Maybe 30min in K at 5-6yo You can expect about an hour per grade until middle school and then a leveling off. So, a first grader should be able to sit still for about an hour of seat work, and a fourth grader should have no more than four hours. After that, it sort of levels off depending on the child. I am not saying that a first grade child should only spend an hour on education. I am suggesting that a hour of sitting still in one-on-one academic tutoring is a reasonable expectation. I am not including instrument practice or read alouds/ co-reading snuggled up together on the couch. I am not including science experiments or nature studies or projects or experiential learning. I am not including time at soccer practice or gymnastics class. I am not including adding the cost of groceries or figuring the tip. I am not including any religious instruction or praying or reading aloud of religious materials. I am just talking about basic one-on-one academics where the child is sitting still, receiving instruction, and providing output in a situation that for the most part doesn't engage his full body but primarily just engages his mind. With this situation, an hour per grade is fine. Sure, some kids can sit still and listen and provide output and retain information for longer periods, but an hour per grade is normal. HTH- Mandy

http://project-based-homeschooling.com/workspace-gallery Here is the workspace gallery from the project-based homeschooling website. HTH- Mandy

I just read that your kiddos are 7yo and 8yo. Rising 3rd graders? You could do a two-year US history and then do a four-year rotation. Alternatively, you could do one year of basic world geography alongside US holidays and US landmarks and monuments. Then, do a four year rotation capped of with a year 5, one year US history. Lots of options! Mandy

Oh, I know what y'all are saying, but, fwiw, my middle ds is a computer science major, and he has never kept a math notebook. He didn't keep a math notebook in middle school or high school. He didn't keep a math notebook during dual enrollment. He did not not keep a math notebook in his basic college classes. So, while some people like them or find them useful, they are certainly not necessary. Once you are working on your own material- math or programs or whatever (rather than on a problem set generated by someone)- then you will need to keep your work as you go through your thoughts. A lot of this will probably be kept digitally (certainly programming is) and not on sheets of paper. However, we are not discussing higher level maths or programming. I see absolutely no need to keep sheets of paper covering the four operations with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percents. If it is a multi-step problem or larger numbers and your student wants/ needs to write something, it is fine to scribble something onto paper or directly into the book. Why keep a sheet of paper much less a notebook that has simple Saxon 54 problems like 6 x 7? It's a waste of space and a tree. Say it aloud and move on. This is how we roll with simple arithmetic. If you want to keep an entire year of pages of this type math, I am totally onboard with your family doing what works for you. I just wanted other families who are reading this to know that it isn't necessary to keep notebooks full of middle school level Saxon drill sheets or problem sets. It is also fine to do it aloud or scribble it and toss it upon completion. Your child will not be mathematically stunted, and you will have considerably more storage space. ;) HTH- Mandy

The first edition of LCC does multiple strands of history. Core Knowledge does two strands. Maybe you could look for information about these two products and see how they do it. HTH- Mandy

You can try posting this on the accelerated board. I think they will try to convince you not to use Saxon with an accelerated math student. ;) FWIW- my little guy used Saxon 54 at about that age. It would be a waste of time to put those problems on workbook pages. If you want a written record, get a cheap used copy and let him write directly in the book. There was very, very little- maybe nothing- in Saxon 54 that required any working out. Ds would usually just tell me the answers orally. The whole lesson took hardly any time and he liked that the problem sets contained a variety of problem types. HTH- Mandy

Math notebooks?!?! We are supposed neatly write math and keep it organized in notebooks! bwahaha I am posting because I know there are other people like me reading this thread and scratching their heads. If it is necessary to write anything, we grab the nearest piece of paper and scratch on it. I have lots of spiral notebooks around my house and almost all of them have some math if you flip through the pages. Usually, a page will have a few problems written every which way. If it is math that needs to be shown to someone else, then I have had my kids do two columns, number the problems, and circle the answers. We get it turned in and don't expect it back. HTH- Mandy

I like my homeschool phone book, but I already ordered my big order from RR. That order is waiting impatiently to be put into action. The RR catalog is currently sitting on the coffee table under my heel. I had to set it down there this morning after spending time happily looking at things I certainly do not need before I decided to add those unneeded items to my shelf. :D Mandy, giving a confession only other homeschoolers can understand

