Home schoolers, how long is your school day?

Question

What grade are you in and how long does it take you to complete one days work?

Answer 1

It varies with the lessons of the day.

Answer 2

It depends on the day and what I'm trying to achieve. If by "one days work" you mean the equivelent of a 6-7 hour typical public school day....well, not long. Maybe 4 hours tops. Sometimes though I'll go longer if I get wrapped up in a project, or just want to know more about something and do some extra research. If i'm preparing for something like the SAT, a presentation I plan on giving somewhere, or if i'm preparing materials to tutor a friend or friend's sibling, then I will most likely take a bit longer.

I sometimes do school on Saturdays, but never for very long as I also enjoy spending time with friens or with my boyfriend on the weekend. I usually persue interests when I'm home on weekends... work on classes like Programming and Robotics, Art, do some independent research, or fiddle around with Blender (3D modeling and animation software.)

Answer 3

I'm in the ninth grade and it takes about 3 hours give or take some "discovery lectures"

Answer 4

My son is in fifth grade, and his schedule is all over the board.

It takes about 3-4 hours to complete everything for a day, if he just does what's assigned; however, he normally takes it further than what I assign, and ends up spending anywhere from 5-9 hours on school.  This includes his assignments, extra research that he chooses to do, projects, educational movies, field trips, and extra reading.  He's just one of those kids that wants to know everything possible *now*...and once he gets going, he doesn't want to stop.

So his day really pretty much depends on what he's interested in at the time - if he's satisfied he stops, and if not, he keeps going :-)

He also does competitive sports, plays, and Scouts...all of which I count as school time.  I guess you could say that his day doesn't really have a stop and start time - a lot of what he does is centered around learning in some way.

Answer 5

10th grade. Takes me 2-3 hours. I use a lot of videos and taped lectures; if I was doing more reading it would be done faster.

I'm an unschooler though, so I don't have work set out by the day. I figured that by guessing at what would be considered schoolwork.

Kids in school don't spend that much time learning. You waste so much time shuffling around in the halls, waiting while each teacher collects homework, waiting while the teacher reviews what you already know, waiting while the teacher yells at a couple people, waiting while there's some disturbance as a kid comes in late, time lost because your Spanish class is at 8:40 AM and you were up until 3 doing homework, and so on. My best friend goes to school, and that's how she's described it.

Answer 6

We don't do "school days". We learn all day and everyday of the week. My daughter would be in Kindergarten since she is 5 1/2, but we do more unschooling where you don't have a set time. My sister in law has 3 girls- 9 year old, 6 year old, and 4 year old and she does Traditional Homeschooling and they are in school from 8-3 pm everyday of the week including weekends.

Answer 7

When I was in elementary school and used a correspondence curriculum, I spent one "school" day of about 6 or 7 hours to do an entire week's lessons.

With my own kids, it's hard to determine how long they spend on "school" because a lot of the learning that we do seems like fun stuff.  We don't spend a lot of time on book lessons, maybe 2 hours a day.  

But we spend a lot of time on other things that I consider educational (and the kids might not) such as watching educational videos, going to museums or hiking nature trails or at the library, taking martial arts, or reading and writing for the fun of it, doing science projects, or getting together with other homeschoolers.

So, the answer I would say is:  It depends greatly on your style and curriculum, and on what you count as "school".

But I think that most homeschoolers spend less time on "school" than they would if they were in a public school and bringing homework home after their school day, too.

Answer 8

My 7th grader does school between 8amish and 3pmish. He isn't doing school work the whole time though. He has what he is accomplish each day and once it's done then he's done. Usually only takes 2-3 hours to finish everything in one sitdown.

Answer 9

I don't really know.

As a family, we don't bother keeping track of 'grades' (or 'years' as they're called here). I *think* that other kids my age (those who do go to school) will be starting year 10 when the next school year starts in February.

I can't say how long a typical 'school day' is for me either. It varies depending on how I feel, what else needs to be done around here etc etc.

Also, as we're unschoolers, I don't know what would be considered to be part of my 'school' day. Our parents don't believe in 'school' so we don't have separate 'school' time/'school' activities and non-school time/non-school activities. For instance, I'm doing my ppl (private pilots licence), does the time I spend working on that count as part of my 'school' day or not?!? Also I volunteer in the local old folks' home. Does that count as part of my 'school' day or not?!? My parents would say that all these experiences (and more!) count as 'education' (and, in our family, it's education that matters, not schooling).

Answer 10

It depended on what else I had scheduled for the day.  Every week I had:

Violin lesson - One hour

Piano lesson - one hour

4 ballet classes - one hour each

Group lesson - two hours

Teaching violin - three hour-long lessons

I pretty much had all these activities from 2nd grade through 12th.  In high school I also added:

Orchestra - two hours a week

Dolce Strings - one hour a week

Lietto Quartet - one hour a week

Violin practicing - 4 hours a day

Classes at the community college

Political campagning

This was all fit around my brother and sister's busy schedules as well.  And because these are are 'school' activities for a homeschooler, my school day never ended!  We did most of our reading work in the car.  We took turns reading aloud.  It amazes me what my little sister remembers from those car rides.  She learned so much listening to the older kids read!  I was always learning something even if I was not specifically workin gon 'school' work.

