Homeschooling while working full time

[JenniferinFL]

Just as the title states, I am trying to homeschool my daughter while working full time. My husband and I are on nearly opposite shifts. She spends a few hours at my mom's, then gets picked up by my husband. I do school for a couple hours with her in the evening when I get home from work. 

 

There is only one private school near us, but, you have to be a member of their religion. The public schools near us are all D rated schools. It seems like they are all trying for last place in our state. 

 

In other words, even only having a couple hours in the evening for school still seems likely to be an improvement on the other options. 

 

If you only had a couple hours to teach your child Kindergarten, how would you spend it? 

 

Right now, we spend most of our time with me reading aloud to her. I read her a mixture of picture books, chapter books and science books. She reads aloud for about 15 minutes. Usually it's a McGuffey lesson and then whatever book she selects. She usually picks something by Dr. Seuss or a similar author. I also bring her home some easy readers from the library which feature popular characters. They are not great, but, it does get her excited about reading them. We spend about 10 minutes practicing her writing. She also spends about 10 minutes doing math online, on the Khan Academy website. Sometimes I print her out math worksheets which she enjoys doing. When we go to the bookstore, I let her pick out a new school book. Last time she selected 2nd grade science and insisted on working through it in a couple days. 

 

 

I want to include more of a classical curriculum, but, I'm obviously a bit pressed for time. I already know we won't be doing Latin unless something dramatic changes. 

 

Thoughts and criticisms welcome. :)

[Stibalfamily]

Can your mom work with her as well? I just wonder how it will work out for you longterm with such a short amount of time. I would get something very open and go (like Explode the Code and Math U See) if your mom and you can tag team her education. Can she do math, while you do reading, writing, history and science? We are homeschooling kindergarten but for about 5 hours a day. I just don't think I could get everything we needed into 2 hours. We use book shark though and it does seem like a pretty heavy load for kindergarten. 

[Renai]

What you are doing sounds fine for K. Most K doesn't take longer than 1.5-2 hours. I also work, and this is my second child I'm homeschooling. Reading and math are daily, as well as read alouds, saving science for the weekends or Fridays. She spends a lot of time playing and doing art, etc., which is what a K child should be doing a bulk of the time.

 

To the other pp, I've used Sonlight, which is what Bookshark spins off of, and I don't understand why it is 5 hours for your family. Is this including interruptions, younger kids perhaps? (I'm on mobile and can't see signatures.) Please remember that the schedule is for you to rule, not for it to rule you. Are you on the forums? There is a lot of good advice on the SL forums on how to work with the curriculum. ETA: I'm not saying this as a criticism, but really would like you to enjoy it and not stress over too many hours.

 

This is my second time through, using SL4/5, MFWK, and other resources, and we still don't spend more than 2 hours a day.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Renai