I have approached our school day all kinds of ways. Some ways have worked for a year or part of a year. Some ways have worked better for some of my children than others. Now, I am down to one child home schooling. A couple of years ago, I was here complaining about prepubescent boys. There were a number of threads. ;) Rather than super-scheduled, I decided to go the other way. This past year, I put a fair chunk of ds's work in a weekly folder. I let him decide what he wanted to do, how much, and when. He just needed to finish everything in the folder by the end of the week. He wants to do folders again this next year. This is what is working with this particular child right now, but you know those little critters grow and change. What works great today may not be a good fit tomorrow. HTH- Mandy

He will also be reading three plays from Shakespeare, analyzing short stories, and using a reading comprehension workbook. The whole books are just a list I put together so that he has at least one whole book each month that isn't a manga comic. He will just read those and discuss or narrate. I am not really the literature guru, and my youngest doesn't like to read. So, hopefully someone else will share. HTH- Mandy

Khan is very organized now. Once you log-in, you can choose the grade level or high math course and the program will choose topics for you to practice. You can also manually add things to your practice list. When you click on the practice, if you don't know what to do, there are three options: a hint, where it works out the problem in steps for you; an example problem; videos lessons that explain the concept. We hadn't used it in over a year, maybe over a year and a half, and then logged on about four months ago. It is definitely a work in progress. It is better than it was, and they are constantly adding and updating. However, it is, of course, a totally different approach than Alcumus. Mandy

When I glanced at the thread title, I thought it said Khan y Alcumus, as in Khan and Alcumus. lol I thought, hmmm, that might not be a bad combo. :) So, have you considered doing them both? Mandy

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/forum/19-logic-stage-middle-grade-challenges/ There are several threads about literature currently. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/503424-is-there-a-6th-grade-planning-thread/ Here is the 6th grade planning thread. Here you go. :) FWIW, we will be studying the Middle Ages in history and ds's required literature will loosely be tied to that. I tried to include quality literature and a variety of genres. Our list is in post #93 of the planning thread. HTH- Mandy

You may want to x-post this to the logic stage board. There is a 6th grade thread over there. Mandy

Children who are in the top 1% may not have a academic peer in a class of 25 gifted children... even in a private school. ;) The current situation in full day, no rest/down-time academic kindergartens isn't that the needs of the top or bottom 1% are not having their needs met. Honestly, those children's needs are never going to be met in a mainstream classroom. The issue is the developmental inappropriateness of those classrooms for all children. No children are having their needs met including the average, normal child. HTH- Mandy

The target audiences and the approaches are different. LLATL is designed for the average homeschooled student and is a gentle coverage of LA. At 11yo there is probably a lot of LLATL that can be done independently. What level of MCT? MCT is designed for gifted students with a full time instructor. It will require more of both the student and the teacher than LLATL. HTH- Mandy

The last full week of June was music camp. Last week was abbreviated with Independence Day stuff, so just some light school happened. This week we jump back into learning, but we haven started our day yet. Mandy

As an anecdotal point of reference, my oldest child is 2e, gifted and dyslexic. He couldn't read at all at 6yo or even 7yo. He was 8yo before he could independently read Amelia Bedelia level books, but was reading LoTR by the time he was 10yo. My middle ds is within normal psych-ed parameters could tell you the sounds but not the names of all the letters in the alphabet at the end of half-day public kindergarten. He was promoted to first grade where he was reading Amelia Bedelia books before winter break. From there, the middle ds progressed on a very normal language learning curve until he hit high school when his vocabulary and reading blossomed. My youngest was my only child who would have met CC guidelines by the end of kindergarten. He is 11yo, and he isn't reading at the level my oldest was at this age. My sons' reading abilities at the end of kindergarten were no indication whatsoever of where they would be at the end of fifth grade. It is like learning to walk. Some kids walk before 9 months, and some kids don't walk until 18 months. By two, most of them who will develop within normal physical parameters are walking. Being able to walk before 9 months is no indication that a child will be athletic. It is within normal development for a child to not read until 7yo. It is ridiculous to cause a child within a normal developmental range to feel academically inferior, as not being able to read prior to this is no indication of his intelligence or where he will be at the end high school or even the end of fifth grade. Mandy

