How many hours a day?

[AnneGG]

How many hours a day do you spend homeschooling with book work?

I’m just curious! 

For us it varies, but most days it’s about 5-6 hours. If we just do math and English bookwork we’re done in about 2 hours. (3 school aged kids) We’ve had a lot of minimum days for various appointments/errands/interruptions and coming back to the full day has been…… tiring. Lol 

[freesia]

What age?

[8filltheheart]

My general rule of thumb is approx 1 hr per grade level for k-5th, 6-8 hrs for 6th-8th, 7-9 hrs for high school (depends on the number of credits being taken).  That is for a 170 day school yr and no homework on weekends.

[AnneGG]

1 hour ago, freesia said:

What age?

13, nearly 9, and almost 8. 

[Not_a_Number]

My 10-year old does about 5, if you count music. My almost 7-year old does 2-3, but she has a knack for taking breaks and draaaagging things out. It ought to be under 2.

[LauraClark]

5ish for my 11 yo. 3ish for my 9 yo. 1ish for my 6yo.

[Clarita]

Are these times including breaks or not including breaks?

Our "school time" for 4.5 and 6 year old is 2-3 hours. Broken down in to time spent on actual stuff for 6 year old is 10min story/bible stuff, math is 5-10 mins, reading/spelling 10 min, and copy work/handwriting/grammar 10-15min depending on if I'm reading a story for this (we are in a transition for this area). The not everyday stuff 10 min for History/geography, 20-30min for science (because it includes video, experiments and my kids always wants to do the whole thing in one sitting), and 2-5 mins for music and Chinese. We do have a 50 min music and Chinese class once/week and an hour long PE class once/week. Let's say for 6 year old is average an hour of work give or take per day.

Time spent for 4.5 year old is 10 min for handwriting (her request), 2-5min reading, and 2-5min math. She is combined in the story time and history/geography, science, and Chinese and music.

I've always tried to follow their lead on how much school and breaks they want.

[freesia]

2 hours ago, 8filltheheart said:

My general rule of thumb is approx 1 hr per grade level for k-5th, 6-8 hrs for 6th-8th, 7-9 hrs for high school (depends on the number of credits being taken).  That is for a 170 day school yr and no homework on weekends.

This is pretty much exactly what we do. 

[AnneGG]

50 minutes ago, Clarita said:

Are these times including breaks or not including breaks?

Our "school time" for 4.5 and 6 year old is 2-3 hours. Broken down in to time spent on actual stuff for 6 year old is 10min story/bible stuff, math is 5-10 mins, reading/spelling 10 min, and copy work/handwriting/grammar 10-15min depending on if I'm reading a story for this (we are in a transition for this area). The not everyday stuff 10 min for History/geography, 20-30min for science (because it includes video, experiments and my kids always wants to do the whole thing in one sitting), and 2-5 mins for music and Chinese. We do have a 50 min music and Chinese class once/week and an hour long PE class once/week. Let's say for 6 year old is average an hour of work give or take per day.

Time spent for 4.5 year old is 10 min for handwriting (her request), 2-5min reading, and 2-5min math. She is combined in the story time and history/geography, science, and Chinese and music.

I've always tried to follow their lead on how much school and breaks they want.

That’s great! They must be very diligent!

[bookbard]

Just to be different, my 12 year old is basically unschooled and does maybe an hour of set work (maths, Japanese). The rest of the time she's writing and drawing and following random interests. I have a program on her computer so I can see what she does each day. She has a fantastic general knowledge and is a wonderful writer and artist. Her maths is about a year above grade level, so her minimal input doesn't bother me, especially as she's decided to go to school next year. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

My kids did 4 hours of seat work even in high school. Our studies were efficient and didn’t need more. They did some other work on their own but the bulk of it was done in four hours. 

[Clarita]

10 minutes ago, AnneGG said:

That’s great! They must be very diligent!

