Daily schedule?

[talltexan]

What does your daily schedule look like when you homeschool? We are using SL Core A and SL P4/5 in our house. Do you suggest taking breaks between subjects? Doing subjects at different times of the day?

[MelissaMinNC]

With a 5 and 3 yo, I would most definitely take lots of breaks. Make sure they (the breaks) include a lot of movement - jumping jacks, marching, playing tag, whatever. You'll have a lot of wiggles that need to be...vented...so you can get some work done. ;)

 

I haven't used SL, so I don't know how my ideas would work with those IGs, but I would just keep the lessons short and take breaks whenever you need/want to.

 

Hopefully someone with experience with SL can chime in.

 

:001_smile:

[Satori]

At 4-5 years of age, I kept lessons really short and kept our overall day short. Now that dd is 6, we're increasing the total daily time (to over two hours/day), but still love our relatively short lessons.

 

Editing way later: I forgot to say we do lessons in chunks throughout the day.

Edited June 11, 2011 by Satori

[MiztrezzLyn]

My son is about to turn 6 and I separate out our day into chunks:

 

There's a 30 min break after History, Literature, and Phonics, then another 30 minutes after Math and PR. We have lunch, and then Science.

 

He has about 10 min or so of "independent work", which is really just handwriting/copywork and side b of his math worksheet, then 30 minutes of independent reading, and he's off for the rest of the day to do whatever he wants.

 

The breaks in between are nice, for him and for me. Jovie (his almost-3 year old sister) looks forward to the breaks too so she can play with her brother, she is always asking, "Is it break time?" lol

 

She also knows that after he's done with school he'll read her books to her. She's currently on a "What's Under the Bed?" and "Five Little Ducks" kick, he really is a glorified page turner since she has them memorized now.

[Homeschooling6]

What does your daily schedule look like when you homeschool? We are using SL Core A and SL P4/5 in our house. Do you suggest taking breaks between subjects? Doing subjects at different times of the day?

Hi, TallTexan:D

 

The great thing about Sonlight Core A is it's so fun that it didn't seem like school. At least with the history and science. SL A was one of our best years. We loved the books.

 

For Kindergarten I spent about 15-20 with each subject. I would read our read aloud book at lunch at times (all the children were 5 and under at the time and it kept them quiet ;)) Bible, I would read at bed time.

 

I think SL trained my four older children to be able to sit still because of all the reading :001_smile: With my two youngest I didn't use SL and they are pretty wiggly. I use to read about 2-3 hours a day with them but it kind of dwindled as more kiddos started school. Now the kiddos are lucky if I read 15 minutes a day.

 

Have fun!

[laughing lioness]

This article might be helpful to you. We do skills in the a.m. and content in the afternoon. I make use of several CD's (CC cycles, SOTW, N.T.) as well as educational DVd's (Bill Nye, MSB, Moody science) and computer games (1/4 mile math, Typing Tutor, strategy games like Sim Town,) . Sometimes we take breaks, though the kids think that any media is a "break" ;). Once we start school we work through, though we will occaisionally take breaks for a snack (I have a couple of boys that have much better attitudes with a spoonful of p.b. in their stomachs). Morning chores right after breakfast and afternoon chores. We do projects together- (gardening, house stuff). The older kids start laundry before they come up the stairs in the a.m., I fold and they put away.

I do several simple meals the day after grocery shopping (marinate meat, package in dinner size bags, etc).

[MerryAtHope]

I've found that doing read-alouds (literature) before bed works very well here, and have done that since my son's K year. Other than that, different years I did different things--I usually try to start with the subject I want to focus on most that year--so they're fresh when they do it. But sometimes I started with something more "fun" too. And some years I let the kids choose the order somewhat. My schedule with K & Pre-K kids was very flexible, we usually schooled between 10-12 (and didn't always need all that time--often an hour was enough). My kids tended to do better without breaks between subjects--it was hard to reign them back in if we took breaks! A snack break sometimes worked ok though.

 

Merry :-)

[tkdkidsmom]

My dd5 does well in 10-15 min segments, with lots of breaks. I follow her lead. Some days she is all about math, other days she wants to work on word families/phonics stuff and reading. The rest of the day she joins in with ds8 for science or history for as long as she wants...no pressure I just want her to enjoy learning. Both dc love read aloud time and we try to fit it in when we need a break and some snuggle time. Sometimes my dd even asks if we can "do school" on Saturday. :D

[talltexan]

Your responses have been so helpful!

 

We now have a week of homeschooling under our belts, and we are having a blast. I am finding that it is hard to keep the house clean, though! And all of my friends who said home schooling a Kindergartener would only take 30 minutes a day must have some secret that I don't know! :001_huh: I agree with homeschooling6--it looks like 15-20 minutes per subject will work most days. But that sure does add up when I am trying to fit in Bible, math, history, LA, science, and read-alouds!

 

If any of you have a schedule that you would like to share, I'd love to see it!

[Homeschooling6]

Maybe they meant 30 minutes of math and phonics (15 minutes each):glare:.

 

Maybe start with Bible, math, history, phonics with a few breaks in between.

I know it's hard to break from the schedule but maybe you can make one week of science last two weeks.

 

Since you are using two cores, don't be afraid to take more than a year to complete the history/read aloud portion. I wish I would have used SL-A (Core-K back in the days;)) for 1st grade or at least had spread it out. By the time we got to core-3 my son imho was not ready for it, so we went another route and I never was able to get back on the Sonlight track :( .

 

As for the house, yes, it is a challenge to keep it clean. My hubby, is a big help in that department, even so, it's not as clean as I would like it to be :001_huh:

[Homeschooling6]

I wanted to add that with Lance for his K year, it took about an hour but that was only phonics and math.

 

I no longer do a formal history or science program for grades k-4:w00t::eek:. This coming year I am going to add those subjects in for Caleb 5th and Brent 4th and have the youngest two tag along.

 

To be honest, science gets pushed to the back of our schedule. We rarely do science. I do have tons of books and the children listen to Jonathan Park:D and other audio books. I didn't plan for science to be so light here at Homeschooling6, but it just happened.