Working for a specified amount of time rather than completion

[EKT]

Thus far in my homeschooling, I've tended to "let things take as long as they take to complete." So, for example, on a typical Monday, I'll assign my children two math pages each, and then they do them, whether it takes us 15 minutes or 35 minutes to complete. I've been reading a lot of Charlotte Mason-type stuff lately, though, and I am intrigued by her idea of working for time instead, and in that time, just getting as far as we can. So, if I'm understanding her philosophy correctly, this means giving focused attention to the subject of math for 20 minutes and then moving on, whether we've completed two problems or two whole pages. 

 

I feel as though working for time (as opposed to completion) would be less stressful to my children, is likely to produce better, more focused work, and--bonus--would make it easier to plan my homeschool days, but I admit I am concerned about not getting very far. I'm not a slave to my curriculum--I definitely consider it merely a tool--and I'm okay with not completing, say, all 36 lessons in a school year, but at the same time, I'm a little worried that working for time will leave me only halfway through our current math book by next June. In other words, I'm really interested in trying out the work-for-time idea in the coming school year, but at the same time, I don't want to get into a situation where my child truly isn't as far along as I would like. 

 

Long story short, if you are someone who does the Charlotte Mason "scheduling for time, not completion" thing in your homeschool, how's it going? Do you find that you actually get pretty far and stay pretty much on track? How do you determine how much time to devote to each subject? (I realize we do already do this for free reading - we read for one hour each day, with no pressure on how far each child must get in their book, and that works well, but I'd love to hear how it works out for actual subject matter/content.) Thanks!

[Farrar]

We mostly do this. My kids are very uneven workers. Not out of laziness or distraction (though sometimes it can be those things, but not generally). They're just slow workers and readers overall. So this approach is pretty important.

 

I will but a final deadline on things sometimes. A math assignment that's tricky might take two days, but when it gets to three, I just have to put my foot down generally. And if there's a bigger project or assignment, I will put it down to a deadline eventually and make the kids work overtime so to speak. But typically, we just do time.

 

I play it by ear. I generally think about an hour of math is good for us plus any math lesson time (my kids just finished 7th grade, but we've done the hour as the standard since about 5th). Sometimes if I do a long lesson, I'll make it less. Sometimes if we're having a shorter day, I'll cut it a little. Sometimes if there's no lesson or if there's multiple tasks (as in, work on this page of new material and then work on that page of review) then I'll break it up. I do the same thing for reading assignments and writing and everything else really. I have a general amount, but then I play it by ear based on what we're doing.

 

I write the times down in their agendas. If there's no time, then they just have to finish it. I use this for little things, like if we do a Daily Paragraph Editing assignment or a dictation, for example.

 

Overall, this works well for us. It does mean that I don't have a specific start and end date for curricula or know exactly when we'll get to what topics. That doesn't bug me. Some kids will work at a steady pace so you'll easily be able to predict that stuff to a decent amount. But for us that's not so true and I just have to be okay with it being loose. 

[Wheres Toto]

I'm thinking of doing this for some subjects but for the opposite reason - I feel like they are rushing through and I want them to take more time on something.  This is mainly writing or other project-type work.  

 

We do reading for an hour a day but once we start some specific novel studies together, where you are supposed to read through a certain chapter, I'll have to change that so we are all on the same page.

 

I worry that doing a time limit instead of a number of problems/pages for math will result in stopping mid-stream in a place where we'd have to start all over again with explanations and examples the next day.   I'd rather "teach" a lesson, do some sample problems, and have them do some practice problems in the same session so I can then judge if that topic may take longer or may be super simple for them, and assign future problems accordingly.

[HomeAgain]

We do this.

 

It is scary to start.  I'm not going to lie.  The first year of handwriting and realising we were doing much less than anyone else grabbed me in the back of my mind and brought out the insecurity.

 

But it works.  Saying "we're going to focus on X for 10 minutes" and setting the timer, gives us a more productive time than saying "we're going to do X lesson" and taking as long as we need.  The child knows there's no time to let thoughts wander, and stays involved because break time is directly after.  The timer means that we're keeping interest all the way through.  For difficult subjects it's a welcome relief to take it in bites.  And it means that I am more engaged in staying with techniques that work - if I use up that time mini-lecturing, nothing gets done.  I can plan short, full in lessons better that use Socratic questioning, hands on work, and allow ownership of the learning.  I probably could do that anyway, but the time crunch makes me fully aware of how that time is being used and packing it better.

 

 

[desertstrawberry5]

We do this with content subjects. I read until they get less interested. time

 

I tried it For Output with my resistant childs. He was a dawdler. I asked that he focus and work for a very short time, With The Intention of gradually increasing the length of Time. He Just Ran out the clock and did literally nothing. When I called him on it, he complained it wasn't enough time. Before this her had complained it was too much time. You can't win sometimes.

