Question about time commitment

Welcome, Kam!  The answers to your qu. will vary, but I’ll take a general stab:)  You should be able to complete with your 3rd grader within probably 3 hrs. or so.  My 3rd grader (9yo) works indepently for about 1/2 of that, the rest he combines with his older sister.  He’ll do math, copywork, cursive, spelling workbook, lit. reading, and history reading on his own.  I’ll then help him with any math mistakes and he’ll give me oral narrations on his readings.  Then he’ll sit and draw while we do together stuff with his sister…. Bible, history, science, geography, memory work take the most time.  Picture study, composers, poets, nature study are weekly (when I get to them all:)  Adding in your 2nd child shouldn’t take much more time, since K is light and you can do it while your eldest does independent work…should still be able to be done by lunchtime. 

I do my main planning before the school year starts and then do very little prep as the year progresses.  Many of our subjects we simply ‘do the next thing’ as they’re already planned.  I highly recommend “Planning Your CM Education” sold here.  I use their schedule downloads.  My kids have their own sheets to check off as they go so they can start independent work on their own right after breakfast, even if I’m not quite ready for them:)

I don’t use the library because I hate dealing with the trips, but if you go that route you wouldn’t need to go every week.  You’d just have to plan well to have the books you need when you want them, and probably be willing to substitute some.  I get many books from Paperback Swap, which only works out a couple bucks each…but you have to be patient.  I’ve also found many classics on Vegsource, there’s a couple dealers there.  And we have a Half-Price books locally. It works out pretty cheaply and then I have them for the next child and re-sell or put on PBS when I’m done.  HTH some:)  Gina

I am not sure if this helps, but we buy no curriculum except math.  We get whatever is available at our library for whatever we happen to be studying.  We do narration, dictation, and copywork right from our reading.  We also include notebooking and lapbooking sometimes.  Most of our expense is paper and printer ink!

I have 4 kids (ages 8, 5, 3, 1).

So far, I’m teaching the 8 and 5yo together… the 5yo is advanced or I wouldn’t do much with her…  My son is very bright and does well, but has struggled a bit… so they are scarily at a similar level with a lot of things.

We just changed to using RightStart math, and they both placed at the same level.  (My daughter had been doing math (self motivated) before and was almost done a grade 1 program.  my son was about 1/2 through the grade 2 program we did before, and was starting to struggle.)   

SO, temporarily, we are doing math together….  (At about 2 lessons a day…)  I expect to seperate them later in the year, as I expect my son will be able to be able to go quicker when we hit new concepts to them.

We did a cursive writing first, but my daughter was struggling to make legible strokes (forget letters).  my son could write in cursive with a model (copywork) right above but was struggling to write anything on his own at all… so we are changing our handwriting program… so they are together for that.  unusual again.  I expect my son to also progress faster with that (we just started the new program yesterday…)

We are doing our own history – but with the same concept as here on SCM (a spine book, and then individual books to read based on rough grade level…  as they are both in years 1-3, they share the same books… so that reading is done together.  Scriptures are together.  Geography together.  I’m not sure about the science we were going to do (which they would be doing together) – but I’m sure whatever I decide on will be done together.  Picture study – together.  Composer study – together.  Violin practice….  well, review songs are together (up to the ones they each know) – and then they have a seperate practice with me for new songs.   German – well we did it together last year… this year we just aren’t quite getting it done yet.  sigh.  

So yes, most subjects can be done together.  Oh, btw, my 3yo declared that she is in school this year…. she watches our math a lot of days (she joined in the first day or two, but of course it is way past her…).  And otherwise she generally colours.  If my kids are doing a notebook page – she wants to too.  Our geography course has the kids drawing maps (cartography) – the last one was a basic one showing the placement of the continants….  she drew the equator line and prime meridian lines (without a ruler…) and drew circles all over the sheet… lol.

It can take a little time to get the flow going in the house…