How much time do your DC spend reading history?

[Michelle T]

Those of you with kids upper elementary/middle school age, how much time do they spend daily on history reading? I mean reading an assigned book on their own, NOT you reading history out loud to them, or a book they are reading for their own enjoyment.

 

I think I've been letting DS, 12, off waaaaaayyyyyyy too easily in this area. I would love to hear what a reasonable time is for daily assigned history reading.

Michelle T

[Jenny in Florida]

My son is 10. His history assignments for last week included:

 

3 pages of world history atlas

20 pages of non-fiction book

6 pages of articles in history magazine

 

He also read about 100 pages of fiction related to the week's history topics.

 

He does four-day weeks for schoolwork, so that's an average of about 30 pages per day.

[KathyBC]

12yo boy: One book at a time, a chapter a day, sometimes more, depending on their length. I have no idea how that compares to anyone else.

 

ETA: This would be historical fiction, a la Sonlight.

Edited November 4, 2008 by KathyBC

[Laura Corin]

Probably a couple of hours a week.

 

Laura

[Chloe]

I'd say my 4th and 5th grader read about an hour every day. If you are only talking about non-fiction, probably about 20 minutes a day.

[Shasta Mom]

I've been wondering this myself, too. We certainly don't do that much. My ds, who is in 4th gr, reads a chapter of SOTW each week, and the associated selections in the UILHE. We then try to get some selections from the library that pertain to the chapter, and do some map work, some discussion, and some timeline work. He's not interested in coloring, so our activities are quite light, too. I've been feeling that our history studies in general are light, but I can't find the time to increase the work. I'm amazed to see how much others fit in.

[mcconnellboys]

Well, for history itself, it's not that much this year. Most weeks, he's only reading one or two chapters of SOTW. He outlines one section from one of those chapters. It takes him about 10 minutes to read a chapter of this and about another 10 to do the outlining.

 

Some weeks, I have history related reading for him; other weeks he's just reading mythology or folktales related to the culture we're studying. He reads a lot and reads pretty fast. He probably averages about an hour of this type of reading per day. Some weeks, I also have quite a bit of science reading for him to do on his own and this reading also gets factored into his reading time.

[mims]

I do a lot of read alouds but they probably read 30 minutes a day plus mapping and timelines a few days a week.

[Wildiris]

DD~11~ reads a chapter a week from Human Odyssey and I have her working on writing notes from her reading, which really truns out to be summarizing her reading and finding the main idea. She also work on Geography Trails. I'd say she spends an hour to an hour and a half on reading just her history text and several hour more reading the fiction that goes with the time period we're studying.

[Pretty in Pink]

we do all of the assigned reading from TOG, not including the supplemental suggestions, every week. it averages one read-aloud per quarter. the rest is assigned reading.

 

i do not require him to read anymore history on top of that, but he often borrows historical non-fiction from our local library.

[mom31257]

I'm not good at estimating the hours, because dd spends so much time reading both school and pleasure. Last week's reading for history, on her own, included a chapter in BJU 6th grade ancient civilizations book (? pages, it's in her room), "The Trojan War" by Olivia E. Coolidge (250 pg book), and a non-fiction book, "The Search for Lost Cities" (46 page book). It really varies week by week, based on what I can find for the time period that I want her to read. She's 6th grade.