aggie96 Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 From the planning thread, it looks like a first grade day is 8hrs long! How long is your 1st grade day? Is this 4 or 5 days a week? I am concerned that what I have planned (via WTM) is going to be too long for us logistically. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satori Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We spend about 2 hours a day on seated work, 4 days a week. That's my goal anyway. It's pretty rare for people on these WTM forums to have school (seated work) exceed 3 hours a day for first grade. I think there's a recent poll about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom-ninja. Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 Between one to two hours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 I would guess about 45 minutes plus or minus a few minutes . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We start at 8:00 and end around 2:00, but we have a break from about 9:00-12:30. ;) So 2.5 hours total? Sometimes we end earlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommyfaithe Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 My little guys have about an hour or so of seat work, then another hour of read alouds before bed. Faithe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2_girls_mommy Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 It's hard to say, because my 1st grader is involved in work with her older sis that I may not do with a 1st grader on her own. But she has about 1.5-2 hrs of sit down work on reading, phonics, and math. Then she has storytimes throughout the day when I read to her on our current topics or just for fun. She sits in on Latin for about 20-30 min a day. We do an hour of history or science or art most afternoons. She listens, colors, and dictates a narration and maybe works on a map. She has music practice most days for 10-15 min. So 3-4 hrs spread throughout the day of work, plus learning through stories and free time art and playtime the rest of the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HollyB Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 It's usually 1-2 hours for 5 days. It's even less if she is feeling super cooperative. That does not include read alouds or art. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXMary2 Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 Ours is between 2-3 hours. I just posted this morning on my blog about our Typical First Grade day. The link is in my signature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmamato3 Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 i just want to add that i've learned sometimes people count "school hours" differently: certain families consider history/lit/science/art/music/bible read aloud time as "school" b/c the kids are not in "free play" mode. other families consider that to be just "a fun way to spend every afternoon together" and would never call it officially school. so b/c of that, it can be difficult to tell what the *actual* school time is for each grade, and just as a PP said, it depends on whether that child is the oldest, or is following along with older sibs. i've also learned that comparison often gets ya down (in my case it always does), so it's better to just do what feels best for your family :) the WTM suggestions can easily fill up the days .... we always try to keep a 4-day week, leaving one week day for errands, regular out-of-the-home classes, playdates, etc .... and as a result, our 4 school days tend to be a little bit longer than some families', but in the end our kids still have lots of free play time and time to be involved with extra curricular activities like sports and music. just my $.02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silliness7 Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 1 hour for seat work. Another 30-60 min. for read-alouds. 4 days per week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindyz Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We are 2 - 3 hours 5x/week, but this is not all seated work. This includes piano practice, scheduled reading, science experiments and activities, scheduled educational videos, etc. Outside of this we do about 45 minutes to an hour of reading 5 - 7 days/week in the evenings. This includes him reading out loud to me, and on going read alouds that he has going with me and my husband. We do lessons year round and take days off whenever we want or need to. My guy really enjoys lessons and would happily do more to be honest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Down_the_Rabbit_Hole Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We school throughout the day. 10 mins here, 15 there. The longest we do school in one sitting is math which takes about 20 mins. I also watch the classes that she needs to write in and pair them with classes I read to her or she reads to me, so she is not writing alot at one sitting. Over all I would say we school 2-2.5 hours a day 5 days a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 My plan for the upcoming first grade is to do about 2 - 3 hours of work, that is not counting read aloud. Now, I am just a bit puzzled over the idea of all those extra educational time that we all spent and that are not accounted for. My understanding is that there is no need/requirement to keep records of elementary years. In WI we are not required to keep or show records at all. However, in thinking ahead, if we have to move to a state that requires, then I will not have anything to show. I am planning on keeping record of everything from the get go. Please share with me, is this an overkill? Does anyone here keep records of all the school work that is done? Including read aloud, library trip, music instrument practice? My dd takes violin lesson and one requirement is to listen to the cds daily. Should this be counted as well? I play it all day long as a background, so it would be absurd to clock that much time.. All things considered I think that the average homeschool child does way more educational time than any school child does. Be well Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melenie Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We do about 2 hours per day, 5 days per week. No more than 15-20 minutes at a time with lots of breaks in between. