Numbers hours per day for a fifth grader?

[Lostinabook]

How many hours a day do you have your fifth grader work? Right now I'm coming in at around 6 hours, not including music practice time. We'll do our Morning Time stuff together for 1-1.5 hours, then she'll spend 2 hours on reading history/science/literature, 1 hour on math, 1 hour on writing and I'm guessing .5 hour on MPH 5/6. Those subjects will happen 4 days per week. On Thursday mornings, we'll go to CBS & then do art instruction & science experiments on Thursday afternoons.

[NanceXToo]

Well, my fourth grader and I averaged maybe 3 hours a day this past school year. Sometimes it was a little less. If we were doing a hands on project of some sort, it might have been a drop more.

 

I do not foresee fifth grade taking much more. I wouldn't spend more than 4 hours a day on it, and I expect that most days it'll be a bit less than that.

[KarenNC]

:lurk5:

[radiobrain]

I think that the hours per day depends on how many days you teach. I do between 3-6, depending on a multitude of factors, but we are mostly year-rounders.

 

Our state requires 900 hours per year, whatever grade. The state online school requires 950 or 990. I figure that if you are doing 180 school days, 5 hours gets it done. If you school more days than that, you can lower the average hours per day.

 

Are you considering only actual schoolwork, or are you also including free reading, exercise, park pay dates, field trips? I consider those educational hours as well, as they are.

 

Anyway, 6 hours is definitely enough for a 5th grader. If they were "at school" they would probably be doing less (when you take out lunch, and all the other time eaters).

 

blah blah blah, you're doing great!

 

:D

Edited July 23, 2010 by radiobrain

[Skadi]

We try to keep it to one hour per grade level (e.g. five hours for a fifth grader). We don't include independent reading, family read-alouds or independent music practice in the calculation. When they're older, we find a sweet spot of somewhere between six and eight hours and try to keep it there until graduation (just so you don't think we'd teach a senior for twelve hours a day or anything).

 

For a fifth grader, personally I would do science two days a week and history three days a week so that we could spend more time on the core subjects.

[Harriet Vane]

We try to keep it to one hour per grade level (e.g. five hours for a fifth grader). We don't include independent reading, family read-alouds or independent music practice in the calculation. When they're older, we find a sweet spot of somewhere between six and eight hours and try to keep it there until graduation (just so you don't think we'd teach a senior for twelve hours a day or anything).

 

For a fifth grader, personally I would do science two days a week and history three days a week so that we could spend more time on the core subjects.

 

:iagree:

[Lostinabook]

Thank you for the input everyone!

 

I think that the hours per day depends on how many days you teach. I do between 3-6, depending on a multitude of factors, but we are mostly year-rounders.

 

Our state requires 900 hours per year, whatever grade. The state online school requires 950 or 990. I figure that if you are doing 180 school days, 5 hours gets it done. If you school more days than that, you can lower the average hours per day.

 

Are you considering only actual schoolwork, or are you also including free reading, exercise, park pay dates, field trips? I consider those educational hours as well, as they are.

 

Anyway, 6 hours is definitely enough for a 5th grader. If they were "at school" they would probably be doing less (when you take out lunch, and all the other time eaters).

 

blah blah blah, you're doing great!

 

:D

 

I don't have to report anything to my state so that perspective didn't even occur to me! I guess I was wondering if it's too much. I'm frustrated that what we're doing will end up taking 6 hours & that's not even including her 30-45 minutes of music practice. I keep trying to streamline so that she has plenty of time to just moon about, but there's so much I want to get in that we always end up with more subjects than I'd intended. Oh well. At least she doesn't have to spend her evenings doing homework.

 

We try to keep it to one hour per grade level (e.g. five hours for a fifth grader). We don't include independent reading, family read-alouds or independent music practice in the calculation. When they're older, we find a sweet spot of somewhere between six and eight hours and try to keep it there until graduation (just so you don't think we'd teach a senior for twelve hours a day or anything).

 

For a fifth grader, personally I would do science two days a week and history three days a week so that we could spend more time on the core subjects.

 

Her independent reading that is dictated by me & the small bit of reading aloud I'll do in the morning are included in the 6 hours. Her personal choices (mostly fluff) are not. This is the first year for MPH for us & it looks to me like she'll need to do it every day in order that it not get overwhelming since I'm having her do HOTS & Homework, but I could be wrong. Our history/lit is kind of odd since we do Ambleside. She will probably end up doing that mostly on MWF since Thursdays are out & Tuesdays are going to be difficult.

[laurad1125]

Last year my 5th grader averaged 20 hours a week, over 4 days. This year, for 6th we're bumping that to about 24 hours a week....

[patchfire]

Dd has about 5 hours per day, at the most, for this upcoming year. That's not including 30+ minutes for reading, nor 30 minutes each practice for piano & trumpet. It's also not including any outside activities.

[Melissa B]

My 5th grader will be doing more than 6 hours per day. She is happy and healthy and still has time for music, writing and swimming. :D The number of school hours will be different from family to family, but 6+ hours is definitely doable.

[kittysmom]

Last year my 5th grader did about 4 hours a day, 4 times a week. That doesn't count music practice (~45 min/day) or independent reading (~1-2 hours/day).

[Lostinabook]

Sounds like I'm in good company. :D She may end up with nearly 7 hours by the time all the reading is added in, but part of the reason for the long day is that she's a s---l---o---w writer. Maybe she'll have some incentive to speed it up!

[radiobrain]

If your state doesn't require anything, don't worry about it! ;) I use the state requirements as a guideline, not a hard rule. It all depends on how many days you do this 6 hours. 180 days: 1080 hours (that's almost 200 over our state requirement). If you school more days than that... egads! Cut your kid some slack! If you school 150 days... 6 hours is good.

 

I would say 6 hours (INCLUDING the practice) was enough. That's more than I could ever do. It might be too much. But you know what... whatever works best for you and your kid, is what you should do.

[Lostinabook]

If you school 150 days... 6 hours is good.

 

I would say 6 hours (INCLUDING the practice) was enough. That's more than I could ever do. It might be too much. But you know what... whatever works best for you and your kid, is what you should do.

 

We'll school between 144 and 160 days. I'm shooting for 144, but some things may end up trickling over.

 

I'm thinking 6 hours is probably my max too, but we'll see if she works quickly enough to get done in that amount of time. I've set up a chart showing how many pages she has to read in a week so that I can sit down with her at the beginning of each week & help her plan her reading. Some weeks she may want to spread the pages over 5 days so that she has less to read each day &, thus, shorter days. I'm hoping that she'll be able to break up her readings on her own after a few weeks of me helping her.