Insight from a seasoned CMer, please :)

I’m not very seasoned, but I think you’re right in thinking that it’s too much. I think you could do spanish and recorder once or twice a week. I’d also try to cut down on some of the other areas, maybe by not planning to do everything each day. Another idea which can be nice is to focus on an area, like folks songs, and after a month or two use that time for something else.

I know it’s hard to think of cutting back when you look at Charlotte’s schedule, but she wasn’t changing diapers, etc. I also find that doing less on more days in helpful for my family, otherwise we all experience burnout! So we take off some days here and there, but usually do some “school” year round. But that’s just how things work best in my family, you may find the longer days to work great.

Yes, I’d agree to that that seems like too much.  I am doing a CM-style Kindergarten year (with an almost 3yo who likes to “play along”) this year and just revamped our whole schedule because I realized that we were trying to do too much.  One of the big things I have done is moved some things to other parts of our day – we are are still doing them, but they aren’t part of our formal sit-down school day.   The things we do at other times of the day and not part of our formal “school time” are hymns and scripture memory at the breakfast table (then we stop and do chores before we sit down for “school”), literature and reading practice after lunch before naps (includes picture books with the toddler,and then a chapter from a chapter book for dd5 after he goes down for nap), French before we get up from the dinner table (dh wanted to be involved in this b/c we might be moving to a French speaking country), and then Bible reading and another chapter from a chapter book before bed.

Our formal sit down school time is about 1-1/2 or so and looks like this right now, with approx times:

Circle Time (30-35 minutes)

1. M – Child’s Book of Character, T-F Psalm (5)

2. Poem of the Day + Review poem we are memorizing (5)

3. Calendar (includes reading a brief article from God’s World News, filling in the calendar, and filling in the 100 chart with a number of the day and building with base 10 blocks) (10-15)

4. Topic of the Day (10)

    M – History (US History read aloud)

    T – Geogrphy and Map Drill (reading about a different state each week and finding on the map)

    W – Nature living book

    Th – Geography and Map Drill (as on Tu)

    F – Alternate picture and music study each week

Table Time (25-30 minutes)

Phonics/Reading (10-15)

Math (5-10)

Copywork (5)

Snack-Break

Activity (about 30 minutes) – various things such as art/crafts, nature walk, science experiments, or whatever – sometimes we drop this if we have other things going on.

Now obviously with a first grader with more formal studies than K, your formal “sit down time” would probably be longer than our 1 to 1-1/2 hours…but 3 hours and stretching school into the afternoon does seem like it would much longer than necessary.   I suspect when we hit first grade next year, we will add the Module 1 readings as an extra thing to our circle time, and will probably be close to dropping the phonics lessons (at which point I’ll ramp up the amount of time we spend on math and copywork).  I offer this as a suggestion only – sometimes seeing how others organize their schedule makes it easier to figure out how to make yours work for you.  =)

HTH

Jen

I would say we do about three hours per day but some of that is for a single child (reading or math) and the other child gets a break at that time.  We work mostly from 9-12 unless we have something in the morning.  We do our lit book before bed, character trait Sunday nights before bed.  Our reading lesson and phonics is the same thing.  We also only do one history and won’t do US till we get there in the modules. 

The only other thing I notice that I know would not work at our house, though might for you is your order of subjects.  To have all our reading in the afternoon and all our table work in one block would send us over the edge!  Here we start at the table with copywork and a few daily practice things while I set out what I need, then we go to the couch to read history/Bible/Geo mod, to the piano for hymn sing.  Then my older practices piano while my younger chooses math or reading/phonics.  Then we swap, younger plays, older does math while she is still fresh.  Then we go back to the couch for science reading, back to the table for drawing what we learned in science.  Then older kid gets a break while younger does her last subject (reading/phonics or math-whichever is left).  Then older does her reading and grammer and we are done.  The once a week subjects (composer, artist, poetry, Spanish) we do at some time in the afternoon if we don’t get to it before lunch, just when they are bored or in between playing.   If I asked them to do all reading related subjects together we would have anarchy or I would fall asleep!  We have are whole afternoons free.  This year my kids are K and 2nd.  I plan on next year being basically the same with a little step up for our current K.  Does that all make sense?!  I know sometimes it doesn’t via writing!

I hope it all irons out for you though.  I was just wondering how your year was going since I hadn’t seen a post of yours in a while!  Glad to hear you are still out there and that your year went well.  Oh, and I don’t mean to sound “seasoned”, we are just finishing our second year of CM!

I remember your little picture (not a comuter gal, I know they have a name!).  I think you posted right before you were starting last year.  I don’t know if I posted on threads you were posting on or started, but I read them.  As far as one can tell from posts, I thought you seem cool, funny, and having young kids like I do.  We must have had some common questions!

You sound much more relaxed and the day sounds fun and doable!  =)  Especially with 4 little ones under grade 1 =)  I think that you will enjoy it!