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 I forgot to mention that we school 4 days a week usually. We have a tiny bit scheduled for Friday, but it either gets done quickly, we skip it, or we do it Thursday with everything else. So about 2.5 hours, 4 days a week, and that's everything school related that we do (reading, math, history, science, projects, whatever). As far as record keeping, I'm in a state that doesn't require record keeping beyond attendance, and I have no plans to move anytime soon, but my cover school does require a report every 6 months. It's easy enough - I just say "We did this book in math and this many chapters of this book in grammar...." It's very easy. They just want to know that the child is getting an education. They aren't worried about how that education is given (ie, unschooling is fine with them... NO schooling would not be fine and they wouldn't want you in their cover school if you sat and watched TV all day and never cracked open a book). I do keep records in HST+, but I don't record every single educational item. I have no need. I do record a big field trip as something we did, plus it becomes a "present day" for attendance to the state. ;) I record all school assignments so I can easily look back and see what we've done. It's very easy to do though. Those assignments are in there so I know what we need to do for the week. I print out daily assignment lists and we go through the list and make sure we don't forget anything (because I *will* forget something without a list). When I get back to HST+ sometime during the week, I mark things as done, and it automatically calculates our attendance (I consider us "present" if we do any school work at all, since my state doesn't have an hours limit for what a day constitutes). Now come reporting time, I can just look at all the "done" assignments and summarize what we did the last 6 months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3peasinapod Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 About 1-1/2 hours, about 45 minutes seatwork, the rest couch-work! :001_smile: That is 4 days a week, and on the other days, we read a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1GirlTwinBoys Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We probably average 2 hrs total. Their math lesson is 30 mins long and then another 30 mins spent doing the 2 page worktext and some fact practice sheets. This takes up most of our time. The other hour is spent reading to me, me reading to them, writing & spelling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallory Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 I plan from 1/2 hour to an hour of seat work per grade. So for first grade I'd want less then an hour. For us that is a little math, handwriting, and phonics. Sure we do read alouds and maybe history or science projects, but in first grade those are optional anyway, so if they aren't having fun we just stop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Attila the Honey Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 We do seatwork for about 2 hours, reading on the couch for about an hour and a half throughout the day, and our science labs and Story of the World activities about 2 hours a couple times a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leav97 Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 DD and Mom (me) do 1 hour every night of Reading/English/Math. DD and Dad do about 30-60 minutes a day of History and Science. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScoutTN Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 i just want to add that i've learned sometimes people count "school hours" differently: certain families consider history/lit/science/art/music/bible read aloud time as "school" b/c the kids are not in "free play" mode. other families consider that to be just "a fun way to spend every afternoon together" and would never call it officially school. so b/c of that, it can be difficult to tell what the *actual* school time is for each grade, and just as a PP said, it depends on whether that child is the oldest, or is following along with older sibs. i've also learned that comparison often gets ya down (in my case it always does), so it's better to just do what feels best for your family :) This is very helpful! Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiseOwlKnits Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 Our day is between 2 and 3 hours, not including independent reading. If you count assigned reading that she does on her own, it's probably between 3 and 4. We do school 5 days a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aggie96 Posted February 16, 2011 Author Share Posted February 16, 2011 Thanks for all the replies! After reading through WTM again, it seemed like much more time. In Kinder, we already do 1.5-2 hours on phonics, math, grammar, composition (writing), and hand writing. Adding science, history, geography, and maybe a foreign language and music "seems" like it would require possibly 2 hours more. Given everything we have going each day right now, I just cannot see getting 4 hours of seated one-on-one (or loose supervision) a day. There is no way my 4 yr old and 2 yr old would let me. I guess I'll start on a rough daily plan while going through the curriculums. I just started freaking out last night. Kinder has been so fun and such a breeze, I want that for 1st grade too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satori Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 Some things to keep in mind is that you can keep your lessons short. We have 5, 10, and 20 minute lessons. Rarely do we go over that. We also don't do every subject everyday. Our first grade has been fun, even more fun than kindergarten, because now we can take advantage of those early skills we learned. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 In Kinder, we already do 1.5-2 hours on phonics, math, grammar, composition (writing), and hand writing. Adding science, history, geography, and maybe a foreign language and music "seems" like it would require possibly 2 hours more. One thing to keep in mind is that you don't have to do every subject every day. ;) We do history 2 days a week and science 2 days a week. Those take us about 30 minutes each. I don't do a separate geography curriculum. We're just doing mapwork as part of our history. It takes just a few minutes. We're not doing a foreign language yet, though I have a couple Spanish workbooks. I just haven't gotten them out yet. I'm waiting a couple years to do a full on Spanish curriculum, as I'd like to do something like La Clase Divertida when all 3 kids could benefit. We also aren't officially doing "music" yet, except listening to good music during the day and maybe talking about a composer once a week. When we get a piano, we'll do piano everyday, but I don't consider that "school". If my son were in school, he's still do piano outside of school. I likewise don't consider his hockey practices/games "school", as he did those when he was in school. So for us, the "extras" are adding about 30 minutes a day. And we are having a lot of fun. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMD Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 we school 4 days a week. Around 2 hours a day. 45mins ish each of maths and english tues-thurs, plus 'something' (geography, history, music, sport, puzzles/games etc.) Friday it's 45-60mins each of Science and Art. On top of that we have Violin practice about 15-20mins a day, and reading aloud at various times through the day - maybe 45-60mins all up... Our days are still pretty relaxed and fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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