In a half-day, play-based kindergarten where the children are allowed to wiggle and move in an environment with language-rich exposure and open-ended experiential learning, it doesn't matter if some children are academically accelerated, and all the kids can have some benefit from some of the experiences. It doesn't matter if a child is academically ahead. Developmentally, five-year-olds are not designed to sit still for long periods. Also, having the academically gifted child or early reader sit still through hours of material he already knows is not only developmentally inappropriate it is also not benefiting him academically. Having children who are performing within normal developmental academic perimeters sit still which is developmentally inappropriate and then asking them to do things that are just outside of their developmentally normal academic abilities is not benefiting the child. This all day kindergarten classroom designed with lots of developmentally inappropriate sitting still in reading groups, test prep, and developmentally inappropriate academics will not produce more academically accelerated elementary school students. OTOH, it will create behavior issues, self-esteem issues, and issues with how young children view and feel about classrooms. HTH- Mandy

LLATL will have gentle writing instruction. It may be what you need for this next year for composition, but, for a struggling speller, you will definitely need to supplement spelling. Look at Sequential Spelling. It is what helped my middle ds. Mandy

The issue isn't with families spending a few minutes each day cuddled up with a child teaching them to read and do basic math. FWIW, I don't even have problems with families enrolling their preschoolers in Kumon (obviously, since I have worked there for over five years). Kumon is after all a product that families can use in their home like 100 EZ Lessons or OPGTR. The issue is with little people sitting still for long periods of time. The issue is with academically advanced children having to sit still through hours of academic material they already know. The issue is having neurotypical children sit still through hours of lessons that are developmentally inappropriate where they are made to feel stupid because they are unable to do tasks that as outlined are just out of reach for the developmentally normal five year old. The issue is that these little people are not being respected as whole people but are viewed as empty vessels that must be filled with the answers to test questions and are being told that this is education. The issue is that children are not empty vessels and being able to fill in bubbles on a standardized test is not education. The issue is that doing this to kindergarteners will not give you more advanced elementary students. The issue is that requiring developmentally inappropriate behaviors for hours day after day will create behavior issues and issues with self-esteem and issues with how a child feels about the classroom and learning. HTH- Mandy

My state requires 180 days. This past year I pulled apart our books and scheduled them over 16 weeks, 80 days/ semester of seat work. This gave us 10 days each semester to use as field trip days or as overflow/ catch-up days. I don't know why I haven't always scheduled this way. Last year, we went to the art museum 3 times. One of those times was after we went to the symphony. We went to two homeschool classes at the science center- once after the symphony. We went to the symphony dress rehearsals multiple times. We went to a play at the children's theater, a homeschool class at the nature center, and the homeschool day at the botanical gardens. I can't remember it all off the top of my head, but we did many fun activities/ field trips that I included in our homeschool count, and we did it without getting behind in our book work. So, of course, depending on what you are using and how quickly your child works, I certainly think there is a good possibility that you can schedule the book work/ curriculum portion of your child's education over 34 weeks instead of the 36 week schedule often provided with homeschool materials. I would even suggest going ahead and planning less. If you plan 32 weeks that will give you five days of padding each semester for when a lesson takes 2 days instead of 1 or to go on an occassional field trip. HTH- Mandy *a sidenote to skip if you are dedicated to taking summers off* We do homeschool year round. We also do a summer session, but I handle it differently than our two reported semesters. I think my children deserve to learn the habit of consistency. Very few people in the world have the luxury of taking 12+ weeks off from their routine. This is enough time to forget material and create an atmosphere of twaddle and/ or boredom. However, my primary concern with a long summer break is that this system of super long summer breaks sets our children up for dissatisfaction with life/ a sense of entitlement where they have the mindset that working hard should result in earning long breaks rather than the reality that working hard will be part of what enables you to keep your job where the reward is that you can continue to work hard. Thinking that as a working adult you will have vacation time all summer and on every major holiday is highly unlikely unless, of course, you are a teacher. (However, balanced calendar school years are becoming more and more common so I wouldn't count on a long summer vacation even if you plan to be a teacher. OTOH, as an exception or a sidenote to the sidenote, some families have the money where their children spend the summer engaging in activities all summer like camps where their children learn about team building, learn about nature, take part in outdoor sports, and have experiences that they don't have during the academic calendar year. These things are educational whether or not the family counts this time as school. I am talking about spending 12 weeks loafing around without routine while the only words you read are poorly written texts from friends.)

