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How long is your total day?
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Can some of you share how long your TOTAL day of school is….meaning everything you require your kids to do (besides chores). I just made out a more disciplined schedule to hopefully ensure we get in things like nature study and handicrafts (that we tend to neglect). Schedule seems a bit daunting, but maybe if I have piano/free reads/nature study/exercise in the afternoons it’s not so bad? My estimates have my 12 yo 6th grader doing about 5-6 hrs./day and my 9yo 3rd grader doing about 4-5 hrs./day. That includes absolutely EVERYTHING…core subjects, those mentioned above, devotions. Too much or sound o.k.? Thanks for any input:) Blessings, Gina
P.S. This doesn’t include our weekly music class or bi-weekly co-op, but those are pretty fun for the kids.
That seems a little long compared to what we have scheduled. For my fourth grader, I have scheduled four hours. For my first grader, I think it will end up being about 2-3 hours.
I haven’t put it into practice yet, so I can’t say for sure how it will work out. I’m trying to remember that short lessons is key to Charlotte Mason!
Seems a bit long to me too. My high schoolers are at about 5-6 hours a day. My 6th grader does closer to 4.
I think everyone’s going to be a little different, but that’s okay! At my house schoolwork for 5th, 1st, K, and younger easily fits in the morning hours before lunch. The only exception is extra reading/reading aloud time or nature study. Okay, so the other exception is if my 5th grader is dawdling over her work…LOL. She works the full morning with breaks, probably 3 hours. The K and 1st grader both do probably 1 1/2 hours, with longer breaks between things.
Agreeing…seems longish for their ages. Can some of your subjects be alternated with others throughout the week to buy you a little time each day?
My high school girls do about 6 hrs a day – prior to highschool in middle school it was about 4 hrs. Linda
Thanks everyone for the input. That makes me feel better…the schedule does seem a bit much for us, esp. when we have to be out of the house some days. But everything is important….any suggestions on what’s too much? Thanks for any guidance. I’ve had my SCM planner out and I’m ready to type it all in, but want to have it as accurate as I can:) If you have time, this is an avg. day for my 6th grader, with how much time per week (my estimates could be off a bit):
Personal Devotion 50, Character Book (family) 60, Hymn 10, Memory Work 40, Art 60, Piano 60, AO Lit. 2 1/2 hrs., AO free reads 2 1/2 hrs., Spelling 30, Writing Program 2 1/2 hrs., Analytical Grammar 1 1/2 hrs., Eng. Roots Up 20, Geography reading 30, Mapping 10, Family History Reading 2 hrs., Independent History Reading 1 1/2 hrs., Timeline 10, Exercise 1 1/2 hrs., Math 2 hrs., Picture Study 10, Composer 10, Indian Prayer Guide 25, Poetry 10, Nature Study 30, Handicraft 30, Greek 1 hr., Science Notebook 15, Shakespeare or Plutarch 20, Science Reading 1 hr.
What would you cut out or cut back? We spend more time on our writing program and grammar than I’d prefer, but before going straight CM I really researched and planned and made a decision to use Classical Writing….and to be successful in the year we’re in the grammar program needs to be done. Once we finish AG and our current CW level, it’s supposed to get easier. I’d love to just do written narrations for a while, but it’s an incremental writing process and I’m already ‘crunched’ to get all the levels in. Thanks again for any advice on this seemingly too busy schedule…and if you’ve made it this far:) Gina
Gina, Are those numbers a weekly total or a daily amount? If you’re going for a CM style education, remember the principle of short lessons! You want to stop before their eyes glaze over and work varied parts of the brain.
Charlotte recommended the following lesson lengths:
- 1st – 3rd grade – 15 to 20 minutes per lesson
- 4th – 6th grade – 20 to 30 minutes per lesson
- 7th – 9th grade – 30 to 45 minutes per lesson
- 10th – 12th grade – 45 minutes+ per lesson
Comparing your times to this list, I think you can cut a great bit. Personal Devotions, Family character, memory work, AO Lit, AO free reads, writing, grammar, family history reading, independent history reading, math, greek, science reading are all significantly higher than the recommended time per lesson. Don’t try to crunch everything in, it often backfires. That’s my 2 cents.
Hope this helps,
Christie
Suzukimom, thanks for pointing that out. I missed it and was having a
moment. I probably missed it b/c I don’t think in weekly totals, but daily ones. Gina, please disregard my comment. The times are obviously in line for a weekly total. So sorry.
Well, I didn’t notice it either at first… there is about 30 hours of work listed there… hard to do in 1 day!
Gina,
I think it looks fine because you have some subjects listed that some of us might not put in the total hours of ‘official school day’ like free reading, exercise, and personal devotions (not to mention Indian prayer guide which I’m so totally curious about right now!
). Also, as each of us come up with our own schedule, we are keenly aware of how long it actually would take our particular student to accomplish each subject. That knowledge will be reflected in our alloted times; otherwise we’ll all be frustrated. While short lessons are the goal, my child is going to be different from others.Blessings,
Cindy
Thanks for all the comments. And thanks, Cindy….that’s what I was trying to get at. I wasn’t sure how people normally defined their day….counting exercise, free reads, and such. The lesson times are in line with Christie’s (actually Charlotte’s:) recommendations. Just SO many subjects!!! I’m hoping I’m off on my time estimations and it won’t take as long as I have mapped out.
Oh, and if you’re interested in the prayer guide, it’s put out by Sonlight (American Indian Prayer Guide), highly rec. by moms when I used to use SL. Each week focuses on a different Indian group, with some info. about their life and a prayer each day. The blurb says, “This book will help you pray for more than 36 Native American peoples. It will also help you understand why many Native Americans find the Christian Gospel so hard to accept. Your view of American history will never be the same. Read it and—while you pray—weep.” I’m excited to use it. We don’t have time to cover much about Indians in TQ, so I think this will be a neat way to do some coverage. Blessings:) Gina
If you don’t count exercise and piano, which some people would consider outside of “school” work, that takes about 35 min off the total per day. I think maybe how you do personal devotion, character, and the prayer guide is taking up a lot of time too. But if those things are major important to you, then so be it! Here we do character once per week for about 10 minutes and Bible reading every day for about 10-15 minutes. But that’s us. Also it looks like you have an hour a day between literature reads and free reads and another 40 minutes of history reads in addition to the writing/grammer/english which is almost another hour per day. If the LA program you have is important to you, maybe you could require less in the reading dept. Just a suggestion. 🙂
I also wanted to mention that I have learned I need to stick fairly closely to the times I have set for each subject. During our 1st week (which was a little hectic for more than one reason) I was letting the children take too much time with drawn narrations and coloring and such. We couldn’t get through it all! The next week I made sure to check the clock and keep us moving through things. It went SO much better and I didn’t feel as fatigued at the end of the school day either. If the kids didn’t finish something, we set it aside for them to work on during free time. The kids didn’t mind at all, and I think actually liked moving more quickly through things better as well.
moment. I probably missed it b/c I don’t think in weekly totals, but daily ones. 
). Also, as each of us come up with our own schedule, we are keenly aware of how long it actually would take our particular student to accomplish each subject. That knowledge will be reflected in our alloted times; otherwise we’ll all be frustrated. While short lessons are the goal, my child is going to be different from others.
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