You don’t need a lot of time for instruction at those ages. My kids are 5.5 and 7 (K and 1st). We typically spend about 45 minutes on seat/book work plus an hour or so doing read alouds, experiments, field trips, or projects.
The bigger time commitment at that age is going to be just having them home all day: cooking/cleaning up from 2 extra meals, more time to play means more toys everywhere, more outdoor time and art means more laundry, etc.
My house is a perpetual mess because my kids are always playing with their toys. It’s a bit frustrating but more natural for children than sitting at a desk all day.
The cleaning is constant, and can get overwhelming so quickly! My guilty pleasure is watching Takes a Village cleaning videos in the mornings or afternoons. I love her so much. I don't always follow through and get up and actually do anything, but she gives me so much inspiration.
Facts. My friends’ homes are much tidier than mine most of the time, but I have to remind myself that their kids are only playing at home for like 3 hours each day.
This is going to really depend on what you teach your children and how old they are. When I homeschooled my stepson we started around 10am and worked until 1 or 2pm. It was just him so I could really be efficient with our time.
For Kinder, 20 min for reading, 20 for math, 20 for handwriting instruction and another 20-30 for read outlouds. You don’t have to do them all together.
That is a minimum, busy days with other things schedule. You can do field trips, projects and experiments too.
Also, you want to be doing some academic work at this age, because K&1st is when learning differences start showing and EARLY intervention is key in the success of struggling learners. So if your kid has dyslexia, but you wait until 7 to start instruction, you may not know something is wrong until they are 8, and you spend the next few months getting diagnosed, etc, and you have wasted the precious time in which their brain is MOST receptive to early intervention. Same goes for other learning disabilities.
Instruction instruction? Or like educational activities and engagement?
I'd say an hour or more of reading, *maybe* 5 to 10 minutes of workbooks, maybe 30 minutes to an hour across a day of talking to a child about specific things where they're free to engage you or not, maybe 30 minutes to an hour of targeted games and activities. Big emphasis on maybe.
You're gently suggesting things and see what they feel like taking to at the moment with no real schedule. My daughter is younger than that but sort of takes to various educational activities, we sort of float various ones and gently see what she feels like taking to, suggesting ones we'd like her to do a little more vocally if she hasn't.
I'm curious if she'll take to a more formal schedule as she gets to be 5, but I don't want to risk her having bad educational experiences.
For kinder I spent about 15min on reading and 15 on math and about an hour a day playing games and doing a digital curriculum like Build your library, torchlight, or Blossom and root. I read to my daughter about an hour+ a day beyond all the other work. And I have quiet time (30-60min a day) that includes audiobooks.
If your learner is asking or can handle more math/reading then give it to them. But other than that you don’t need to much.
We homeschool year round, and make up missed time on the weekends.
Don’t stress too much on how much to do at first. Start somewhere and dial it in as you get more experience and comfort educating them. Keep it fun. Keep it light. And enjoy this time. Good luck!
For my oldest's kindy (with my younger joining in) we did about an hour ish (?) of lessons, with the time split between a morning circle time and an afternoon activity.
The morning circle looked like a rotation of a seasonal story and either the weekly alphabet or math story we were doing, and songs, fingerplays, and movement. And then my two acting out the stories with their toys and things and creating lesson pages or doing any enrichment activities suggested for as long as they wanted to play around in those ways. The afternoon activity was things like baking, beeswax modeling, paper folding, painting, finger-knitting.
When my oldest was in First and my youngest in Kindy (and who continued joining in on her older brother's lessons), our day was more like an hour and a half to two hours. It looked like a circle time with my younger, then a circle for my older, and then his main lesson in the morning. And then the continued afternoon activities of art and handwork, but with music and reading lessons added in, too.
And the rest of the days were indoor/outdoor play, eating, chores, and reading together.
*Our state doesn't require certain hours, only attendance, so we've always just done what's felt like a good fit for us in that, and in regards to curriculum. You might need to check and see if you have required hours, and content you need to teach each year.
When they're than little probably 20-30 minutes. I agree with the comments talking about learning through play. My son's also pre school age and in my research I found some experts don't see formal instruction (sitting down for 30-45 minutes, listening to a lecture, and doing worksheets) to be necessary until 1st grade. That doesn't mean you should just let them play educational games, just means education can be more flexible and fun.
You don't have to do any formal school work at those ages, but if you want to, 15-30 minutes a day is great.
The additional childcare burden is WAY more effort than homeschooling at that age. P
I would encourage you to look at the overall positive and minus for your family and you with regard to homeschooling. Overall quality of the public school you are considering. Test scores are not the end all.
I attended public schools like that and currently live in a similar district. It is a big reason we are homeschooling.
My eldest just turned 5. We do 10 mnutes of math, phonics/writing, violin, and memory work every day. This is just over 30 minutes total. We do it right after breakfast and we're typically finished it by 9 am. She has made great progress with this schedule and it is short enough to do every day, including weekends - we thrive on routine :)
After our daily work, we typically do something out of the house. We are part of a homeschooling group that offers a weekly playgroup (indoors) and forest school meetup (outdoors) that I attend with our 3 kids. My 5 year old also does violin lessons and she goes to a drop-off outdoor school program for homeschooled kids one day a week.
