How long should schooling take?

How much time should you spend on lessons?  Three or four hours should be sufficient for elementary aged kids.  In school, kids wait for others to finish.  They wait for the teacher to set up the Smartboard or Elmo.  Kids have Art, Music, Computer, Library, and PE.  Yes, they attend school for seven hours; half of the time spent in school is NOT invested in academics.

Older teens should spend at least five hours on academics each day.  Lacie, a freshman, has more material in her core subjects: Theology, English, History, Chemistry, Algebra, and Latin.  She has classics to read and analyze, papers to write, more problem sets, and translations.  If you are working on English, Math, Science, and History, plan on four hours each day.

How long should your daily lessons take?  What are your goals?  My main goal is to complete one year of instruction in each core class.  My secondary goal is to maintain reading and math all summer.  Right now the fourth grader is working three or four hours each day.  The freshman is working five hours each day.  We work five days each week.  The freshman needs time on the weekend for reading, writing, or study, about three hours Saturday or Sunday.

Keep a schedule.  We start at 9:00.  If we run late, we end late.  Paul, nine, spends an hour on math, 45 minutes on science, 45 minutes on English topics, 30 minutes on History, and at least 40 minutes reading an assigned novel.  He reads comic books and graphic novels, too; these are not part of his studies.  Paul’s morning time is entirely academic.  He usually has a cooking lesson, guitar practice, checks on-going science projects, and plays board games outside of class.  We take a 45 minute walk after lunch.

Lacie, a freshman, sets her goals in the morning and works on two topics each day.  She works from 9-2:30.  Lunch is 30 minutes.  Lacie concentrates on two subjects a day in long blocks of time.  Your teen may prefer to do shorter assignments of several subjects every day.  After lessons are over, she often FaceTimes classmates to review Chemistry.

Get your child on a schedule working every day.