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How much time should this be taking?
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We used our new schedule today 🙂 Woohoo! It worked well and was easy to use, but I am wondering how long our school day should last? I may be trying to do too much of each subject. I am still getting the hang of the CM ways. After our lessons today, I began thinking that we did not spend enough time on Bible, but if we had done any more work today my kids would have been worn down. I keep looking back at a hand out that I got in a ladies class about being sure that we have a “God-centered homeschool”, and I did not feel like our day was God-centered today. Here is how our day went:
Habit / Chararcter work: they colored a picture from 21 Rules of This House and I read a story from A Child’s Book of Character Building.
Bible: they listened to Genesis chtp. 46 on audio and studied their memory cards for Bible class. We added Noah to our timeline on the wall.
History: we read 15 pages of Pilgrims of Plimouth and 15 pages of Samuel Eatons Story
Science: we read a page from Apologia Zoology 3 and put pics of animals on our world map in the correct countries
Literature: Read chpt.1 of The Magician’s Nephew
Spanish: watched one section of our Spanish songs DVD
Spelling: Daughter did dictation from Spelling Wisdom, Son copied spelling words in Learning Spelling Thru Copywork
Language: Both did their lesson in their Queen’s Language Lessons
Math: Both did their Saxon math page
Reading: Both read 1 chapter from their library book of the week
Is this the way I am suppose to do this? If so how much time should each subject take and how do you shorten things to keep it reasonable?
I am really wanting to have time to just read the Bible to them and maybe use some pages from Notebooking Pages.com for Old Testament events. However, we are reading from so many different things that it is hard to do it all.
Bible is going to be made a priority, but I don’t know what else to cut back on at this point. Literature? History? Should I read Bible for history and use the Module 5 books for literature purposes? I have the Module 1 guide book that we did terms 1 & 2 from last year. I could use term 3 from it for history……They asked to learn American history this year, and I agreed that we would. But I did not think I would not be able to do both Bible and History in a reasonable amount of time.
Whew…my brain hurts. Any suggestions?
I do see some areas that can be adjusted. You don’t have to do Science and Hisotry in the same day or even everyday. For example, History 2x a week and Science 2x a week. some people I know actually alternate months.
Secondly, depending on their ages, you may not have to do Language Lessons daily. again, maybe 2x a week if they are under 4th grade.
Lastly, again based on ages, maybe 15 pages is a little long for reading? You couls read Pilgrims of Plymouth aloud and, depending on their ages, Samuel Eaton’s as a hisotry independant read.
I wish I knew their ages, I could be more specific.
Just some ideas,
Rachel
I second Rachel’s ideas. We don’t do history, science, AND literature and Spanish all on the same day. We do some things just once a week, some things two or three times per week, and try to balance them out. Our important things here are Bible/character training, math and language arts. The older ones add Latin to the “every day” category, and the rest of our subjects are done less frequently. That could definitely be a way you could adjust. I don’t do spelling every day, either. I would often do a language arts activity each day, but it would be copywork some days, dictation others, spelling practice, writing letters, etc. on other days.
I try to keep lessons at about 15-20 minutes for the under 10 crowd. We slowly work up to longer times in some subjects as they get older. So that is another area to look at. Did any of these subjects that you did take longer than that? Perhaps you could think about adjusting how much you try to do in one day.
If you can adjust some of these things to make your day seem more manageable, I think you’ll find it’s not so hard to focus in on your Bible lessons. I know in my home these things are really the bedrock for our day.
Good luck with adjusting and please ask more questions if you need to. I hope you are able to get things worked out to make your days easier. We don’t want your brain to hurt! LOL
Michelle D
Sorry I forgot to mention their ages…Daugher 9 and Son 7. But everything you guys have said makes sense to me. I had used the sample weekly plan sheet to go by for what to do everyday. I thought that Art, Music, etc were the things only done once a week or so. Now this alternating Science, History, and other things would help out, a lot! And I had not thought about using some of the history books as independent reads for them. 🙂
So, 15/20 minutes per subject…..I know our math takes way longer than that! I have some more tweaking to do 🙂
Thank you all so much!
Amanda
The above suggestions are great suggestions. Aside from what you do everyday, keep in mind that having a God centered day does not have to mean hours spent in God’s word. Reading, studying, and discussing the Bible are great things to have a strong foundation and you should make sure that you are doing those. But you can also have a God centered day when your focus is on God all day long as the Deut. passage says. Thanking him for the beautiful sunshine, warm house and food, asking for guidance and patience aloud when there is a conflict at home are also great ways to have a God centered day and to help your children learn to have that attitude as well.
Crystal
Okay, I talked with my husband and got his help. I realized that there are some things that I could skip (like copy work in Lang. Lessons if we want to use Bible verses instead of and not in addition to) I am also going to finish up term 3 of Genesis through Deuteronomy & Anc. Egypt. We only made it through term 2 last year, and my husband said he would rather we finish that up as “history” and let the kids check out some library books “on the side” if they are interested in learning more about American history at this point in time. ( should have explained and asked his opinion before now, but he had been REALLY busy) (he’s a preacher, btw) I think this was one of Sonya’s suggestions to me to begin with…..anyway, I also cut science to 2 days a week, Spanish to 1 day and so Math and Lang are the only things we do 5 days a week now. Here is my schedule and some of the things like “good deed” are not time consuming, but I just need to be reminded to do it.For each week I want them to send a card to a sick person, hug a widow at services, etc. And Bible Cards are just a few facts they study for their Bible classes (usually they do this and read a book quietly while I am doing one-on-one time with the other child) And I am gonna try and set a timer for their math work from now on. It is hard for me to make some things shorter unless I use a timer.
So, how does this look now?
<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } TD P { margin-bottom: 0in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>
Monday:
Science
History
Good Deed
Bible Bowl
Math
Language
Spelling
Reading
Bible Cards
Tuesday:
Picture Study
History
Habit Study
Literature
Math
Language
Copy Work
Bible Cards
Wednesday:
Poetry
Science
History
Bible Bowl
Math
Language
Spelling
Reading
Bible Cards
Thursday:
Drawing
Music
History
Habit Study
Math
Language
Copy Work
Bible Cards
Friday:
Spanish
Nature Walk
Bible Bowl
Geography
Literature
Math
Language
Spelling
Reading
Bible Cards
Are there any suggestions on how we should get back on track with our module studies? I am in term 2 of this school year and need to do term 3 of module 1 before moving into Joshua-Mal. study (module 2). Should I just wait until next year to do Joshua – Malachi?
Or is it okay to finish up Gen-Deut. and then start Joshua-Mal. this year even though we may not finish it up this school year? Would that matter and if so why?
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