How much time per subject 1st grade

[Sctigermom]

My son is 6 and we school yr round. We are completely in first grade materials (almost 2nd grade with math). I am having a hard time figuring out how much time per subject. For k I planned to do x amount of lessons each week, but I think we would do better with a set amount of time. Right now we are doing an hour each day of 1 subject (math-Monday, reading-Tuesday, science- Wednesday, and history-Thursday). I find that by the end of the. Hour he is burnt out and I think it's bc it's too long for him to sit and work on 1 subject. I would like to do all of our subjects daily so he has a variety of things each day. So what do you think is a good set amount of time for a young 6 yr old?

[chepyl]

I tried to keep it to 15 minutes per subject at most. We did everything in 1-1.5 hours a day last year. We did math, grammar, and spelling daily; science twice a week and history 3 times a week.

 

Math generally took a little longer, 20-30 minutes at most.

Spelling took 5-10 minutes.

Grammar took 10-15, depending on if we did one lesson or two.

Science never took more than 15 minutes unless we did a lab.

History took longer on Fridays when we did our lapbook pieces.

 

I generally just did a lesson or two a day, I would cut it short if something was taking too long and we would come back to it the next day (ie: if there was a math concept that was not grasped quickly, we would practice a few problems, and then do more the next day rather than fight through a difficult problem set.

[heidirenata]

We do about 30 minutes

[SkateLeft]

I tried to keep it to 15 minutes per subject at most. We did everything in 1-1.5 hours a day last year. We did math, grammar, and spelling daily; science twice a week and history 3 times a week.

 

 

That's pretty much the same thing we do. At that age, I never have them doing seatwork for more than 30 minutes at most.

[BugsMama]

I have no idea how people get it done in such small periods of time- I wish I could! But.... we have fun, so it's not all bad :auto:

With my First and pre-k'r (we do most subjects together, teacher intensive)

 

Math- 1 hour daily- (Saxon)

Language Arts- 1 hour (it was IEW PAL/AAS, looking into switching to something else)

Science/Social Studies (we alternate)- 1 hour daily

Bonus Block- 1 hour daily (rotating art/german/logic/music/pe)

 

But these hours are broken up into smaller chunks, so "school" ends up being spread out over 4-5 hours or so, with playtime and breaks in the middle

[Sctigermom]

I have no idea how people get it done in such small periods of time- I wish I could! But.... we have fun, so it's not all bad :auto:

With my First and pre-k'r (we do most subjects together, teacher intensive)

 

Math- 1 hour daily- (Saxon)

Language Arts- 1 hour (it was IEW PAL/AAS, looking into switching to something else)

Science/Social Studies (we alternate)- 1 hour daily

Bonus Block- 1 hour daily (rotating art/german/logic/music/pe)

 

But these hours are broken up into smaller chunks, so "school" ends up being spread out over 4-5 hours or so, with playtime and breaks in the middle

I know! 1 hour of reading/grammar/spelling gets 1 lesson done for us. Math he moves much faster in and we can do a weeks worth of lessons in an hour. Science and history seem to need more time too due to all the reading plus projects/labs. I need to find a good balance for us.

[daffodil]

My daughter is 6.5. Right now we do about 20 minutes of math and 15 minutes of spelling daily. I'm happy with what we accomplish in that amount of time. I'm still figuring out what I want to do for writing, so we'll be adding that in the fall. We rotate Spanish/poetry/science/history/art, and the time spent on those varies. But the majority of our time is definitely spent on read alouds and independent reading.

[chepyl]

I have no idea how people get it done in such small periods of time- I wish I could! But.... we have fun, so it's not all bad :auto:

With my First and pre-k'r (we do most subjects together, teacher intensive)

 

Math- 1 hour daily- (Saxon)

Language Arts- 1 hour (it was IEW PAL/AAS, looking into switching to something else)

Science/Social Studies (we alternate)- 1 hour daily

Bonus Block- 1 hour daily (rotating art/german/logic/music/pe)

 

But these hours are broken up into smaller chunks, so "school" ends up being spread out over 4-5 hours or so, with playtime and breaks in the middle

 

I combine a lot. My son reads his grammar lesson aloud to me. Then we work through the exercises orally. This way we cover reading and grammar in one lesson. (He started reading early, so we don't do a phonics program anymore. I just have him read aloud daily and silently as well.)

 

For spelling, we do dictation every other week. This is how I do handwriting. The neater he writes, the fewer sentences he has to do.

 

I picked science and history programs that could be done in short periods. I wanted school in early elementary to be short to allow more playtime and energy for extracurriculars. Each year, our school time increases a little bit. We started K with 30 minutes a day and increased to 1 hour, 1st started at an hour and slowly increased to 1.5 hours. We will start second at 1.5-2 hours and it will slowly increase as the year progresses.

[BugsMama]

When we are doing it, it really doesn't feel like we are taking a ton of time, until I turn around and it's 3 pm, and we're up to our elbows in paper mache!

[Five More Minutes]

For Grade 1, we tried to emphasize shorter, frequent lessons over longer ones. We've spent our time roughly as follows:

Math: 45 minutes - 1 hour daily (My kids love math, though, and we're shifting activities every 5 - 15 minutes during this time.)

