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how many hours a day for a 1st grader?
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How much school time do you have each day for a 1st grader? This would include read-alouds even if done at a different time than “school time”. (But not including independent reading time.)
Also wondering how many days a week each you schedule history, science, and geography for a 1st grader.
For us, the 1st grader was doing work with the 2nd grader, and history, science, & geography were 2x per week, not all on the same days, of course. I think between the 2 of them, we were doing school for about 3 or so hours a day, give or take? That was with a preschooler and a baby/early toddler in the mix.
Next year I have 3rd, 1st, and a 4yo and 3yo tagging along. I’m planning on about 2 hours a day for my 1st grader, and up to 3 hours depending on how much she sits in on with my 3rd grader, but that extra time is completely flexible to her needs and cheerfulness.
My younger son is in K but he’s been doing 1st grade stuff this year.
For everything, he is done in 60-90 minutes, including the literature reading that my DH does at bedtime.
We do history every day as part of our morning readings. Science is 2-3x/week. Geography was more relaxed – we did a postcard exchange and grabbed a different postcard from the pile several times a week. When those ran out he did Sheppard Software goegraphy games when he wanted. I would say he did some geography most days just because he enjoys it.
I have a first grader with a 2 year old that I try to keep occupied elsewhere.
We do about 1 hour of school on a cooperative day. Much more on an uncooperative day. Meaning she can do her math worksheet in under 5 minutes if she is calm and focused, but it can drag out to a half hour when she is in one of her moods. It goes that way for every subject. Sigh.
Oh, and I don’t think we do a light amount of work. We have Math, Bible, History, Geography, Science/Nature Study, Lit, Artist/Music/Poet/Hymn Study, Scripture Memory, Copywork, Phonics/Reading. But not all are every day things and many only take 5 minutes.
Work at the table is 30-60 minutes depending on the day for my K and 1st graders. We read aloud at least an hour a day, often more. My 5th grader usually has about 60 minutes of table work, longer if she’s deep in a project and wants to keep working.
So, when you are looking at time spent total, are you ever doing “activities” such as science experiments, cooking projects to go with studying a culture, etc. from time to time (not daily)? If so, do you consider not really consider that in total time. I guess I’m asking in that I know 1-2 hrs seems to be the typical amount of time I see people talk about schooling with a 1st grader but can’t imagine doing all the normal stuff plus activities in that time frame. If you do activites included within that 1-2 hrs, are you just reducing other more “academic” work on those days? I guess I would see those activities as just fun things they get to do that happen to have an academic purpose but maybe it wouldn’t seem that way to a child & could feel like they are having “school” all day. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Betsy
We switch back and forth between the table & the couch. When my firstborn was in 1st grade, we probably did 2-3 hours of work each day, including all activities. We did history 3 days/week, science 2 days/week (& nature study 1 day), & our geography was wrapped up in the history.
I tend to be a “follow the plan until we’re done” sort of person, but I’m trying to change to timing our subjects and doing shorter lessons to keep things from going too long. With activities, I try to replace another subject with them so that our day doesn’t get too long. So I might do an activity on a day when history or science isn’t scheduled. Having one “short” day scheduled each week helps us to fit those kinds of things in.
If my children see an activity in my lesson plans, they may be excited about it, but they still consider it “school” since it’s in the plan. I would like to make our “school” time to feel more apart of our life and not this separate thing we have to do–though they really do like most of the subjects we do (especially the living books).
I have one first grader, and 5 preschoolers (2 of my own, 3 in my home daycare).
We do about 20-30 minutes in the morning with everyone. This includes a song, a short devotional, scripture memory practice, a poem or two, and an Early Years type story (Winnie the Pooh and Thornton Burgess books are what we are currently doing.) We sometime extend this a bit with more stories and preschool type songs if the children are interested.
Then we do either some Science (from 106 Days) or Spanish, which takes between 10-30 minutes, depending on the activity. Once a week we do a quick picture study. We listen to composers or Suzuki violin songs during meals and snacks. The rest of the morning is usually spent in the backyard or at the playground or having friends over for a playdate.
Right after lunch, when some of the littles are sleeping, my DD6 and I do about 45 -60 minutes. This includes two read alouds with narrations (literature everyday, plus history 2 days, science living book 1 day, geography 1 day), math, and copywork. We do this 4 afternoons a week. The fifth day we do a ‘wild day’ for nature study or go on a field trip.
We also do a bedtime read aloud, sometimes literature, sometimes a fun history book that goes with our current topic. This is usually only 10-15 minutes. Then DD reads in bed for about 30 minutes, just free reading.
Finally, DD does about 15 minutes of violin practice on most days, whenever we can fit it in.
I also have great intentions of doing a planned P.E. activity for 30 minutes, but somehow this is the area that gets skipped more often than not. Fortunately I have active kids who spend a lot of time outdoors running around, but I want to get better at activities to teach skills like throwing and catching a ball, etc.
Joanne
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