Thank you it's nice to hear because in the actual midst of the school day I feel like it's chaos. The only topic that requires sitting each time is spelling and copy work/handwriting (I switch off between the two). Everything else there is no guarantee that we are doing it at a table. Today math was on a white board, 2 out of 4 problems were done pretty straight forward and 2 of them I was writing his random math thoughts then after a bit of meandering finally guided him to figuring out the answer. Seriously halfway through one problem with a foot in the bead jar he goes "What are we doing?" me: "76-7" pointing to the board.

The 4.5 year old just loves school. The copy work is part of her play because she is just starting to read, so she doesn't know what she's writing.

[Garga]

On 3/22/2023 at 5:55 PM, 8filltheheart said:

My general rule of thumb is approx 1 hr per grade level for k-5th, 6-8 hrs for 6th-8th, 7-9 hrs for high school (depends on the number of credits being taken).  That is for a 170 day school yr and no homework on weekends.

We’re done homeschooling, but that’s about how it worked out for my family. But I always had a large assortment of things to study through 8th grade (logic, art, math, music, history, science, literature, grammar, writing, etiquette.) I would work all those subjects in throughout the week (the 3 r’s were every day, and the others were scattered throughout.) In high school, there were only about 5 or 6 subjects a semester, but we took longer on them.

There was just so much to learn and explore that it just took time. 

Edited March 24, 2023 by Garga

[macmacmoo]

I’ve got four kids. 

we have study hall hours from 9 to 4 with lunch and recess tossed somewhere in there 

I spend about an hour with each kid one on one. A little less than a hour for the elementary and a little longer than an hour with my middle and high schooler. 
 

Study hall is basically just no fun screens. They each have a checklist of things I want them to do independently but once those are done they are free to “unschool” 

[Nm.]

@macmacmoo that’s pretty much what I do… school is all day (no fun screens, really at all period.. they get easily addicted) Not sure how much is seat work.. not much.  Going outside counts as school, walking to library/park counts, reading counts, baking counts, playing card/board games count.. but after most of the book work is done.  Sometimes I like to save something 1-1 after an outing since they needed the mental break.

Actual book work is 3 pages of math mammoth (depends on the kid, some get done in 30 minutes, 1 lesson of rod and staff English (10-30 minutes depending on child), spelling is 5 minutes.  Phonics is usually 10-15 minutes.  I have some online stuff they can do if all book work is completed (xtra math, lalilo, freckle (math/ela), etc)- those are limited to 30-45min and not everyday. They have some funschool journals, but that’s usually reading/ drawing, sometimes writing. They are all supposed to be doing Hoffman Academy, but I’m not good at keeping on top of everyone yet.  

All children are 1st-6th.  Only real focus is math/ela.  I like to focus on my little ones, giving them lots of attention and read alouds, there just isn’t time to do it all without it feeling like we are just going through the motions without any purpose to it.

[birchbark]

Seatwork I would say 1-4 hrs, depending on age. Reading/hands-on work would be on top of that.

[wendyroo]

It is hard because, as others have mentioned, education happens most of the day, and "school" is only a small subset of that.

"School time" starts at 8am and runs until 4:30 when the kids get an hour of screen time before dinner (though, ironically, they often choose to play on Prodigy or compose music on Musescore or play chess, so even their recreational screen time trends toward educational-ish activities). That is our schedule, more or less, seven days a week, though on the weekends they have more chores and outings and one extra hour of screens each day.

But clearly my homeschoolers (ages 7.5, 9.5 and turning 14 next week) are not doing "school" for eight and half hours a day. My 8th grader has ~20 hours of book work planned each week. He also has several extracurriculars (art, PE, Spanish, etc) that he doesn't consider school, but that clearly contribute to his education. The rest of his "school time" is spent playing, exercising, reading, drawing, etc.

My 7 year old spends about 10 hours a week on book work, and a lot of the rest of her school time on gymnastics. My 9 year old spends about 15 hours a week on book work and most of the rest of his school time on piano.

