a bunch everyone.

I feel so much better at this point.

My DH even made me feel good yesterday when discussing this very topic. He said he thought what I was doing was enough. And I have a DH that is totally against unschooling, and I was afraid I was beginning to border on unschooling since we don't put a lot of hours in to it.

[homeschoolingmama]

Oh hun,
Go over to the unschooling section and it will make you feel much much better. I used to do this when I was feeling like I wasn't doing enough. They weren't doing ANYTHING. It sucked me in. Now we unschool!

[mama_ani]

My oldest three will be doing grades 6, 7 and 8 this year.
We do 5 hours a day. We do 30 minutes of each: math, language, writing, spelling and "catch up" time or silent reading. We do 60 minutes of history and 60 minutes of either french, geography or science.

[smurphygt]

My kids are 11, 9 and 3. We do 3-4 hours of sit-down work a day. However, there is a lot of goofing off going on. I'm pretty sure if that was eliminated we can trim the time down to 2-2.5 hours.

[smurphygt]

Double post!

[Lillian J]

My humble opinion - those people are wasting their time and their children's. Mostly their children's. I think it's shameful. And I think you should stay far away from forums like that. And that's just my humble opinion - I'll spare you my arrogant and scathing one on what I think about that kind of arrangement ....

But moving on, think about the Colfax family (Homeschooling for Excellence, Hard Times in Paradise). The first one got a scholarship to Harvard, where he went on to graduate with honors from the medical school. He's doing important medical research today. The next one, one of the adopted ones, also went to Harvard and became a lawyer, and last I heard was doing impressive volunteer work in law while also attending Harvard medical school. The next one is also a lawyer who's working for important causes. The youngest, the other adopted one, studied art, became a chef, and is dong some sort of work with developmentally disabled children. All of them have dedicated their lives to social causes. I started off saying "last I heard," because things keep changing - they keep branching out and moving around into new things.

I once said in an introductory workshop at a conference that I'd heard they once said they didn't push their sons to study, but that did try to encourage them to do some studying at least 20 minutes a day. Well, was I stunned when someone who'd been in my workshop stood up in the Colfax's talk, repeated what I'd said, and asked them if that was true. They stared with puzzled expressions, looked at one another, had a brief discussion among themselves, and finally one of the sons leaned to the mic and said "Twenty minutes a day?... Look, there were whole months at a time when no book was opened in our house!" He explained that they were busy working hard on their homestead - studies had to come if and when they could fit them in. But what was happening was a lot of good conversation, a lot of problem solving in the real world, a lot of respect for the minds of the boys as full partners in figuring out ways to get things done and make things work, and a whole lot of discussion about social causes and the need to help with them.

The parents were engaged in real life with them, thinking with them, talking with them, researching with them - and at every opportunity reading all sorts of stimulating books to and with them. They weren't just mindlessly sticking them in front of a dead pile of curricula some company or some recent educational guru had compiled, and making them grind through it. What would have been the point??? And when those boys were in their teens and of an age when it was time to start getting themselves in a position to apply to colleges, they got together materials to study what they'd need for those applications to the Ivy League schools that have the big scholarship money. They were in charge of their own educations - they'd been brought up from an early age with trust and the understanding that they were fully capable of intelligent thinking and problem solving.

My own son didn't have the mix of opportunities and burdens they did to struggle for survival in the making of a homestead, and he didn't hit the books the way they did when they were getting ready to apply to Ivy League schools. He didn't even study as much as yours do - he did far less! But he's in college with a scholarship right now that covers half his tuition - a smaller liberal arts college - thoroughly enjoying it, and also currently thinking in terms of going into law with the purpose of doing social work. He has two friends who started studying theater lighting years ago in community college, and both have had a lot of paid jobs, at least one award I know of, and have gone on to four year colleges to learn more about theater - neither of them ever was forced to study for hours a day when growing up. Another friend of his was the ultimate unschooler her whole life, and she's working on her PhD right now, having managed her own college applications, done well, and gone to grad school on full scholarship for her Masters. I could go on and on, but I haven't kept up on exactly what a lot of his friends are doing - I just hear impressive morsels from time to time. And none of them were put through the rigors you read about in those forums you mentioned.

If you're reading and thinking and living and pondering and modeling curiosity and enthusiasm about all sorts of things, sharing your thoughts and respectfully soliciting theirs, listening to them and appreciating their uniqueness and capabilities, exploring the world with them in whatever ways you can, you're accomplishing a lot more than disrespectful parents who sit their children in front of those curricula and expect it to fill the empty vessels that they think their children are.

Running out of steam.... - Lillian

[1growingsprout]

I have 2 kids working at 5th grade level and 1 kid doing kindy/1st grade and TOTAL is no more then an hour, usually only 4 days a week.

We unschool so thats actual sit down time, where the kids are doing 'book' work, but all day is learing, thru play,cooking, coloring, reading, etc...

