Can you please share your daily schedule with me?  I might be doing it next school year.  My son works well for short periods of time, will finish assignments but needs breaks in between.  I think I probably will have 3 hours at the most that he will do school work (with breaks).  What do you think will be the best use of the time?  How would you structure your homeschool in my situation.  Thanks for your help.

 

Carmina

On average, our school day is about 3-4 hours long in total. School is in session at 10 am and at 11:30 we have lunch with a break. Lessons resume at 1 pm and we are usually done by 3 pm.

 

 

I went to Titus2.org and got Managers of Their Homes scheduling book....it works wonders for scheduling evrything! I also downloaded an excel sheet from the website and print out a basic schedule for us. I always allow for other stuff to happen; it's not written in stone.

Also, at this time of year the boys start getting alot of their work done for the year, so it's much shorter. I may also decide to do something different for a particular study, like Reading, just so it doesn't get boring.

Right now, we are up at 6:30, chores, breakfast & news & devotions, then school until noon. Anything we didn't get done in the morning is picked up in the afternoon along with extra projects. On some days I drop them off at the library for an hour or 2 in the morning and go work out at Curves and do errands. Then school is in the afternoon.

It also depends on how old your son is . I agree that it takes about 3 maybe 4 hours in total the whole day . If your son is younger it could be less .  We try to break up our schooling throughout the day depending on what is going on that day . We have an outline of what needs to get done and as long as our weekly schedule gets done by the end of the week I feel good . Some days we do a lot and some days we don't do hardly anything  . Like I said it depends on your daily routine . I think it also depends on what methos you decide to use in your schooling .

My son is 11.  There will be a kindergartner half of the day at home and a toddler (very active one) all day.  The rest are in school.  What methods do you use? 

Carmina,

 I answered before that our school day runs 3-4 hours. I homeschool a sixteen year old, a twelve year old and a three year old.

The only thing I can offer on homeschooling with toddlers is I hope he/she enjoys sitting with everyone. Building toys, color and activity pages, if old enough then clay/playdough and more are great for keeping a toddler busy and next to you. Don't feel bad if you have to pause a class to deal with the little one, it's only an issue if it's extreme.

 

Crafts are great for busying a 5 or 6 yr old! It is also a good age to introduce Cuisinaire Rods. Don't pressure them to learn the number symbol for the rod, just let them build with them first. A bucket of colorful Color Tiles and one of Tanagrams is essential too.

Carmina ,

I use the Ambleside Online curriculum . It is a Charlotte Mason based program . We love it because of the flexibility and there is not a lot of  "busy work " that needs to be done . They give you a weekly schedule and you determine what to do on what days . It was a gift from God to our family .

Just FYI, a "schedule" is not necessary.  There is a type of homeschooling called "unschooling" which is not a very good word, but what it consists of is following your child's needs and yearnings.  So if he wants to study about dinosaurs, you can go to a muesum, look up websites online, check out books at the library, do math using dinosaur "cards" you can make, or maybe there is a dinosaur game (I have girls so not much was learned about dinosaurs here ;-))  When you look at all that, you realize that almost all if not all subjects are covered, and he had fun doing them! 

OliveOyl123

That is good too if that is the parent's style. I'm too typeA personality for that, I like schedules and organization, I'd never be able to teach any other way LOL! But for other moms I see it works great for them. I tried the Charlotte Mason method quite awhile ago, and it was fun, but it just wasn't me.