There comes a point where you just have to make choices. There are only so many hours in the day, and how scheduled do you want those hours to be? Start with whatever is the can't do without and add things from there. Once the day is full, that is all you can do. This is just the reality of the situation. HTH, but for some reason I feel like the bearer of bad news. lol Mandy

Interesting thread. Generally speaking, I don't feel that kindergarteners should be tracked because I don't believe the focus of a kindergarten classroom for 4-year-olds turning 5 should be academic. The thing is that in TN the cut off for kindergarten was the end of September even in the early 70's when I attended K. Growing up, all the children that I knew who were held by their parents were held for sports. Now, the cut off in TN is the end of Aug, but all the children I know who are being held by their parents are being held because the parents do not believe that their children will function well in an all day kindergarten where the behavioral and academic demands are developmentally inappropriate even for a 5-year-old turning 6. There are obviously people who realize the demands of kindergarten are not developmentally appropriate for children who will not be five until November or December as states are moving their cut off dates closer and closer to the beginning of the school year. Soon, all students will be required to be five before school starts. The public school kindergarten classes in TN have been all day for over a decade. The amount of down-time and play-time has been reduced to nothing. Five year olds were not designed to sit still for hours on end. They are not developmentally ready to get on a bus in the morning to sit still and then sit still in a classroom and come home sitting still on a bus spending their day in essentially the same manner as the 10yo sitting next to them on the bus including having homework when they finally arrive home. The parents I have met who are holding their children with summer birthdays are not doing so in order to have the biggest kid on the sports team. They are doing so because they understand that their child is not developmentally ready for this kind of day. So, even though kindergarteners in the US as a whole are older than they were a decade ago, the requirements for kindergarten have changed so dramatically that they are not appropriate even for these older children. There was a post not long ago from the parent concerned about her child because kindergarten was all day with no nap. Forget a nap. There is no rest-time and no down-time. My kids didn't take naps at five, but they were not developmentally ready to go from one organized sitting still thing to the next all day. This current situation benefits no child. The children who are academically ahead are forced to listen to academics below their ability level, and the kids who are normal and will be reading fine in a couple of years are made to feel like failures before they even start first grade. A large percentage of the kids, regardless of academic ability, have behavior issues because frankly what they are being asked to do isn't developmentally appropriate. These young kids need to wiggle and move. They should be learning to jump rope and take turns going down the slide. They need to be taught to hold their pencils correctly and form their letters correctly- something skipped in the rush to have five-year-olds writing paragraphs. They need to do things like play with play-doh and finger paints to build the muscles in their hands and to explore colors with less directed academics and more exploration. They need to explore our culture and language in language rich environments of songs, rhymes, and picture books. They need blocks and such to explore math without even knowing that is what they are doing. There are plenty of open-ended and exploration activities that are appropriate for students of diverse levels. I enjoy a good picture book. A good story can be just as thought provoking to an adult as it is to a five-year-old who is not ready to learn to read. Blocks and matchbox cars taught my son early math through open exploration in ways just as valuable as having him to sit, write, and recite things he knew or alternatively wasn't ready to learn. This sort of learning is why half-day kindergartens used to work. The kids were there for a few hours and they participated in activities that were not only developmentally appropriate but also appropriate for a group of children with diverse academic abilities. Thinking of little people sitting in desks all day long doing reading groups, test prep, and attempting to meet developmentally inappropriate academic standards makes me sad. Not only will this route not accomplish the goal of having more academically advanced elementary school students, but it also fails to respect the developmental needs of the children and thus creates another set of problems. :( Mandy

The first edition of LCC suggested multiple history strands. However, maybe for kindergarten rather than two full blown strands, you could do famous people, landmarks, and holidays for US and world geography- learning continents, oceans, etc. HTH- Mandy