IMO the whole reason to homeschool is to get out of the 'school' mindset where its 30 mins a day on x and 30 mins a day on y etc...

[slinginhipmama]

Lillian J---- being a newbie to homeschooling, I found your post inspirational! Thank You!

[mommy68]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Originally Posted by 1growingsprout

IMO the whole reason to homeschool is to get out of the 'school' mindset where its 30 mins a day on x and 30 mins a day on y etc...

I agree. The only reason I give my son a set schedule for his core subjects is so he will actually do them at some point each day. He's a teenager and can be very slow and will use any excuse to forget to do something.

Originally Posted by Lillian J

Running out of steam.... - Lillian

I get the same way when it comes to certain topics too, especially socialization.

[jillc512]

Originally Posted by homeschoolingmama

Go over to the unschooling section and it will make you feel much much better. I used to do this when I was feeling like I wasn't doing enough. They weren't doing ANYTHING.

I attended an "Intro to HSing" class last year put on by the local Christian homeschooling group. The consensus from the class facilitators (typically very school-at-home-y, structured curriculum folks) was that there should be about 1/2 hour of structured learning in kindergarten. First grade should be 1 hour, 2nd grade 1 1/2 hours, etc. etc. It was very refreshing to hear this as a new HSer!

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by homeschoolingmama
Go over to the unschooling section and it will make you feel much much better. I used to do this when I was feeling like I wasn't doing enough. They weren't doing ANYTHING.

"Anything" is often in the eye of the beholder. My guess is that they were doing a lot. Lillian

[mommy68]

Originally Posted by jillc512

I attended an "Intro to HSing" class last year put on by the local Christian homeschooling group. The consensus from the class facilitators (typically very school-at-home-y, structured curriculum folks) was that there should be about 1/2 hour of structured learning in kindergarten. First grade should be 1 hour, 2nd grade 1 1/2 hours, etc. etc. It was very refreshing to hear this as a new HSer!

4-4.5 hours of school for my 7th grader sounds much more reasonable.

[mommyto4grits]

WOW! 6-8 hours! Are these high schoolers? Even that is too many hours. I just posted a similar question. In my post I mention how I figured that my girls got only 2-3 hours of instructional time out of a 7 hour school day. Even then I am sure it is less, because of disruptions, etc. And that is upper middle school grades.

[Lillian J]

Oh, dear - that still sounds like an awful lot to me. Even if you imagine a middle schooler in classrooms at a school, he'd wouldn't be putting in that much focused study time in the course of a day. And the bulk of what he'd be studying wouldn't be remembered in enough depth to matter in the long run - so much of what a child that age learns can be learned with so much more retention and understanding later.

I know so many now grown successful homeschoolers who were doing nothing like 4-4.5 hours of study a day. Now, on the other hand, if you were talking about 4-4.5 hours that included a whole variety of activities, along with educational games, conversations, films, computer time, and reading really enjoyable things he relates to, I think real learning would take place, and I say that from firsthand experience and observation. Lillian

[eclipse]

We're with a charter school, and they recommend 4-5 hours per day at my kids' ages (5 and 7) but when you consider that that's supposed to include music, art, language arts (basically, reading), "physical education" etc, it's really not much time at all.

[naturallyspeaking]

subbing to come back and read all those replies...ha

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by eclipse

We're with a charter school, and they recommend 4-5 hours per day at my kids' ages (5 and 7) but when you consider that that's supposed to include music, art, language arts (basically, reading), "physical education" etc, it's really not much time at all.

Yes - we were with a public school's "homeschooling" program when we began, and I included cub scout meetings, homeschooling support group park days, 4-H meetings and activities, attendance at musical and drama events, my reading books to him, certain TV shows, field trips, games, crafts, vacations - all sorts of things! - in my weekly write-up, and they absolutely loved it! If even an experienced teacher and her superior can be that favorable to that way of learning, I think homeschoolers ought to to lighten up.

Lillian

[moominmamma]

Originally Posted by eclipse

We're with a charter school, and they recommend 4-5 hours per day at my kids' ages (5 and 7) but when you consider that that's supposed to include music, art, language arts (basically, reading), "physical education" etc, it's really not much time at all.

We're with a similar program. They require that we log 25 hours of learning a week. Require.

But ... baking brownies counts, riding a bike counts, watching a Discovery Channel documentary counts, typing an e-mail to grandma and an overseas friend counts, so does practicing piano, figuring out a new origami pattern, having a conversation in the minivan about how the circulatory system of a human compares to that of a tree, listening to a bedtime readaloud, playing Mastermind and Go, helping install a ceramic tile backspash, visiting a friend's place and helping with the afternoon animal chores at their homestead, listening to the last half of your sister's string quartet rehearsal ... and so on. We often go over 40 hours a week without cracking a workbook.

Miranda