Edited July 27, 2017 by desertstrawberry5

[G5052]

I did this with mine when they were younger to increase their attention span. Sometimes I had them split it like two 20 minute sessions of math when they were 5th-6th grade.

 

My college son told me that he still does this on subjects he doesn't like, keeping mind deadlines.

[desertstrawberry5]

I did something else with my oldest. He's generally a slow thinker, and I needed to speed him up. I set a timer, and rewarded him for finishing in time. Then gradually have him less time. It worked well. But that's a different thing.

[KrissiK]

You could do this with some subjects and not others. Some subjects it is very important to finish the book. Like math, for example. But, if you make it through June, and are only half way through the book, just do math during the summer. Do it year round. My oldest two are quite behind in math and they are doing it all summer long. They don't love it, but it's fine. It's not like we're doing full-on school. Just a math lesson a day.

Edited July 27, 2017 by KrissiK

[Kuovonne]

It didn't work for my kids. My older DD would lolligag so much that it was too difficult to track time. (No, the five minutes searching for pencil and the ten minutes you had to spend in the bathroom do not count as time on subject.) My younger DD works dilligently because she wants to be done. She would rather have a clear amount of work and then work hard and get it done sooner.

[silver]

We do this for math. A few things that make it work for our family:

 

We use Math Mammoth and Beast Academy (depending on the kid). For Math Mammoth, this works well because it's so incremental, and there are little teaching bits every few pages. Stopping "mid lesson" doesn't create any problems, as each topic/chapter is meant to take more than one day anyway. For Beast Academy, this works well because pages are so varied in the amount of work required. The first few pages of any chapter are introductory/easy problems and at the end of the chapter you typically see word problems and other problems that take more thought/time. Sometimes we have to review the topic again the next day before getting started. But I don't see that as a problem; I think that if the student needs more review before picking up where they left off, that shows that they didn't quite fully grasp it the first day and would likely need more teaching anyway. Also, since BA goes from 5th to Pre-Algebra, I'm comfortable "falling behind".

 

I add 5 minutes per grade. A child in kindergarten does 15 minutes of math, 1st grade does 20 minutes, etc. This seems to be a good amount both for their attention spans and for the amount of work required from our math curricula choices at each grade.

 

I do sit down and figure out, on average, how many pages would need to be completed each week to finish the curriculum in a year. If, after a few weeks, I see that my student is consistently falling short of that amount, I can assess. Do they need more time each day? Is this a hard topic, and they'll fly through other topics to make up for it? Are they really focusing the whole time, or is part of their time spent making jokes with siblings or staring out the window? 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

We've never really done this until we started AOPS math, which I find to be paced really inconsistently from section to section.  However, leaving a section half-finished drives me bonkers (internally, I try not to verbalize it.  lol).  Interestingly, I can see it's starting to drive my ds crazy too, and he is now regularly asking for more time in order to get through a section in one day.  I attribute this to him finally developing a sense of mental flow in his work.  We are all irritated to be pulled out of flow, so when he asks, I let him keep going past his timer.

 

This is working fine right now because math and spelling are the only things we're doing for the summer.  It'll be harder when I have more subjects I need to get to during the day.  

 

I would encourage you, if possible, not to pull a child out of flowing work.  If, on the other hand, a timer helps to maintain focus, then go for it!  

 

 

[LindaOz]

I do this for math with my 15 and 13 year olds. They have a set math time and, yes, sometimes they don't get through a whole lesson in a day. Other times, however, they will get through more than one so it can balance out. Dd15 completed 3 lessons in one math time the other day!!! It seems to work well.

Edited July 28, 2017 by LindaOz

[bluemongoose]

We also use this for apps for my DD.

 

One of my DSs gets overwhelmed, so while he does some work to completion, the rest is by time in a loop style schedule. He actually gets more done this way because he doesn't sit there frozen by the stress of all that must get done. He knows that he is off the hook at the end of the time no matter how far he got in the loop and that he can just pick up from where he left off tomorrow.

[bluemongoose]

On a phone and just realized that autocorrect changed aops to apps and I cannot edit! Eek!

[Χά�ων]

Nope. My son started taking a stupid amount of really long bathroom breaks. Back to complete the subject no matternhow long.

[regentrude]

I have always required a certain amount of school time from my kids, but not completion of a certain amount of material in a given time. My reasons for this were several:

1. it is very difficult to judge accurately how long certain work will take the child. With our math program (AoPS) that is not divided into "lessons", problems and sections varied greatly in difficulty, and without working everything out myself, it would be impossible to predict how long it might take and where students might struggle. 

