WTM and Family Group Time

[Flowergirl159]

I have been reading through the WTM and am very inspired. I am intrigued though, in how you can follow the timelines recommended, when you have more than one child.

 

For a few years we have always had morning basket or group time first up in the morning. However, I am really struggling to keep their school time down. Once we add the group time with their individual work, their days can be quite long.

 

Now looking at the times recommended in the WTM book for grade 6, 4 and 2, it seems like my grade 6 girl will have a rather long day. 

 

Currently, we aim to begin group time at 7:30, but it is usually 8am before we actually start (winter here so hard to get up and going in the mornings), then onto their individual school time before we stop for lunch at 1pm. My 6th grader works that whole time while my younger two have breaks and will be finished earlier. After we have lunch I read our family literature aloud, then everyone has about half an hour of quiet reading. So by 2:30pm, all school is complete. 

 

I guess my question is, is it possible to have family group time each morning and follow the recommendations in the WTM for the separate grades?

[Epicurean]

The new edition of WTM comes out next month, and since morning time has become so popular, I've wondered if SWB will have more to say about it. I don't have any advice since I'm no where near where you are yet, except to say that one classic way of trimming down her daily work is to rotate subjects (history MWF, geography TH, spelling MWF, grammar TH, etc.) so that she isn't doing every subject every single day.

[michaeljenn]

I just listened to a podcast by Susan and she said that she doesn't follow those timelines either.  She said she is structured, but there was no way she could follow those timelines as written.  The publisher made her put those in the book;)  

[KeriJ]

I think that most people leave things out. I consider myself a mix between WTM and CM. So we just pick the parts that work for us in order to fit in everything we want to do. I'm not sure there are very many who do everything that is listed in TWTM.

[Flowergirl159]

Okay thanks, I will pick and choose what I think is important for us at the moment :)

[2_girls_mommy]

Most years we didn't do a morning time together.  We do our read alouds, discussions, memory work, and history altogether most days after lunch.  That works better for us for our together time. We spend about an hour and a half on that.  Then there is about a half hour for a quick subject, last year that was English. So by 3:00 we were done with school, except homework. (My kids rarely finish math during school time.  We do corrections and look at the new lesson each day, start a few problems together, then we put it up, and they do the lesson at night, much as they would in a PS.)

 

Some days we have to leave the house at 2:30 to get to afterschool activities.  On those days, we don't do the 2:30 subject.  And on our days at home, we often go later than 3:00 and just do a longer day.  We just make the schedule work for us.  And like others said, we don't do everything as in WTM.  We have pretty much left formal logic out of the schedule for middle school.  They each did a book of mindbenders at one time.  We read through a couple of chapters of Critical Thinking book one at one time.  So now that odd is starting high school, she will be doing Traditional Logic as a high school course instead of getting it out of the way in middle school as WTM suggests. I wanted to get it in, but it didn't happen, lol.

 

We have always had long days though.  I don't know if that is because we follow WTM or if it because we are slow.  Maybe a bit of both. :)

 

 

[ScoutTN]

Another vote for content subjects and group time after lunch. We work harc on the 3r's in the morning and enjoy our rambles through history, science etc. in the afternoon.

[BlsdMama]

Are you reading the first edition or a later edition?

[BlsdMama]

If it's not the first, please clarify what you mean by the word timeline.

Edited July 5, 2016 by BlsdMama

[Flowergirl159]

If it's not the first, please clarify what you mean by the word timeline.

 

I have the third edition.

 

Arts 1-2hrs week

Logic 3hrs week

Grammar 40-60 minutes day

Writing 30-60 minutes day

[Flowergirl159]

ScoutTN and 2 girls mommy, thanks for your ideas. I think I have always done our group stuff in the mornings, first thing. Then they can all finish for the day once their work is done. But perhaps I should try moving our morning basket til the afternoon. That way, I can begin working with whoever is ready first up in the morning. This would allow my oldest time to get all of her work done (she has commented before that morning basket is wasting her time that she could be spending on her school work).

 

To give you a rough idea, this is what our current day looks like:

morning basket (once chores are done and eveyone is ready, often gets dropped or shortened)

9 maths

10 begin rotating between each girl (an hour per girl)

1 lunch

1:30 read aloud

2 quiet reading

2:30 extra curricula activities or free time

 

Perhaps I could change it to independent work and work with mum in the mornings, without time frames, just get the work done.

Lunch at 12:30 followed by morning basket

2:30 finish

 

My oldest would enjoy having all the morning hours to work on her work :) She would actually love that!

 

But, we wouldn't fit in read aloud and quiet reading :/ 

 

[fralala]

It works best for us to dive right into math in the morning (sometimes right before breakfast), and not to have lessons looming over us-- so we save the kind of things people generally do during morning basket for evening, but I often think of things I want to include during tangential discussions over the course of the day, so it's kind of a nice way to tie together loose ends too.

[KeriJ]

We do group time in the afternoon. My oldest said the same thing yours did.😊 So she gets going early while I move through individual subjects with the rest.

 

We take a break, have lunch and then do group subjects. After that, we have quiet time where the littles and I nap while the olders read and finish any school work needed.

[LindaOz]

We split our family time into two sessions. Firstly, we have Bible, memory and a read-aloud at breakfast, followed by morning chores, then own work usually starting with math. After lunch we have more group time which then leads into quiet time (reading).

 

We do it this way because dd17 has a cafe job that starts at 12 each day which means she is not here at lunch, but she doesn't like to 'miss out' on everything the family is doing either. So we have the earlier time together which includes her but also gives her time to do some of her own study before she goes to work. I also have kids that like to get in and get their work done in the morning so this method works well for us at the moment.

[Flowergirl159]

Thanks so much everyone for your suggestions, I really appreciate all of your responses :)