I am homeschooling 3 kids. Grade 5,4 and 1. They all do 4-5 hours a day. Is this too much for a 7 year old?

Question

How many hours do you school per grade?

Answer 1

We do about 5 hrs. a day as well.  For my oldest two most is hard core curriculum work for my Kindergartner it's more like a 1/2 day program.  The kids have their assignments, teaching time, and education game time that all counts for the hours so it's very easy to get the hours.  If they were in Brick & Motar school they'd be there more than that then have homework time...

Good for you teaching at home!

Answer 2

I have a 4th grader and a 2nd grader.  Rather than school for a certain amount of time, I have a set amount of work for them to do and when they complete it, their day is through.

My children can finish their curriculum in 3 hours, and then they spend a couple more hours doing "extras" such as independent reading, a project that interests them, watching an educational show, playing a board game, etc.  A lot of their free time is spent doing educational activities that are not a formal part of their curriculum.

In homeschooling, the time involved is much less than that in the public school because there are less students, and you do not have to wait for the slowest to finish, etc.

Answer 3

For a 1st grader, 1-2 hours is completely appropriate.  Any more than that (other than learning experiences that are based around play, video, read alouds, or manipulatives) is really too much.  My 10yo 5th grader easily does 4-5 hours per day, but it's too much for a 1st grader.

Answer 4

On average we do about two hours a day, one hour for each child one on one, and after that they do their work independently.

An average day is never longer than 3 hours and this is now at what would be considered middle school level.

This of course does not include reading books, or other educational activities that they are involved in.

When they were that young; first grade, we may have had a structured hour in the morning, mostly learning how to read, or do basic words, and numbers.

The rest of the day was spend on educational games, fun activities, reading together, watching a DVD, coloring, playing out side, going to the park, and library story hour.

By ages 8 to 10 we did math, reading and language arts in a more traditional manner, short half hour lessons, and used unit studies for all other subjects, these can be a lot of fun with arts and crafts and field trips.

We do not believe in a lot of busy work.

Yes, that is definitively to long if you are talking about doing a sit down structured curriculum, but then again that is just my opinion.

Answer 5

no if they were at school they would be there from 7:30 until 2:50 and that is 6 and a half hours

Answer 6

well my mom has 9 gets to teach...& it all depends on how old we are and how much we do...for us 8 and up means we work for atleast 7 hours a day. 8 and down they work for about 4 hours a day...

Answer 7

i think so, I'm thirteen and i only have to do two hours a day. i think you should cut them some slack.

Answer 8

It really depends on the child. Sometimes, a child might be able to sit and work for hours on end. Some need many breaks in between. The beauty of homeschooling is that you have the power to decide what's best.

It also depends on the schoolwork. If it's all work done with a textbook, a pencil, and a paper, then it is more tedious. If it involves more hands-on activities, then time will pass more quickly. Also, if it's reading aloud, the younger ones can listen and color. That way, it is much easier to sit through it.

Instead of looking to the time it takes to do school, you could try to have an idea or plan of what the children should complete in a day. Also, if the child gets too restless during school, offer a ten-minute break before returning to schoolwork.

My siblings just have an agenda of what they have to do. Sometimes they work more than 4-5 hours, sometimes less. My eight-yr-old brother can only sit still for about half an hour at a time, but usually does nearly 4 hours of school. At that age, my ten-yr-old brother could sit for much longer.

Answer 9

Yes, it is too much.

Think of all the wasted time in a school setting.  Time spent waiting for the teacher to read announcements, wait for everyone to settle down, take attendance and deal with paperwork, deal with discipline problems, repeat directions for the 5th time because a couple of students weren't listening, etc.  Time spent waiting for all the students to find their books, get a pencil ready, line up, sit down, ask questions because they weren't listening, etc.  Time wasted on particular students because they already know something extremely well but there are some others in the class who still don't get it, or wasted on them because they don't understand an assignment but the teacher's too busy to help them.  Time is wasted on so many things in the classroom.

