Am I the only homeschooler who *doesn't* like to do groups during school hours?

[Excelsior! Academy]

I am torn. We don't do groups because of the time it takes. I just can't be gone from home for a weekly commitment and grocery shop and get school done and house cleaning and.... But if we do commitments we prefer not during school hours or nap time, so, um, that pretty much rules out everything.:lol: Our compromise is to try not to commit to more than once a month or take a lighter school week. I know we can't have it both ways, but nap time seriously takes priority over school hours.

[Sahamamama]

Now, my mother, needing me to go with her to doctors' appointments or my MIL constantly scheduling airport runs during the school day when I've REPEATEDLY told her that she needs to go early morning or late afternoon/evening and refuses to heed this admonishment culminating last time in her being taken to the airport at 7:30 a.m. because ds had an AP exam that dh was taking him to, but I had to be home in time for the picking up, so she ended up sitting at the airport for FOUR hours before her flight....well, now that's just another story right there. :glare:

 

Faith

 

:lol::lol::lol: Faith, this just won top prize for Run-On-Sentence-of-the-Year! :lol::lol::lol: (sounds like we have the same MIL) :grouphug:

[mommymilkies]

I hate it, too. My kids love our co-op, but it's every other Friday morning, which means we get no work done that day. Ours is more a social thing. But there isn't anything I can do about it right now. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have so many different ages to teach.

[linguistmama]

I prefer not to interrupt the school day either, except for certain special fieldtrips, and I only have half the number of children that you do! This year with only a 2nd grader and a preschooler we can do groups that meet at 1pm, but eventually I'm sure that won't be late enough for us.

[Stayseeliz]

When the kids were younger I loved morning and early afternoon sports, etc. But now that the kids are older and have more work I won't do anything in the morning on a regular basis. I try not to leave the house for anything before 2. I need my mornings at home!

[Mommy22alyns]

Nope, I can't stand it. It cuts into our day and makes it impossible for us to get everything done.

[Bear23]

I put maybe because it would depend on what what happening. I too would like to keep school between 8-3.

[Deniseibase]

Until this year, I kept TRYING to like these kinds of things. We have park days with our support group, but that's just once a week, in nice weather, and they start around lunchtime, so it's not too hard to push everybody to get everything done in time to go. LAST year I foolishly decided I must be missing something wonderful by not doing all these outside classes, and ended up going to some class or other 4 days a week for the first half the year, and 2 days a week the second half. It was really disruptive and made me crazy and the worst part was I really did NOT feel like the academic benefit was significantly better than what we would have done at home, with the exception of one fabulous nine-week physics class. This year I am not doing ANYTHING between 8-3 except on Thursdays when we have park day. We are just a couple weeks into our school year and I can already feel how much less stress this schedule is going to be! :)

[Kelly1730]

I just sat down today and wrote down our schedule, looks like we are going to school pretty much from 9-3 with a 45 min. break for lunch/outdoor run around time. I had thought as much and already had requested to change our piano lesson time from Wed. mornings at 9:30 to Wed. afternoons at 4:30. Not sure if this will work at any better but at least it won't interfere with our school day. We have church on Wed nights so we'll have piano lessons until 5:30, either grab a quick dinner out or I'll pack something to eat at church. Kid's program at church (dh and I are leaders) and then home between 8:30 and 9:00pm. It will make for a long day but we will get school in. We do a co-op two Fridays a month which is mostly extra-curricular/social but my boys love it and I do it for them. I plan light Fridays so one week is co-op, library, math and that's pretty much it and the next is review, games, educational dvd's.

[OK Family]

In the past three years we did classical

conversations one day a week so we only schooled at home 4 days. I never scheduled anything during those school at home days, but felt rushed and frazzled. I am excited to be home for all 5 days this year. I have scheduled an art class for one afternoon though.

[Jenny in Florida]

As a general rule, when it comes to things like music lessons, no. I much prefer those to happen after 2:00 or 3:00 so that they do not interfere with our school day.

 

I voted "maybe," though, because I don't mind certain academic stuff happening during the day, as long as it's not more than one day per week.

 

For example, last fall my son participated on a Lego robotics team, which met one afternoon a week for a couple of hours. By the time we added the drive to the meeting location and back home again, it pretty much took up the entire afternoon. But it was worth it to me to get my son out of the house, doing something educational with a group.

 

We're signing up for more classes for this coming year.

[abacus2]

I prefer daytime activities. With my kids' young ages, it is easier to be flexible in our schoolwork scheduling than with evening and weekend times. Sometimes I feel that having a lot going on gets us in the habit of being productive and ups the effectiveness of our schoolwork at home time. We do MOPS which includes a Bible class for elementary age homeschoolers, music class, and I am considering adding a once a week sport. It can get overwhelming and I carefully weigh whether what we are doing is worth the disruption.

[Denisemomof4]

OH MY GOSH I am so excited that we are NOT DOING ANY THIS YEAR!!!!! And I hope to never do them again!!!

[freerange]

I'm planning based on a six day week with an average two flexible days off. Some weeks we'll do more than four days at home, some less.

