Approx. hours a day?

[nelschooling]

I am considering this as our primary homeschool curriculum for next year. My children will be in 3rd and 5th grades? How much time should I estimate allotting for this. We do have other activities I plan to schedule everyday, but before I start adding them in, I want to ensure I've set enough time aside here. I would like for my children to basically complete an entire grade here as it is designed over the course of a standard 9-month school year. Both are tech savvy and are already familiar with T4L, having already played around here for the past 6-months. And both are strong readers.

[hearthstone_academy]

Hi, nel!

It will vary quite a bit, depending on how quickly your children work and the type of activity scheduled for that day. For example, some students will complete a writing activity in ten minutes, while others might labor over it for hours.

If there are math problems to work out, a lesson might take longer, too.

As a very, very general guideline, I would estimate 3 hours for your younger student and four for your older child. Again, either of them might finish much more quickly than that on days where most of their activities are simply quizzes . . . or take longer, if they have writing assigments or other potentially time-consuming activities.

[nelschooling]

hmm, I do wish this was a much more active forum. I'd love to hear a few perspectives here. I set up the activity schedule for my children to complete a grade over a school year. My 8-year old did a weeks worth of all subjects in about 5 hours. He is a sharp kid, highly self-motivated, but I was not expecting him to be that quick.

Again, I'd love to hear other perspectives. How much time does the average child spend here, if their goal is to only complete 1 grade level each year?

[onlyme4430]

i'm new to the program but i think it really just depends on your child. i know that my son can sometimes rush through a lesson just to get it finished but isn't really absorbing the concepts. so depending on your schedule and how you set up your day can make a big difference in the amount of time it would take. for example, during the summer, we are doing 1 lesson a day for 1 subject so it can take between 20 minutes to 1 hour depending on the subject. in the fall, we plan to concentrate on 1 subject per day but obviously will be doing more than 1 lesson so the time will increase. that plus adding in hands-on activities will increase the time even more. doing that we'll complete the whole grade level (7th) in one year (august to may on the activity scheduler since he's not doing a full day during the summer). hope this helps a little.

[Rae1980]

I am curious to know too. I'm planning to use this program as my core homeschool curriculum for my rising 4th & 5th grader. They both learn at very different paces.

[Twinsmomma27]

My boys and I usually can do 3-4 lessons of Language arts in about 1-2 hours for 4th grade. It takes us a while since I let them read it out loud and we discuss the lessons. Some days we finish our lessons in 2 hours and some days we spend 4 hours but we also school year round.

[hairymoss]

My son started with T4L last year and we finished almost everything for his 5th grade level by the end of the regular school year. We also did LA extensions and more than 1 science. I scheduled him to start at 8 and we were usually done doing 1 activity or chapter in 4 subjects by noon. We didn't race through and I complimented current topics with books and videos from the library so I knew he'd be exposed to the same material several times in different mediums but I felt that was most thorough; and sometimes just offered additional insights or real world applications to what he learned.

[home_school_mom]

With T4L I can't say how much time my dd will take just yet since we are new to it. but since we have always taught her from home, I can say that a lesson can vary as to how much time it will take. It will just depend on if it is a topic your child struggles with or if it is one he/she excels in. My dd has always excelled in math and therefore she can do it quickly. But when it comes to thinking creatively and writing a story in language arts, she struggles a bit with that. She is getting better with language arts as she gets older but it is still not her strongest subject. Most parents, IMO, forget that when you are teaching a child one on one, like with home schooling, they can do a full day of school much more quickly than if they were in a public school setting with 30 other child. The one on one time can really make a difference.