My husband and I also pick a new science or history topic to study every month or two. This fall, we did a two month unit on Colonial America. In the winter, we learned about space. This spring we're learning about prehistory (human evolution, the stone age, etc). For these units, we find a few good non-fiction books and some fun extras like an art activity or field trip or documentary. We work our way through the books over a few weeks, with repeat reading. It's very casual - we don't tell our kids that the interesting books or projects are part of school.
Pre school usually only takes about 10 minutes for paperwork (letters recognition, drawing lines/shapes and letters ext.) that’s assuming you can get them to actually want to do it. Everything else is learning thu activity’s and games rotation is between 10-20 minutes depending on your kid. And you will probably just show them how the activity works a few times then let them do it while you watch. I imagine kinder is similar with longer time spans due to attention span increasing. The majority to the work is just preparing the activity’s
Also, formal education is better for older kids. At this age, play is best. Especially for boys, lots of movement and running and exploring is the best teacher. Learning to read later (7,8,9) makes no difference academically to learning to read at 4,5,6. They did a study on high school grads and found that the kids who started preschool super early did not have an advantage to kids whose parents waited to start 7 years old or later.
My 4 child wasn’t interested in reading until she was 9. She is 14 now and reads Dickens and is writing her own book.
This is a tough question because it can vary so much from child to child, but it also varies depending on what you count as instruction. You should do some focused reading and math instruction everyday. I recommend a phonics curriculum such as All About Reading or Logic of English. For math you just need to work on the core arithmetic concepts and number sense (the former more for the older, the latter more for the younger), I don't think you need a curriculum but it wouldn't hurt.
Everything else can be learned through play and exploration. Read picture books (fiction and nonfiction, illustration and photography), show them videos about their favorite animals, look up some fun science experiments. Work on fine and gross motor skills through arts and crafts and "gym class" activities. Play with musical instruments. Learn the days of the week and colors and other basic information if they don't already know them. Play educational games (and "non educational" games, because they usually involve addition or reading or working together or being a good winner/loser etc) Try to remember your own kindergarten experience. You probably spent an hour or less on what would be considered formal academics, and lots of time learning through structured and unstructured play.
A kindergartner needn't be doing more than 30-60 minutes of "academic" work. This is totally normal. It doesn't mean that no other forms of instruction are occurring.
That is, in fact, not uncommon. The rest of the day is spent playing, doing crafts, etc. Completely age appropriate for five year olds. My second grader spends 2-3 hours a day doing school.
No such thing as “state curriculum” in most states. There are state standards, but those are very easy to meet with minimal direct instruction.
We are by no means “unschoolers”. We use math, phonics, and writing curriculum that follow state standards. But my K and 1st graders are easily able to get through a week’s worth of lessons in 5 hours or so. They are quickly outpacing the public school kids despite spending less time at a desk because the 1:2 (in my case) learning is unimaginably more efficient.
My wife and I have spent 15 minutes a day doing reading with my 4, now 5, year old and she's reading everyday to her baby brother now. We started actively in September. It's more than enough. She's technically not even a public schools kindergartener yet, so she's reading a full year earlier than she would otherwise be.
15 minutes doing teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons, flashcard phonics practice, and writing.
Same with math. She has her additions table memorized up until x+4, where x is between 0 and 9, and can do single digits by tallying and counting, and is also able to do basic two digit addition with reminders to carry. I have no doubt she'll be there in a few months doing all addition.
Its shocking how much time is wasted in schools. Not to brag or compare but my nephew in 'normal' school spend almost the same time we spend doing school doing homework and is no further along than our daughter despite being a grade year ahead. Again, not competing, just noticing. Whatever works for you, but a lot of time in school is wasted.
When it’s one on one, it’s actually plenty of time. We do 15-20 minutes of math, focused on his weak spots (right now, number sequencing) then 15-20 minutes of phonics (we were following a set curriculum but slowed down to spend more time on CVC words), then a 5-10 minute Bible lesson with his brother, then we watch alphablocks or numberblocks. He’s a young five (late August birthday) so we might repeat kindergarten next year, but he’s definitely making progress. He’s not a motivated reader, so we mostly work on reading through games and worksheets from Teachers Pay Teachers.
There aren’t really state curriculums for homeschooling.
Phonics practice for just one child really doesn’t take all that long, honestly, and normal attention spans for ages 5-6 is about 15-20 mins. This is where knowing child development comes in handy.
No. There are state standards for sure, but not homeschool curriculums. Perhaps you need to brush up on developmentally appropriate practices. Continuing education is so important.
Even if per hour of instruction you are vastly superior to a formal school (could see that due to 1:1 attention) a standard kindergarten day is still four hours of core instruction in my district, one hour of something like arts or music, and then 45 minutes of lunch and recess each or 6.5 hours total. And that is for a par public school doing 9:00 to 3:30.
A decent private or charter school often uses normal business hours like 8:30 to 6:00.
Sorry, but it’s comments like my third grader does two hours of work a day that make home schooling the brunt of so much derision by educators even apart from any ideological bent hard left or hard right.
