A Practical Walk

I asked if anyone would be interested in a day in the life of a high school homeschooler post. But as I’ve been working on it, it’s turned into a long conglomerated post about all things homeschooling! Finally I decided maybe I should chop it up into smaller posts. So this post is just about our schedule and how much time it takes us.

A question a lot of people have is, “How long does homeschooling take the parent (or whoever the leader is)?” The problem is, there isn’t one answer for this.

• It depends on the curriculum you use. Do you use an online course that does everything versus making your own curriculum you compile and teach yourself?
• It depends on you the homeschool leader. You might want to spend time doing things with the students and planning it all out, or you might try to do as little as possible (that will probably be reflected in the curriculum you choose).
• It also depends on the student. Even with curriculums that are supposed to be independent work for the student, they might have trouble and need someone to come along side them. And of course it also depends on the number of students you have.

So, while I can’t give you an exact answer about how long homeschooling takes, I can tell you how it’s has looked for me.

• We don’t currently have a strict starting time (it used to be 8:30). I’ve held more to this in the past, but so far this year, don’t feel the need to. Both kids know what they need to do, and as long as they’re doing it in a timely manner I see no reason to enforce a specific time. Also, they have chores to do. They take care of getting their own breakfast, take turns washing dishes, feed their animals, and my son likes to walk the dog in the morning when it’s cooler. So if they start a little later because they were doing chores, that’s fine by me. Even when we did have a specific start time, one of my kids often started early…not for a love of school, but for a love of getting school over with!
• This year, they need less help from me than previous years. They get started on their subjects. They can choose what order they do them in.
• Once they finish a subject, if it’s one I need to correct they put it on the cupboard in the dining room. They each do school in their rooms, and I do make them do it at a desk, not laying in bed. I know there’s controversy over this, but it’s a rule that I mostly stick to.
• Once I correct the subjects, I put them back on the cupboard but in the back (so they know I already went over it) and in 2 piles, one for each kid.
• Then they look over their corrected work before we sit down and go over it together. I like to give them a chance to find the correct answer as I feel that helps them actually learn it rather than me filling in the correct answer for them. Doing this part together also helps me be aware day-by-day how they’re doing. If it seems they didn’t understand a particular section I can read over it with them. Through this I’ve discovered that I actually love teaching them English, particularly grammar. It’s taken me a little bit by surprise.
• Each week I put in their schedules what they need to do or how many pages. As they get older, I sometimes leave certain things up to them how much they do per day. Their self-designed courses (as opposed to curriculum based), are by hours completed, so they have to record the hours they’re spending in them (like PE).
• The kids used to have a 15 minute mid-morning break, then they requested it be extended to 30 minutes, so we did that. But, similar to my feelings on a strict time to start, I don’t pay much attention to their break times anymore. If they want to take a break, that’s great, but it’s on them to decide exactly how and when. When they were younger I think they needed more oversight on this than they do now.
• We also break for lunch if they haven’t finished yet. Lunches are our smaller meal of the day, usually made up of sandwiches or leftovers (I like to call it “heat it and eat”).
• After lunch we finish up anything that’s left. Some days the kids finish before lunch, sometimes it takes longer.
• Then, a new thing this year, is that 5 days a week somebody has to go somewhere for a class. Two days a week, my daughter does a dual credit art class at a local college. And a couple evenings a week my son goes to Taekwondo for PE. Then on Friday they both go to a homeschool book club. Even though I’m not counting the book club towards any of their credits, it’s been great for them to read and discuss the classics and they love the time of hanging out with their friends.

The homeschool group does periodic field trips too.

Even though the kids don’t need me all the time for their school, I do have to kind of be on call. So I work on things like cleaning, cooking, or ebay, and when they have things to be corrected or need help, I can stop and do that.

The “breakfast nook” is where I do the school correcting.

I have more things I could say about schooling, but I’ll stop there for now.

What are you most interested in hearing about?

• Our curriculum choices and review
• Schooling elementary versus high school
• Things that have taken me by surprise in homeschooling
• Things we’ve changed and tweaked over the years
• What we love about homeschooling
• What we don’t love about homeschooling
• Another question or topic?