2. I wanted to give my gifted kids to learn more in the same time rather than learn the average in a shorter amount of time. 

We started with 4 hours in 5th grade and ramped tie up to 6 hours for high school. My kids were always allowed to fill this school time how they wished, as long as they worked with the materials I had selected for them - alowing the to binge on certain subjects if they are on a roll.

3. I wanted to instill love of learning and encourage initiative. Telling a child to stop learning what they are learning, just so they can switch to something I have scheduled is against my philosophy. The best self directed learning happens when the child is free to immerse herself as completely as she feels like.

 

It worked very well for us.

Edited July 28, 2017 by regentrude

[lllll]

nm

Edited September 6, 2017 by lllllll

[Garga]

I starting doing it the new way (set times per subject) a couple of years ago. The kids were getting overwhelmed with there never being an end to a subject. Now they know that they have X time for the subject and they can move on to something else when it's done. It helps them to focus and gives them light at the end of a tunnel in whatever subjects they don't particularly like.

 

It's a balancing act, though. If they waste their time, then they will have to make up the work on Saturday. If the lesson is inexplicably longer than we thought it would be through no fault of their own, I sometimes don't have them make it up on Sat, and sometimes I do. It depends on how important it is.

 

Now that my oldest is in high school, he pretty much has to complete all the work, even if it means working on the weekend or into the summer. I rarely let something go uncompleted for the oldest.

[Ellie]

It depends. I would not expect children younger than, oh, 13ish to be able to work on Official School Stuff for more than about 45 minutes, so we would break at that point whether they had finished or not. Then we'd pick up at that point the next day.

[Arcadia]

You can always try it out and school through summer if it doesn't work out and you have lots left to complete.

 

I have a tortoise and a hare. So the tortoise would have to spend at least double the time that the hare used to do the same curriculum. The tortoise however is not interested in an easier curriculum and is also slowed down by his reading speed.

 

So in our house going by time failed because my tortoise either feels bad about having to spend more time than his brother on academics, or he feels bad about finishing less work in the same amount of time.

[Julie of KY]

I do this mostly for math. I'll make an assignment that I generally think that can be done in a reasonable amount of time. My older boys have permission to stop anywhere in the assignments if they've put in enough time - sometimes it simply takes longer to do the math. My daughter usually does math for x long and then we just stop and pick up the next day.

 

My little guy - I assign a # of pages, but I tell him to tell me if they are too hard. If they are hard, I'll work with him some, but usually postpone some of it until a new day.

 

I need to institute a time limit for copywork for my little guy - this is something that I think he'd quickly knock out if he has a time limit, but otherwise drags his feet.

 

You have to work with your kids and personalities. It will look different for everyone.

[MerryAtHope]

It didn't work for my kids. My older DD would lolligag so much that it was too difficult to track time. (No, the five minutes searching for pencil and the ten minutes you had to spend in the bathroom do not count as time on subject.) My younger DD works dilligently because she wants to be done. She would rather have a clear amount of work and then work hard and get it done sooner.

 

What I did with my kids was to set up expectations. For reading I usually said, "Read 1 chapter or for 30 minutes, whichever takes longer." (Or if the chapters were really short in a book, I'd say 2 chapters).  or for math I told them in jr. high/high school, "Do 1 lesson each day, but if it takes more than an hour to an hour 15, come tell me and we can break it up over 2 days." In upper elem, I usually aimed for 45 minutes--I made the time doable iow.

 

Other subjects I monitored--if I felt they weren't reading much for the time, then I made an expectation clear. That helped eliminate the lolligagging, but also allowed us to adjust for slower reading or more processing time needed (and it helped me keep from over-scheduling, LOL!)

[MotherGoose]

I'm following this. Dd 11 yo is making me insane with dawdling and carelessness with Saxon 7/6. FTR this is not a new preteen problem, this has been going on since K. I'm already going to skip the tests, which gives us 132 days of instruction. Hoping to set time limit and see how it goes. I definitely want to get through the whole book and she is entirely capable of it if not for the dawdling. But I'm not comfortable wIth saying that oh well if we only get half way through the book then that's okay. She had no learning problems, she has dawdling and carelessness problems.

[Roadrunner]

I know generally how much time I want to spend on each subject in order to get through a day, so the assignments I give correspond to that timeline. Of course there are times when it just can't get done (a super tough mah problem slowed us down), in which case we go by how we feel. If DS feels like moving on to a new subject and coming back the next day to finish what he was working on, that's what we do. If he insists on finishing, I let him do that. So I think flexibility is the key. The only time I insist on finishing work is for outside deadlines for outsourced courses.