Reasonable work load for first grader?

[Wabi Sabi]

I'm just curious what others think is a reasonable work load for a first grader. I'm *personally* comfortable with the level/quality/quantity of work he's doing, but I still wonder what is considered "typical" for most WTM homeschoolers.

 

Every morning I write out a list of things that I would like ds to do for the day and he crosses them off as he's done. Sometimes he gets it done, often there are one or two things that don't get crossed off and are moved to the next day. Most days I try to keep his list to about 10 tasks and have at least a few "fun" items on it (games, puzzles, drawing, etc.) Much of it he can do semi-independently, some things he does with me and/or his younger sibling. Here is today's list:

 

Build Lego calendar for May (we have this.)

One page of sticker dictionary (he and his little sister like to do this together)

Math Mammoth- coin review page

WWE with Mom

Grammar (FLL) with Mom

Read and color page 8 in Darwin book

Read about Degas (pages 32-33) with Mom in art book

Read one chapter of "Grasshopper on the Road" to your little sister

Do Latin America jigsaw puzzle

Explode the Code page 18

 

Does that seem like a reasonable work load for a first grader by this point in the year? I'm often questioning whether my expectations are reasonable or not.

[AngelBee]

Taking notes...

[anmom]

I think it is completely reasonable. It is less than what my 1st grader is doing. Here is our list from today:

 

1 lesson from Horizons 1

2 pages Math Mammoth

WWE

Spelling Workout

ETC 4

Beyond the Code

Read one book out loud then write/draw in reading log

Snap Circuits 15 min

DreamBox 15 minutes

Piano 30 min

 

That is not counting our work that we do together which today includes reading a chapt from SOTW with a mapping activity and a hieroglyphics craft.

 

I think we all are different. You have to do what works for you and your child. Sometimes I have a hard time comparing what my child is doing to others, most of the time I feel like I am doing too much compared to others. But, if I consider my child and not everyone else, I know I am fine. He loves it, he is excelling with it all, completes everything without complaint!

[chepyl]

I try to keep my son's workload under two hours a day. Some days we finish in an hour. My son needs little repetition. It really depends on the kid. Today we did three sections of my the CAT/e test and then a science chapter on frogs. We did half of a lapbook on frogs. Tomorrow we will do the last half of the test, read about frogs in another book and finish the lapbook.

 

A normal day includes 2-4 math pages depending on the subject, 1-2 grammar lessons, either history or science, and spelling or dictation. He does art or legos daily.

 

We have made amazing progress with this schedule. You really just have to know your kid and what he or she is capable of.

[cagirlintexas]

love this list idea! I think I need to try that next year. I think it would help my son to have it set up like that!

[Dinsfamily]

Looks good to me. Ours was a little heavier last year but it looks like you've got everything covered.

 

Here's the plan for next year with my 1st grader:

 

1 lesson Singapore PM

1 lesson Horizons

SWR

McCall Harby (2x/week)

Read SL Readers Grade 3

Listen to Mom read SL A

Do Noeo Physics 1 with Mom and ds8

1 lesson FLL (2-3x/week)

1 lesson WWE (3x/ week)

1 elective (rotates through art, logic, geography, and Latin)

 

This is basically what we I did last year with my 1st grader. It wasn't too much.

 

BTW, I'm definitely buying that Lego calendar for next year. Love it!

[lea1]

I have two 1st graders and this is what we normally do each day:

 

2 pages of Math Mammoth

1 lesson WWE 1

1 lesson FLL 1

1 lesson in SOTW 1 or Apologia Astronomy

1 lesson in HWT Cursive

1 spelling list AAS (with tiles or writing on white board or paper)

Listen to mom read aloud (currently reading The Penderwicks)

1 lesson in Leading Little Ones to God

[Wabi Sabi]

For those who consider this possibly on the lighter side, what would you add/change to beef it up a bit if it was your child?

 

To reiterate, I'm happy with this amount of work and the system we have seems to be working quite well for us right now. For now, I think that what we're doing is just right for *us*- not too little, not too much, not too lax, not too rigid. It's not my intention to compare him to other children, but I am very intrigued to know what various people mean when they think something is light or rigorous.