Writing: 10 - 15 minutes daily

Spelling: 10 - 15 minutes daily

Handwriting: 5 minutes daily

Grammar: 5 - 10 minutes, 2x weekly

Reading: 20 - 30 minutes daily

History: 30 minutes, 2x weekly

Science: 30 minutes, 2x weekly

Other fun stuff (Latin, Bible, art, geography): When we had the time and felt like it.

 

Subjects like math, writing, and reading need to be worked on daily at this age, in my opinion. I notice a difference in my students' ability to pick up where we left off in math after a long weekend.

[LillyMama]

Here's our first grade schedule:

 

http://coloradostrongs.blogspot.com/2012/05/this-is-test-to-see-if-i-can-figure.html

 

The key for us it to break up the activities within the subject. So, although it says we phonics for half an hour, it's 15 minutes in the workbook, then 15 minutes on the computer. Spelling is 15 minutes with the AAS tiles, then 15 minutes either doing a written test or reviewing key word cards (while running laps around the house.) We've done our spelling test outside in the driveway in sidewalk chalk, taken a picture, and posted it in our notebook. That actually made spelling 45 minutes that day. So although we may spend an hour total on math, we've done skip-counting while bouncing on a Bosu, a lesson (sometimes with manipulatives) workbook pages and then a game. For some reason, the game can last 30 minutes when everything gets old at 15.. ;) The other thing is that I schedule things that may only take 10 minutes, making them feel super smart or challenged to see if they can do one more page before the time runs out. Depends on the day.

 

Also, what helped us, was to have this pretty set schedule. Now, we don't EXACTLY follow it- I'd say one day out of ten goes as drawn up here. But my son needed to know what came next, for how long, etc. Once we got the routine down, we stopped feeling so wiped out because we knew exactly how far along in our checklist we were.

 

And, my last tip- DANCE BREAK! Finish one math page and he's flogging? Get up, turn on some loud music and DANCE. (You can close your curtains if you need to...) Don't sit back down to more math until everyone is laughing- and has a nice glass of water. For me, the point of year-round school is so that we can relax in our pacing. Although, so far, it hasn't made us fall behind at all.

Edited June 3, 2012 by LillyMama
typitty typos

[MinivanMom]

For my ds6, who just finished up 1st grade, we spent about 2 hrs on schoolwork daily. The first hour was basics (math, lang.arts, writing) and the second hour was the extras (French, read alouds, history, science, art).

 

I didn't think he was ready to work for 2 hrs straight at the beginning of the year when he was barely 6, so we would take a 30-45 min play break between the 2 hrs. After Christmas, we began working through the 2 hrs without a break.

[ScoutTN]

We do 15 minutes max for most things except projects (mostly history and science, some art) and math. We go 30 minutes for math and occasionally longer if DD is interested and we are rolling right along. Math games are part of our lessons and DD loves them.

 

The time limit works well for us. :)

[Chelli]

I'm going to copy and paste what I wrote on my blog about how I plan our length of school day:

 

I've already written a blog post on how I schedule our subjects in the day, so this section is more about the timing of the day. How long should you schedule for school each day? My answer is that I have no idea. Every family, every child, and every homeschool is different.

<snip>

I am not a big advocate of making children sit at a desk and do all of their work in one sitting. However, some children thrive doing school this way. Mine do not, so we rotate out break times with learning time quite a bit. Within our school times I also rotate more brain intensive subjects, like math, with more hands-on, "fun" subjects, like science or history. I tend to follow this guideline for how long a child should be engaged in school:

K: 30 minutes of school time, 30 minute break

1st: 45 minutes of school time building to 1 hour, 20 minute break

2nd: 1 hour of school time, 20 minute break

3rd: 1 hour of school time building to 1 hour 30 minutes, 20 minute break

4th: 1 hour 30 minutes, 20 minute break

5th: 2 hours, 30 minute break

6th: 2 hours, 30 minute break

 

Repeat this cycle until the child is done for the day. I want to remind you though that this is my plan for my children. Even I adjust this for my kids. If your children want to work longer, then do so. If they need a longer break, then let them have it. Let your children lead how much they can do at a time (within reason). It is better to have 30 minutes of really great instruction time, then 30 minutes of instruction and 30 minutes of whining and threatening because your child is tired and needs a break.

 

You can see the full post here.

[susankenny]

I've never focused on per subject honestly. In first grade though, we spend only a couple of hours at the most on school for the entire day.

 

Susan

[ALB]

Math takes us the longest, usually around 45 minutes. Language arts only takes us about 30 min. My dd is accelerated in LA, but pretty average in math. I think that is why we breeze through LA and plod along through math.

 

We could happily spend the rest of the day doing history/ science, literature and art. I've started to let go of planning much for those subjects. We just pick up where we left off and go until we're "done."

[ByGrace3]

I think it very much depends on the child. This year, a typical school day for my first grader was:

 

Piano- 20 min

Bible- 30 min

Math- 45min

Writing- 10 min (MTWR)

handwriting - 5 min (first semester only)

Phonics- 20-30 min

Grammar 5-10 min (MWF)

Spelling- 15-20 min (MTWR)

Science- 30 min (TR)

History- 30 min (MW and sometimes FRI)

 

Total-- about 3/3.5 hours plus a read aloud at bedtime with Friday a much lighter day.