 

Some of the group activities we love & friends we want to see are 45mins away, so we needed to build in some flexibility.

 

Dh teaches them French & economics, and he also studies at the weekends, so it makes sense for all of us to work & take a day off mid week.

[Soror]

Right now we don't have that much to do so taking off one day a week isn't a big deal. We will see how it works as they get older. I don't like a lot of activity period though. On our schedule is 1x a week for co-op and that is actually only every other week at most and then 1 night a week for Boy Scouts/American Heritage Girls.

[Dewdrop]

We are out and about most days of the week during school hours. This coming year, dd has outside classes on Mondays 10-2, Tuesday 2-4 and Fridays 9-11.

 

Through the years, we've just learned how to work around her schedule.

 

Luann

[RegularMom]

When the girls were younger and our academic day was shorter, it didn't bother me too much having an activity or two in the early afternoon. But now that they're older, I prefer to be home during regular school hours to get our work done. Starting this year, we will only be out one afternoon a week for theater classes and library time. We've slowly dropped every other thing over time (girl scouts being the last) that met during the day. It's such a relief, taking back control of our time. :)

 

We'll still be out at karate/dance/prep classes, but none of those start until 4pm at the earliest. Yay!

[Parrothead]

Going into 8th grade with a full work load means no classes between 8a and 3p. I'm trying to figure out if it would be worth it to do a one day a week pool run.

[kewb]

Maybe/other. We are part of a group that meets 2x a month in the morning. I just schedule around the fact that I know that day is shot in terms of other school work.

 

Overall, now that the kids are older I prefer a 1:30 start time. I don't like it much later then that because then I am frazzled getting to swim practice. Plus I like to avoid the after school/rush hour traffic.

 

If something really interesting pops up then I will consider it.

[dollie*]

Same here. It just interrupts the flow of things, and it's hard for my girls to get back into the groove and focused, and me, too, for that matter. I prefer extracurriculars to be after 3 p.m.

[higginszoo]

Not nearly as much as many people around here. I know of a few groups and families that have park days/field trips pretty much every day. Some of these families have younger children, where that probably works better. I prefer to leave the days fairly unscheduled because our evenings and weekends are pretty full of extracurriculars, and even unschooling at my three older children's ages requires some time at home to be able to explore what they need to. (Only one of those three actually unschools -- the others use a more traditional model, which definitely requires time at home sometime to complete.)

[Woodland Mist Academy]

I avoid it whenever possible. Sometimes with appointments it's unavoidable, though.

 

Missing precious school time is the main reason we don't participate in a co-op. It's not worth the missed hours of school. We work on lessons 6-7 days a week year-round to make-up for the time we do need to miss.

 

We take some weeks off for travel, educational day camps, etc--especially in the summer. Routine lessons or activities need to be after school hours.

 

Some people presume that since we home school we are available all day, every day. :001_huh: This can be frustrating, sometimes.

Edited August 9, 2012 by Hilltop Academy

[laundrycrisis]

If it is something that meets one of the state subject requirements or has other educational benefit, I'm fine with it. We go out weekly during school hours for violin, gym'n swim, Spanish and OT. Our after school hours are taken up by league sports so I need these others to be afternoon "school hours" activities or they would probably just be dropped. But if it is something that is purely social, I only want to do it on Friday afternoon. I do not like to set anything up in the mornings - that time is for school. The afternoons that have some time left after a weekly activity are also school time. And this year there will also be evening/weekend "homework".

[FairyMom]

We don't do anything outside the house before 3:00pm during the school year.

[Luckymama]

The only scheduled thing we do is the monthly Math Olympiad competition. Since that's academic, I allow it :D Last year she did spend some afternoons meeting with various Science Olympiad event partners----again, very academic.

[Pretty in Pink]

I didn't mind morning activities when my oldest was younger. At this point I've got a high schooler, two elementary students, a pre-schooler, and an infant. The school day does not end for me until mid-afternoon. I am hard-pressed to sign up for any outside activities during normal school hours anymore. It's just too chaotic.

[Sharilynn29]

I answered no because I very much dislike having activities during our school days. Unfortunately, my kids love being involved in our hsing community. We attend our homeschool skate one a week from 10-2 and park/gym day from 1-4. We start school one hour earlier on these days and schedule only 4.5 days a week.

 

I do like spending time with adults during this time. :001_smile:

[mom31257]

I feel that the outside things we do are just as an important part of my children's education as the book work we do at home; therefore, I voted yes. Some things have to be scheduled during school hours. Dd sings in chorus at a local Christian school and takes a Cotillion class there, so that's obviously according to their schedule. Some field trips happen during school hours and can only be scheduled during that time. We are participating in an every other week co-op that will have IEW writing, life skills, and Biology labs. The group wants it from 9-12 to get home for naps with the little ones.

 

I figure school work can happen any time of the day or night or happen anywhere we choose. When dd schedule's her week, I go over our week's happenings so that she can plan more school work for the days we are home all day and less on the days we are out some. She also has the option to do school in the car while going to those things.