 

ETA: We normally try to do one full lesson in MM- sometimes it's 3-4 pages, other times it's only 1-2 pages. As for today, he did the review for the money chapter in 1B. It's only written as one page and more importantly? It's the VERY LAST page of the book! As of today, he's officially DONE with his first grade math program! :party:

Edited May 1, 2012 by Wabi Sabi

[SilverMoon]

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Edited September 10, 2023 by SilverMoon

[ByGrace3]

I think reasonable is super subjective, it varies based in child and even day. We spend anywhere from 2-4 hours a day on school for my first grader. As far as rigorous verse light, my goal is to challenge my dc without frustrating them. That will look different for every child. Sometimes I think we have no "typical day". :tongue_smilie:

We are finishing up some subjects so it seems lighter than normal, but I think it is a very reasonable day still.

 

Today:

Piano practice 20 minutes

Bible lesson from BSGFAA

WWE narration

AAS 15 minutes

Read 2 chapters of Magic Treehouse book for reading/history

2 pages of math mammoth

About an hour working on science, a plant lapbook.

Took about 3 hours spread out through the day. She is finishing up science now.

Yet to be done at some point I will finish reading a book for history and read a chapter or 2 from read alouds.

[Karen in CO]

I think it is very subjective. We also have a very wide variety of ages for first graders around here. My first grader is 7. I am very comfortable with the amount of work she does daily. I don't typically schedule any fun activities; I'd rather just leave plenty of time for unscheduled fun. Here is her daily work that she does every single school day:

 

Math - either 2 chapters of Life of Fred Elem. or a page front and back of Saxon 2

1 page of McRuffy first grade cursive handwriting

1 lesson from WWE 1

she reads about 6 pages from her reader for the day (reading Make Way for Ducklings right now)

she reads 1 or 2 sections from CLP Nature Reader 1

I read her 1 chapter from our current read aloud (working our way through OZ books right now)

she does 2-4 pages from ETC5 including the writing

once a week while her sister is at her enrichment school we read a story and do an activity from our history unit - we're finishing Egypt and moving into the castle times soon.

 

She has plenty of time left for free play, art, painting, riding her bike, taking nature walks, and a wide variety of other things that I don't plan or schedule. This doesn't include her outside activities, just her daily seat work.

[Kathryn]

It's going to depend on the child. From my own experience, it's more than reasonable. Our "school day" today went like this:

 

With mom there:

Reset wall pocket calendar

WWE - two days of lessons

FLL - one lesson

WWW - one day's lesson

GWG - one lesson

HWT1 - one page

ETC6 - two pages

AAS2 - 10 spelling words on paper

Mindbenders - one page

Building Thinking Skills - two pages

Sonlight core A read-alouds for today

 

Alone:

MUS - Unit 4 test

Sonlight science - read two-page spread in Usborne children's encyclopedia and answer 3 questions on worksheet

Sonlight readers 2 - he was supposed to read two chapters of "The Sword in the Tree" but he read the whole book

 

Besides the extra reading he did, we were done in less than two hours. My DS is a young first grade, not eligible for public school first grade. We also don't schedule "fun" activities as part of our "school day." his swim team this morning and 4H where he is right now don't count.

Edited May 1, 2012 by kebg11

[2_girls_mommy]

By the end of 1st grade, both of mine were doing different things, because they were capable of different things.

 

Last year at this time my 1st grader did daily:

 

1 R&S penmanship page

1 lesson of either R&S reading w/workbook or 1 lesson R&S phonics w/workbook. We rotated. She couldn't do both each day.

A few sentences of dictation from me.

1 R&S grade 1 math lesson

either: a Lesson from Drawing with Children, a Section of SOTW3 (color sheet, listen to story, answer questions orally, and dictate a narration to me) or a science experiment and a drawing/narration of it for her notebook.

She read aloud to me for about 5-10 min. a day. I read aloud to her as much as possible daily.

 

My other first grader at the same time in the year was doing:

1 lessonR&S reading w/workbook

1 lesson R&S phonics w/workbook

1 lesson R&S grade 2 math

She read silently constantly. She is the type you have to tell her to put the book down to do anything.

She wrote stories and letters constantly

She had the same others, except that I required a lot more writing for her. By the end of 1st grade she wrote her whole narrations herself 1-2 paragraphs, and science definitions along with her narrations and diagrams.