[ScoutTN]

22 hours ago, 8filltheheart said:

My general rule of thumb is approx 1 hr per grade level for k-5th, 6-8 hrs for 6th-8th, 7-9 hrs for high school (depends on the number of credits being taken).  That is for a 170 day school yr and no homework on weekends.

This is similar to what we did. 

[AnneGG]

22 hours ago, Clarita said:

Seriously halfway through one problem with a foot in the bead jar he goes "What are we doing?" me: "76-7" pointing to the board.

😂 Mine are like that too. The younger two tried to write with their socks on their hands today. I’m like okayyyy 🤪

[lewelma]

There is a difference between assigned work vs freetime that is bookish.  Throughout highschool, my older did 1 hour english and 1 hour science as assigned work from 11-1.  From 1pm, he did whatever he wanted (which just happened to be like 5 hours of math lol). But at night he just read read read, for 3 hours per day 7 days a week year round. So did he do 10 hours a day?  He would never say he did. He did math because he loved it. He read for pleasure, so didn't count it as school work. He read things like Crime and Punishment and The Economist (which later I retrofitted into courses). But because it was not required and was his choice, it was not 'school' and was not stressful. He never felt overbooked or stressed. 

[JazzyMom]

On 3/22/2023 at 8:59 PM, Jean in Newcastle said:

My kids did 4 hours of seat work even in high school. Our studies were efficient and didn’t need more. They did some other work on their own but the bulk of it was done in four hours. 

We also aim for efficiency.  Seat work at a maximum is:

Kindergarten - 30 min

Elementary school - 1 to 2 hours

Middle School - 2 to 4 hours

High School - 4 to 6 hours

This does not include fun reading, crafts, independent projects, playtime, extra-curricular activities, etc.

Edited March 24, 2023 by JazzyMom

[goldenecho]

My son went to school in Kinder (cried every day, came home with a lot of fears about learning).  He made very little progress.   Years later we learned he had dyslexia, and ADHD.

40 minutes to an hour our first year, which was sort of repeating Kinder at home.
By our 4th year we were doing 2 hours a day (though sometimes 3, sometimes one) and working through the summer.  I felt like we needed to be doing 3 hours a day but it was hard to manage.  Very little of what he was doing was independent because reading was still not there yet.
He went to school the next year (sent him in at 4th, for various reasons).
In 6th we were home due to the pandemic.  I homeschooled through a district program so it would allign well with what he would be doing next year.   We were doing 4-5 hours a day. 
The next year we went back to school.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by goldenecho

[-----]

When our dc were young, I couldn't plan by time.  I just did what I could, when I could with them according to how long I could get them to sit/work without getting frustrated. They spent way more time playing than they did doing book work.  

As they got older and the workload increased, I slowly converted to schedules and times.  Then, they gradually started making up their own schedules and planning their days.  I would tell them what subjects/books they had to cover, and what group times they had to plan around, and they would go come up with rough schedules to show me.  We discussed them and finalized them together.

[Ellie]

For Official School Stuff, we usually started around 9 a.m., and finished around noon. When the dc were little, we only did Official School Stuff two days a week (Monday and Tuesday). The other days were Library, Field trip, and clean house/monthly park day. I counted the other days also as learning; if I'd had to keep track of school days (so thankful I did not), I would have counted them as well as the Official School Stuff days.

[Momto6inIN]

We start school at 9 and take a break from 12-2 for lunch and outside time, then do school some more until done, usually around 5.

The high schoolers work pretty much that whole time. Once they're in 3rd or 4th they have a little bit of afternoon work to do, but not a lot, and it ramps up from there til high school. K-2nd starts with about .5 hrs in the morning and then works up to about 3 hrs. That includes reading on the couch with me and oral subjects and music, not just seat work/book work. 

[LMD]

I agree with hour per grade but we usually top out at around 6 hours × 4 days a week plus another hour or two car schooling and plenty of unschooly/practical life stuff - eg my boys are helping dh tile our hallway this weekend.