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

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 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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 6

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 7

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 8

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 9

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 10

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.