How much time do you spend preparing material and teaching

[mathnerd]

This is my first year afterschooling my Ker who is in PS. His school does not do "subject acceleration" or differentiation until the 2nd grade (even for highly gifted students). And his teacher is unable to pay any personal attention because it is a combo classroom with multi grades and she has to teach different things to different groups of kids all day long and simply has no time to deal with individual cases. She basically told me to send work packets from home if I had any problems with my son not being accelerated or bored in school - which is fair enough considering that now I know what needs to be done and will set my expectations accordingly! Basically, afterschooling became more important because of this situation ...

 

I have accomplished things during afterschooling that give me a great feeling when I look back on them (especially working with my son to get him to write when he had major small motor control issues). But, the bad thing is that I seem to be devoting a lot of time to researching, reading, preparing material and then teaching things to my Ker. He is advanced in a few subjects, so I need to help him with challenging and stimulating materials in those. But, he is weak in handwriting, spelling etc where again he needs attention and help from me. And then again I want to do stuff with him just for the "fun" of learning - things like music appreciation, science projects, arts and crafts, geography, robotics etc (the list could go on and on). My DH also spends time with him - on Legos, Chess, Mindstorms, sports etc. All these are in addition to homework supervision and driving back and forth to extra curriculars. All these amount to a large part of my life. It looks like I need to take a step back and scale down the time I spend on "afterschooling" when I calculate the sheer number of hours spent on these activities. I think that afterschooling is very important (obviously) but when I catch myself sitting up at 2:00 AM dissecting another new curriculum, I think that I need to find a balance between this and the rest of my life.

 

I can easily spend 1-2 hours a day on afterschooling. How many hours do you all spend on this?

[SKL]

I too easily spend 1-2 hours or sometimes much more on afterschooling. I don't generally develop materials, but I've spent time researching to purchase materials, and I look over what they're doing in school in order to get an idea of what will be most helpful at home. I sit with my eldest daughter going over supplemental worksheets, working with math manipulatives, reading together, helping her with piano, supervising homework/projects/test review, taking the occasional trip to a museum, etc. We also do 4-5 different kinds of therapy most days. My other kid, who is advanced and very independent, luckily only wants my involvement occasionally. I take the kids to extracurriculars 3 nights per week. We drill spelling and memory work and review AR books while I drive. We sometimes do homework at Panera / Subway between activities. On Saturday mornings their part-time nanny takes them to swim lessons and teaches them Spanish and art; Saturday evenings, I work with them or take them somewhere. On Sundays we go to church/Sunday School and then my sister works with them on whatever needs work that week. (I work 7 days per week.) Does that sound like a lot? :) Luckily my dd is good about working with me and enjoys having that one-on-one time. She learns so much better at home than in a classroom. Until she gets caught up and learns to listen well, I consider myself to be homeschooling, not just afterschooling select areas. For the time being, I rather enjoy it, though it can be stressful on really busy days. My biggest challenge is making sure the kids get enough sleep.

[Uff Da!]

nm

[wapiti]

If you are looking to trim the time you spend afterschooling on a daily basis, at the elementary level I would prioritize skill subjects (math and language arts) and only squeeze in anything else if you happen to have some extra time. While Latin is another possible priority, that's a longer-term commitment and weighing the costs and benefits, personally I would not bother with it until he's ready for something more substantial. For a K-er, I'd try to keep the work under an hour total.

[JenniferLynn]

I spend 1-2 hours on average, which includes read alouds and them reading to me. This has been our second year and the prep time is down dramatically. Like an earlier reply, we have books and CD's ready for car rides or tagging along to siblings' dance classes, etc. I now use more of a Do The Next Thing approach for each subject which eliminated the calendars and charts to plan and track progress. Teaching itself is now slightly less teacher-intensive too and I can multi-task or work with more than one child at a time. The main time sink is my own curiosity and tendency to keep checking out other curriculums or look farther ahead than necessary.

[mom2lydia]

If I count reading to my daughter it's about 1hr maybe 2. However literally I read her stories in the morning as she gets dressed for almost an hour and a 30 min bedtime story so that's 1 1/2hrs and the rest is at most 30 min. She is very bright and catches on quickly to new ideas ad generally it just has to be presented once and then some practice to master but the actual explaining from me takes maybe 10 min if it's a new topic. She's in 2nd grade and for math we do multiplication and division or large adition/subtraction problems that require carrying and borrowing and are in the thousands. Most of ours is oral though not so much a set curriculum or workbook pages. It's oral practice because that's what she has liked since she started making up story problems at 3yrs old in the car. I limit extra curricular activities to girl scouts and 4-h so there isn't a lot of running around. She also helps with cooking and baking which is an important skill IMO for girls to know so we have started workng on them. That also reinforces fractions and is sscience experments all at once. It's more of a lifestyle and very hands on for us rather than pen and paper extension of school. Also I require her to spend time playing outside as long as it's nice. She's only a kid for so long and I feel we learn through doing and play more and better than through books and paper.