I wasn't as good about dictation with her in 1st as I was later with her sis, and I paid the price for it. It was a big struggle with her this year...

[Wabi Sabi]

I don't add puzzles, drawing and such; she does those abundantly in her free time.

 

She has plenty of time left for free play, art, painting, riding her bike, taking nature walks, and a wide variety of other things that I don't plan or schedule. This doesn't include her outside activities, just her daily seat work.

 

We also don't schedule "fun" activities as part of our "school day." his swim team this morning and 4H where he is right now don't count.

 

I'm a little surprised to see this repeated so often for kids this age (and, I suspect that my first grader is actually probably amongst the oldest.) We like geography games, GeoPuzzles, Word Ladders, Scrabble, playing art history memory/matching games, the series of Draw, Write, Now books, etc. Choir, nature class, pottery class, volunteering twice a month at the food bank? Yep, all "school." I'm clearly pretty liberal in what I count as "school," LOL.

 

Today ds played outside (riding his bike, finding snails and slugs, eating all the ripe strawberries from the garden, ha!) until noon, completed his daily list of school from roughly 12:30-3:00 and then was dropped off at a friend's house for a playdate. He won't be home until later tonight, after dinner.

 

It's so interesting to see what works best for other families with similarly aged children. Us moms were talking about this recently at our homeschool park day and at that time I got the impression that I was a little on the rigid side! :tongue_smilie:

[Wheres Toto]

Depends on the kid.

 

I don't schedule all the fun stuff as part of school but I do count it as school. Which just means I write it on his weekly schedule/report. I don't have to tell anyone anything so it doesn't really matter to anyone but me. We mostly "do school" 4 days a week but there are some weeks where it's just 3 (or even 2) days.

 

Keep in mind this kid LOVES math and doesn't like to read.

 

My son starts the day with 30 minutes of reading from a chapter book of his choice.

While I work with his sister, he does his semi-independent work:

-Copywork or Handwriting without Tears 1st grade book - 1 or 2 pages

-A math riddle where he has to solve problems then match the answers with letters to answer the riddle.

-A Kumon page of writing numbers since I didn't think HWT did enough with numbers.

-Explode the Code. We're about to start Book 5 and it's always been review. He's been doing an entire lesson each day except the heavy writing pages, which I don't make him do.

-A page from a Scholastic "Algebra Readiness Made Easy" book.

 

If he's finished before I finish with her, he can chose from making sentences using magnetic words, do Mad Libs, Draw Write Now or read.

Together we do (and I do a lot of the writing for him):

-Spectrum Language Arts - one lesson which is a 2 page spread

-Spectrum Reading Comprehension - one lesson which is a 2 page spread

-Math Mammoth - 4 pages a day pulling from a bunch of different things.

-All About Spelling - usually we do one Step each week.

 

I just bought Beast Academy 3A and will probably add that in somewhere where he reads the Guide during his independent time and then we do the problems together.

 

All of the above usually takes about an hour. Then we break until after lunch and we do nature study, science, history, geography, art, etc. or have one of our outside activities, all together in the afternoon.

[Dinsfamily]

I'm a little surprised to see this repeated so often for kids this age (and, I suspect that my first grader is actually probably amongst the oldest.) We like geography games, GeoPuzzles, Word Ladders, Scrabble, playing art history memory/matching games, the series of Draw, Write, Now books, etc. Choir, nature class, pottery class, volunteering twice a month at the food bank? Yep, all "school." I'm clearly pretty liberal in what I count as "school," LOL.

 

I think this is just one of those preference things. I don't have to report anything or keep track of hours or days so it doesn't matter what I count as school. My 2nd grader has a habit of reading our read-alouds to himself at bedtime because he can't wait to find out what happens and has to have something to read at all times. I don't count any of that reading as school even though they are "schoolbooks" because it's what he does in his free time. He also does snap circuits, watches birds, and devours Penrose in his free time which isn't counted as school here, either. If I had to report, that would probably change, but for now, those are just things he does for fun.

[MinivanMom]

I think what you listed is very reasonable for a 1st grader.