When you homeschool, you don't have all that wasted time.  The child gets one-on-one instruction and doesn't have to waste a lot of time on busy work.  The lessons can be geared to the child's specific needs.  (And the child can't hide his weaknesses from the teacher, he can't get lost in the cracks.)  Since the education is more streamlined, it takes a lot less time at home to accomplish what schools do in much more time.

When I was homeschooled in second grade, I spent about 7 hours on a week's worth of lessons.  My first grader probably spends about 2 hours a day on lessons.

Answer 10

A local principal who oversees homeschooling families (we MUST register where I live or be considered truant) tells families that most gr. 1 children shouldn't have more than 1 hour a day of structured seatwork. If an individual child wants to go beyond that, fine, but they should not have to spend so much time in focused work.

I taught grade 1 for a bit. They do NOT do 4-5 solid hours of work. They really don't. You do some group stuff, then they have a little work, then group stuff, then a little work and so on. Lots of grade 1 work here is colouring (even the math workbooks that the schools get have the kids colouring this and that and the other), cutting out things, drawing, listening to stories and more. For example, one social studies topic is My Family. The kids will draw pictures of the people in their family and colour them in, then maybe have to cut out the leaves and write names on the leaves then glue that to a family tree. There's lots of hands-on stuff in grade 1 classrooms here--and that's how it should be. But there's also a LOT of time spent in organizing the class. There's absolutely no way a typical grade 1 class spends 5 hours a day in some sort of work!

When you are in a tutorial situation like homeschooling, a grade 1 child really doesn't need to be sitting and doing 4-5 hours of work. I know Sonlight works a bit like that, but it's kind of like the above: some group time (or read-aloud by the parent) followed by an activity, then another read-aloud, etc. It can easily add up to 4-5 hours like that. But expecting a gr. 1 child to sit and physically do 4-5 hours of work is probably a little much. You'll see it by resistance or a lack of interest or no joy whatsoever in what's being done.

Answer 11

i am homeschooling grade 4 and we do on average 3-4 hours a day...its easier to teach a small ratio and faster than public school

they get recess , lunch break, all the time to settle the class, etc...

Answer 12

Sit down work and book work should only take 3 hours or so for that age.

"If they where in school" like many have stated, they would not be doing work all those hours. One of the reasons I home school is because it wastes so much of the kids day to be in school all day then bring home 2 or more hours of home work.  In "school" (away for home), they have to line up, take attendance, deal with discipline issues, drill for those ever present state tests, and so on. I read an article that kids get about 10 minutes of teaching of  new material each day. That's ridiculous. The kids that fall behind get left there and the ones who caught on the first time material was taught get bored.

Answer 13

Depends on how intense the work is and how your child is doing.  Some kids can sit still that long.  Some can't, especially young boys.  The nice thing about homeschooling is that you can vary it based on your child's needs.  That isn't to say that you don't have to push them a little sometimes; I'm just saying that, as long as the child is learning what he/she needs to, be flexible and do what works best for the both of you.

Answer 14

I'm guessing by "school" you mean sitting at a table and doing work in notebooks and textbooks and such things? Actually, 4-5 hrs per day of that sounds like too much to me for anyone.

For us, the "traditional book learning"  is a very small part of the day-- maybe an hour, hour and a half about 4 days per week-- for all grades, though probably half that for kids under 6.  

We also try to balance the dry, boring textbook/worksheet stuff with hands-on activities, creative projects, experiments, field trips, reading, watching educational TV shows, taking co-op classes, etc.

EDIT--- People seem to confuse how long kids are at school with how much work they do. If a kid is in school 6 hrs, they're not working 6 hrs.

When I was teaching, if I had a 50 minute class, I would plan a 25 minute lesson. Kids file in, settle down, put away their stuff, I take attendance, I have to collect things/pass things out, have the kids copy notes off the board, start the lesson, there were often distractions or times we'd get off track or time taken out to discipline, they'd have to copy their homework.

Homeschoolers go faster because they get right to things, have fewer distractions and "procedures" that take up time, and when they're done they don't have to wait for anyone.

Answer 15

I don't think it's too much if they where in a regular school it's 6 hours a day. SoI don't believe it's too much for the seven year old.