New to This Board - Afterschooling 1 subject

[KrissiK]

It looks like we're going to be putting our 3 oldest in parochial school next year. The oldest for sure (if he gets in, the 7th grade class is full and we are on the waiting list), the next two possibly. It's a tough decision, but... anyhow, it's complicated, but necessary with the oldest. The one thing we are not happy about with giving up homeschooling is giving up Latin. Which is huge with us. I'm sorry if this is a subject that has been answered before, but how does after-schooling look for any of you who do it, what subjects have you continued to teach and how do you fit it in, with extra-curricular activities, etc.

[LimitBreak]

For K-5, I afterschooled history, math, writing, and literature. I was most consistent in the summers--this helped out for the following school year. For example, instead of spending 45 minutes on challenging homework problems, it would only take my ds 10 minutes. This freed up time for him to play with neighborhood kids and play minecraft during the schoolyear. For extracurriculars, I'm very particular with what I register him for. For example, he likes basketball and soccer, but I opted to register him for Ayso soccer because both the practices and games were in town. He occasionally brings up joining school basketball (with pressure from friends), but I explain to him again the reasons for why we're not doing it (It's 3 months during the Winter, involves driving to several towns, and unpredictable scheduling due to tournament brackets). Recreational soccer is only 2 months in the Fall and 2 months in the Spring but the scheduling is consistent.

 

He's also in both school band & choir, and private piano. B & C meet on alternate days before the school day, so he gets up 1 hour earlier. Piano he's been doing since K so it's been a part of his routine.

 

Afterschooling, all year, since K has helped out a lot because he is not struggling at all during the school year.

 

He'll be in junior high this upcoming Fall and I'm sure that I won't have time to do all the above subjects... I don't know what's going to happen.

 

I asked a similar question as you a few weeks ago and have had 0 responses.

[JDoe]

Logic, Math and Reading/Writing mainly. To fit it in you need at least a 28h day.

[VANURSEPRAC]

At risk of getting shot......

 

DD is turning 12 in 3 days and is in 6th grade. She does not have one cell In her body for physical type stuff.  She says it is a great day when she doesn't have to dress out for PE and just talk on the benches with her friends. I have had her in cheer, soccer, karate, gymnastics, violin. she did not like any of that.

 

So she has no extracurricular things in 6th grade. She only wants to watch anime, Dr Who, and YouTube. So....

 

She does 90 minutes of "after school" a day. Sun-Thurs. 6th grade has about 30 minutes of homework a month. So it is very doable. She is done at 6:30 Pm and still has plenty of "leisure" time.

 

I realize as school becomes more demanding, there  will be less time for "after schooling" but it is working now.

 

[DoppeltGemoppelt]

My twin boys are only in 2nd grade, so we are not very far into this journey. Initially, we were afterschooling mainly for reading, so that they could learn phonics instead of sight words. The boys are also learning German. Since there are 180 days of school, that left us with 185 days of afterschooling. That is at what we did in Kindergarten. This never took more than about 30 minutes a day, and we routinely switched what we did.

Since we've moved, their school day starts at 9am, and they don't get home until about 3:45pm. There are usually two homework assignments, plus any pending projects. Our solution was to do our "afterschooling" before school. The twins get up at 7am and do 30 minutes of work while eating breakfast. They are now both very advanced readers and don't need more reading instruction. We have since switched to doing MEP math in the mornings, and German read alouds at night before bed. It is not ideal, since German gets left behind somewhat, but I noticed that I constantly have to remediate what the kids "learn" in school for math.

This routine works for us now. I am constantly on the lookout for saving us more time, as school takes up so much of that. It helps that I walk the kids to school in the mornings as late as possible and pick them up again. It's a time commitment on my part, but less time for them spent on the long bus ride. Plus they get some fresh air and exercise. At this point in time, their only extracurricular is on Sundays, so thankfully I don't have to work around that. We also take bike rides, go for walks, and go to the playground. If your children have many extracurriculars, work around that by using the 185 days that there is no school. It also helps, that I severely limit the kids' screen time. One more thing you could do, if you are in the car a lot, is car schooling. Mental math, books, audiobooks, latin, all is game as long as there are no screens allowed. Same goes for any other wait times you encounter (doctor's and dentist's visits, DMV, waiting while another sibling is doing their sport, etc.).

HTH!

[KrissiK]

Thanks for your responses. I'm just trying to figure out if it's even going to be feasible, or if Latin will just be one of those things that we're going to have to let go. I'm hoping I can work it in.

[JDoe]

Afterschooling can, and in my case do, include weekends, holidays and vacations.

[allijammomma]

IMO, afterschooling has a lot of aspects of car school. get a good clipboard, and he can work on it in the car, rather than fighting over what to play on the radio. We listen to history and get a lot done.

 

[kiwik]

There is no reason you can't. It may be hard to do a solid block each day but if you do a ten minutes once or twice every day you will manage. I find the biggest barrier is my tiredness after a day at work and running round.