Answer 11

I am grade 8, and a full work day goes from about 8 am to 4 pm, and we deliver papers for an hour, so we spend about  7 hours in school.

God Bless!

Homeschooling RULES!!!!

Merry Christmas people!

Answer 12

I homeschool my son, a 2nd grader.  Our school day is usually from 10 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m.  This includes a couple of short breaks and lunch.

Answer 13

My two children are 16 and 10 with the respective grades represented, and I don't know that we have a "set" length of school day.....Anything over about 5 hours can accomplish MUCH for one day.....

Children in public school spend a LOT OF TIME each day on NONEDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES, such as waiting for the school bus, riding the school bus, passing thru metal detectors, (getting off the school bus and into the classroom can be a life-threatening ordeal), taking attendance at school, standing in line for EVERYTHING, keeping order in a classroom full of schoolkids, etc. all to accomplish a few hours of instruction time.

The state we live in has certain statutory requirements which must be met by ALL SCHOOLS (public and private) that mandate 600 hours of instruction in the CORE subjects per school year.

There are no mandated hours or scheduling, so homeschooling may be done at any hour of any day, (we have neighbors who homeschool and dad works second shift and mom and kids schedule THEIR waking and sleeping to spend time with dad AND homeschool while dad is at work) and since no one catches a bus or wastes time standing in line or passing thru metal detectors to get to instruction time, 600 hours is a PIECE OF CAKE.

Please realize that 2000 hours (40 hous X 50 weeks) per year is considered "normal" working hours for an adult, so you can see just how little education is taking place in the public system;  and one on one insturction is nonexistant.

Homeschooling ROCKS!!! (My totally biased opinion, but it is a free country)

Answer 14

Generally  my children are done in a matter of a few hours but it just all depends

Having a flexible schedule is a great benefit. Home schooling provides students with more options than a traditional classroom. Students can set their own schedule and learn at any time. If they want to take a test at night, they have the freedom to do so. They are learning on their own terms.

Answer 15

I find it hard to compare because we're not highly structured, and we don't follow the school's curricula or schedule.

My youngest kids (6 & 9) do their "seat work" about 4 days per week (usually in the morning) for 30 minutes to 2 hrs, depending. That consists of their language arts/reading, writing, and math. A couple of days per week we work on projects, usually revolving around a social studies or science topic, but it sometimes can touch on a mixture of subjects. They take co-op classes one day a week, then have other activities that come and go, like a class or workshop or field trip.

My oldest has been taking college courses since age 15, so her schedule depends on the demands of the courses she takes each semester.

Answer 16

I am in 8th grade. I start school around 8:45 or 9:00. My first break and only break is lunch time, 12:30 to about 1:15. Then depending on what day it is, I finish around 4:00. But it is different every day. But that is the general sketch. So the average is about 6 1/2 hours of school.

Answer 17

My kids are in grades 2 and 5. They can spend their whole days doing learning activities. They don't have an assigned time.

Each family seems to have a different setup. I know one family who does 5 hours 3 days a week and 3 hours the other 2 days. They've done that for years. I think the oldest is in gr. 8. I know one girl who gets about 4-5 hours a day in. She's in high school.

Answer 18

Both my sons are in first grade so it takes about 2-3 hours tops.  It will be different with my other son next year who will be starting his first year.  Then I will be adding another 2 hours to my teaching to work with him.  :)

Feel free to either break up your day teaching or all in one time slot!  That's what is great about homeschooling.  It's flexible and can work for you.  I do it when my younger two are napping.  Good luck!

Answer 19

About two hours, the two that are still actively being home schooled require about an hour each for one on one instruction.

Than we learn for the rest of the day in one way, or another.

Learning is not limited to specific hours, or subjects, each and every opportunity, situation or conversation is a teaching/learning moment.

No subject is disconnected from the other, or it's daily application.

True learning happens all the time.

That's what sets home schooling apart from traditional schooling.

Answer 20

My son is 7 and in 'second grade' he does about 2 - 3 hours of book work, science projects, and reading activities per day - 4 days a week.

Answer 21

like 3 hrs. for me

Answer 22

It used to take about 2 hours - but I'm no longer home schooled.

Answer 23

I was homeschooled 7th - 12th grade and did school work about 6 hrs a day, 5 days a week.

Answer 24

Like Hannah, we are unschoolers and don't really keep track of grades or how long it takes to learn any certain topic. Once I figure it out, though, I have a seventh grader, fourth grader, third grader, second grader, first grader, kindergartener, and one toddler.

We learn in our own time. For example, for two weeks we haven't done much outside of repair and yard work, recovering from an ice storm. Lots of volunteer work as well, which might not count as academia in most people's books, but is very important for our lifestyle. There are days when it looks like we are doing nothing for homeschooling, but in fact that's the most important learning time, when kids have time to relax and fully integrate what they've learned.

When my oldest wanted to learn algebra, I never assigned him homework, I didn't make him sit down with the book. I did find him a book, and he set his own schedule. He chose to work on it for eighteen hours one day, took a few days off, then would work on it for ten hours straight, then a few days with just a couple of hours each, etc etc. He worked on it when he needed to understand the next section. Same thing with my younger kids, with everything from reading to math to history.

It works well for us.