My homeschool day
Do you find yourself wondering if you are doing enough schooling every day or every week?
This becomes an important question when you compare your day to one where a child attends a traditional school. Studies, though, have shown that a homeschool student can complete in 45 minutes what takes almost 3 hours in a school setting.
If a student spends six hours a day in a traditional school on their courses, then… some simplified math says that you should be spending about two hours a day on school work (or ten hours a week!). Still feel like you aren’t doing enough? :)
The beauty of home schooling is that you are able to skip past all of the downtime of a traditional classroom and can focus on the lesson and the learning immediately - which results in more focused learning. Trust me - I’ve spent 20 years teaching in a traditional school. I can tell you from experience that my son and I get through so much content FASTER because I can adapt to his needs immediately. The personalized learning is not only better for his growth BUT also better for our schedule building.
I get a lot of questions about what our day looks like, so let me give you a sneak peak. :). Here is my monthly schedule:
This unit above was created to fit living in Portugal. I like to start with a theme for the unit. In the educational world, we call it an “Essential Question.” Since we are in Portugal - land of the explorers - I wanted to keep that theme for all content I pulled for Science, English, and Social Studies. I have found that when I can cross content, the learning is deeper and more impactful.
For math, PE, and Portuguese language class, I outsourced! I purchased a math program since that’s not my area of expertise, and I count his Portuguese class as an elective and his futbol training as PE.
Here’s what it looks like broken down even more:
Pink - Social Studies, Yellow - Science, Green - English
Once I have the lessons, I can then build a weekly schedule. So here’s an example of what Week 1 looked like for us:
Monday:
Social Studies Formative: watch video and fill in time line (30 minutes)
English: read novel and discuss (60 minutes)
Math: complete lessons (30 minutes)
PE: Futbol practice (1.5 hours)
Tuesday:
Science: watch video and fill out main idea and details web (30 minutes)
English: read novel and discuss (60 minutes)
Math: complete lessons (30 minutes)
Portuguese: attend lessons (1.5 hours)
Wednesday:
PE: Futbol practice (1.5 hours)
Math: complete lessons (30 minutes)
Thursday:
Math: complete lessons (30 minutes)
Portuguese: attend lessons (1.5 hours)
We take Fridays off every week. It’s great for a long weekend or as a buffer if our schedule results in us missing a day that week.
I created our units to be 4 weeks long. The first 3 weeks we learn our content, and then, during the 4th week, we tie it all together with a field trip and a project. Sometimes the project is an essay pulling all the information we learned from Science, Social Studies, and English. Other times is a power point presentation, iMovie creation, or podcast script and recording. My son loves to be creative, and I try to tap into how he loves to learn with what we do during Week 4.
By a quick count, we average about 7.5 hour a week in our lessons. This gives me some wiggle room to add in extra practice when I see that he is struggling with a concept. We never top 10 hours a week, and if we do, it’s because his academy adds more soccer practices or games. Surprisingly, he never complains when we go over the PE time every week. :)
I would call myself an expert on traditional schools, and my son has six years of experiences within those schools too. I certainly believe that he is learning more with me. We can go deeper with less, and I feel confident that he is learning those skills that carry over into life. We skip past rote memorization that he can Google and instead focus on teaching him to learn how to apply those facts to compare and contrast life his own life when the worlds we are studying.
This is just ONE way to do your homeschooling. This is what works for our unique circumstances, priorities, abilities, and passions. Yours could look completely different - that’s the BEAUTY of home schooling!
If you aren’t sure how you want to set yours up or what you want it to look like, that’s okay! That’s exactly what I can do for you. I can create some weekly or monthly schedules or even curriculum for you with the FULL ACCESS plan! We can create something together that your kids (and you!) will love! Learning doesn’t have to be overwhelming or boring!
You don’t have to do this alone!
-Kristin
