Science again looking at too much or not enough

[Parrothead]

How many hours does/did your biology student do biology, with lab, per week? Currently I have 4 hours on the schedule, but I'm thinking that isn't going to be enough. If I ditch music (she has guitar lessons elsewhere) and art (isn't ballet enough art?) I can give her 6 hours of science.

 

 

[Cindy in FL.]

My son just finished up Biology for this year. He could not have done it in 4 hours, but 6 would be doable.

[regentrude]

My DD spent 160 hours on biology without a lab.

 

Whether 4 hours per week are sufficient for your student depends mainly on the length of your school year.

[PeterPan]

Depends on the student. We're going to do our science trim, pull in at 120 hours, and call it good. It's enough and she's not headed for anything in science, doesn't relish it, etc. If I had a more sciency kid, I'd put in 150-180. But that would just sorta happen naturally because they'd WANT to, and it wouldn't involve CHOPPING anything else. If you have to chop ART and other natural, normal, important things to cover, then biology maybe isn't her priority. 120 hours is enough, the minimum, and right there at adequate.

[SailorMom]

I would say you could get it all accomplished with 4 hour weeks if you are very organized :)

Block scheduling biology worked well for us because frequently the labs were kinda messy, and by the time we set it up, did it, and then cleaned up, we were looking at a good 2 or 3 hours. So - we'd do book work and reading three or four days a week with the lab on a very long day when other subjects were skipped (that would rotate depending on what we were doing in history, language arts, etc.)

I think it worked out (on average) to about 45 minutes four days a week, and 2-ish hours on Fridays.

[Parrothead]

Thanks for all the insight.

[Nscribe]

Clustering labs can help keep it to 4 hours a week over 30 plus weeks. Doing it required me to be on my game before we started and know when to have a lab week or lab weekend versus a reading and exercises week.