 

I'm a little surprised to see this repeated so often for kids this age (and, I suspect that my first grader is actually probably amongst the oldest.) We like geography games, GeoPuzzles, Word Ladders, Scrabble, playing art history memory/matching games, the series of Draw, Write, Now books, etc. Choir, nature class, pottery class, volunteering twice a month at the food bank? Yep, all "school." I'm clearly pretty liberal in what I count as "school," LOL.

 

I think most of us find those things "educational", we just don't consider it "school" in the sense of having to plan and schedule it. I'm not required to count a certain number of hours, so I only think of "school" as the things I schedule into our day. If I had to count hours, then those "educational" things ds6 is doing in his freetime would quickly be considered "school".

 

I think this is just one of those preference things. I don't have to report anything or keep track of hours or days so it doesn't matter what I count as school. My 2nd grader has a habit of reading our read-alouds to himself at bedtime because he can't wait to find out what happens and has to have something to read at all times. I don't count any of that reading as school even though they are "schoolbooks" because it's what he does in his free time. He also does snap circuits, watches birds, and devours Penrose in his free time which isn't counted as school here, either. If I had to report, that would probably change, but for now, those are just things he does for fun.

 

:iagree:

[amyrjoy]

Well, we do 3-4 pages of math.

 

Some science reading or activity or both (maybe 2 or 3xs a week)

 

History/geography read aloud by him or I along with some questions or activity (mostly each day)

 

Silent reading, independent (about 30 minutes each day) along with some sort of answering questions or narrations

 

Handwriting (part of a page, for quality not quantity)

 

Grammar work (page or two)

 

Occasionally phonics

 

Spelling (either in copywork or other program)

 

Devotional time

 

misc. activities he likes to do: legos, snap circuits, etc.

[Embassy]

Last school year when my son was in first grade this is what one of our days looked like. It was about 5 hours long, but if you click on the link you will see it wasn't structured work all that time.

 

When my oldest was in first grade he also had long days, but the bulk of our day was spent in doing hands-on activities like you see here.

 

I think reasonable depends on you and your child. Your list seems quite reasonable to me. We spent more time, but it was something we all liked to do.

[Heart_Mom]

We are somewhat relaxed in the early years, so my 1st grade list would be shorter than yours.

 

Probably something like:

 

1 MUS Lesson

1 Phonics Lesson

Read Aloud Time

Handwriting

History or Science (or Heart of Dakota)

Bible with whole crew

 

Every situation is different!:001_smile:

[Kathryn]

 

I think most of us find those things "educational", we just don't consider it "school" in the sense of having to plan and schedule it. I'm not required to count a certain number of hours, so I only think of "school" as the things I schedule into our day. If I had to count hours, then those "educational" things ds6 is doing in his freetime would quickly be considered "school".

 

 

:iagree: Yes, this.

[Mommy22alyns]

That looks reasonable to me. Sylvia's workload by this point in the year is extremely light because she's finished so many things already. But earlier, it looked a lot like OPs.

[Karen in CO]

I'm a little surprised to see this repeated so often for kids this age (and, I suspect that my first grader is actually probably amongst the oldest.) We like geography games, GeoPuzzles, Word Ladders, Scrabble, playing art history memory/matching games, the series of Draw, Write, Now books, etc. Choir, nature class, pottery class, volunteering twice a month at the food bank? Yep, all "school." I'm clearly pretty liberal in what I count as "school," LOL.

 

Today ds played outside (riding his bike, finding snails and slugs, eating all the ripe strawberries from the garden, ha!) until noon, completed his daily list of school from roughly 12:30-3:00 and then was dropped off at a friend's house for a playdate. He won't be home until later tonight, after dinner.

 

It's so interesting to see what works best for other families with similarly aged children. Us moms were talking about this recently at our homeschool park day and at that time I got the impression that I was a little on the rigid side! :tongue_smilie:

The reason I only count our seat work as "school" is that I also work full time. I schedule time in my workday to work with her through her seat work. She does all of that other "fun" stuff like geopuzzle, mazes, logic books, drawing books, coloring books, scrabble, boggle, math games, whatever with dh, her sister, grandma or by herself sitting at my desk while I work.

[ALB]

I think its reasonable. Its a bit less than what we are doing, but I think its a good amount.