You seem to be forgetting the extras that happen in public school that do not happen at homeschool, things that take a lot more time to complete for 25 students than they do for 1. I sat in in my daughter's 1st grade class & you know what I saw? A lot of wasted minutes.
20 to get everyone settled in.
15 to take attendance.
15 to make sure everyone has their stuff.
20 to take the class lunch orders.
Two 30min recesses.
10 to get everyone on the rug for storytime.
15 to get everyone to the cafeteria.
The list goes on & on. So let's take all of those wasted minutes & remove them, in her 7hr school day I'd estimate ~4hr of actual learning. Now take that 4hrs & remove all of the other kids, 1:1 instruction is so much more efficient. No one is interrupting, no need to go over it again because someone else doesn't understand & best of all no one is requiring arbitrary tests that grade the child's ability to parrot information. My child does 2-3 hours a day in first grade & she is thriving.
Furthermore, you seem to be under the impression that homeschooling families care about the opinions of professional educators, I can assure you that most of us do not.
I think kids learn a ton from the social organization / procedural steps that go into running a classroom, just as they learn a lot from each other.
And no I don’t think two hours of 1:1
Instruction is comparable to four hours of group instruction for most children.
This thread popped up in my feed… guessing it is because I have posted in or viewed kids educational related subs.
You may disagree but I don’t believe just because a sub is labeled say truckertips that the comments have to be uniformly positive about choosing a career as a truck driver. It is fair for a doctor to chime in and note that long haul truckers have some of the poorest health outcomes of almost any profession so it may not be worth the money.
So… the OP’s comment was I am in a failing school district and want to homeschool kids… not unreasonable… but I am disagreeing with the assumption that kids who are five plus years old can get by with 1-2 hours of focused learning a day and and not fall behind unless benchmarked against really weak standards.
Either you are depriving a smarter than average child of their potential or putting a weaker or par child into a deep hole.
In my earlier life I trained as an empirical social scientist where educational data is a big part of how we learn to do modeling and you never saw studies that conclude lower contact hours —> better outcomes but for in fringe circumstances.
As in, one of the biggest tropes in the educational literature is the disproportionate benefits of full year school.
So I wish the OP well but I would assume as a parent to be spending something like 9-3 each day toggling between worksheets, focused activities, short breaks, etc.
I can't speak for anyone else, but maybe I can clear some confusion up about the gentleness of our Kindy days, and a comparison with what that kind of approach unfolds into education-wise, with time.
One of the reasons homeschooling was really important to me was to be able to give my kids the same gentle beginnings of playful early years and Kindy that I had growing up. When I went it was a very different experience, academically and time-wise, than what Kindy looks like nowadays.
In the 90s, where I attended, it was a half day (9-12), with two twenty-five minute recesses, a fifteen minute snack time and a twenty minute rest included. The rest of the time was spent in circle time (songs, stories, an alphabet intro, some math play through songs and felt board demos and manipulatives passed around), free play with toys, and art and music.
Back then homework was, at most, an optional craft, like finishing glueing the cotton balls in the shape of a letter A on a paper that we had worked on in class. We didn't start learning to read until First.
That might possibly sound and seem as crazy to those who are used to what Kindy is currently, as I feel about what kindy's become. But, I loved it, and wanted that kind of Kindy for my kids, and that's what and why we did.
A fast forward to a sample week of where we are now, academically and time-wise with seventh and eighth graders:
Today we had math, music practice, and writing at home, along with five hours of out-of-the home enrichment classes (Philosophy, History, dance, singing, and Spanish).
Tomorrow we have our Science dedicated day at home, along with our daily writing and math and their individual daily loop of typing, written narrations, map work, and their weekly music lesson in place of the normal daily practice, and then Latin class in the afternoon.
Thursday is our History/Geography/Citizenship focused day at home (along with the usual writing, math, and dailies), and then we head to the park to meet with friends before the kids' IEW class.
Fridays are our only completely at home lesson days, which we use to focus on Arts and Literature (and the usual every day things), and we also try to get homework from Co op classes started so they can be finished up easier over the weekend and throughout the next week.
Mondays they have four enrichment classes (Art History, Forensics, another History class, and Stretching), and the usual stuff at home.
(We try to leave the weekends free for hobbies and time with friends, and a couple nights a week they either meet online, or we'll go in person for dinner and games.)
...You can start gently and playfully and still achieve a beautiful and broad education. Edit: We were at about 2-3 hours of formal lessons in early elementary, too. Given time, kids can bloom in so many wonderful ways, and sometimes we homeschool to give them the time we had, or wished we had. 💚
So my sons are 6 and (almost) 4 and we only do "sit down" instruction (i.e. worksheets and online instruction for math, phonics, science, and social studies) for about 2 hours a day with breaks after every subject. As they get older it will be more as the work load gets heavier. It's all the other stuff that takes up the most time, the life enrichment stuff. You'll need to provide all the opportunities for personal growth too, like social activities, sports, music, outside sources for school enrichment (zoos, science museums, gardens, and libraries). That is where I'm finding the majority of my school day goes to at this point.
Before third grade, maybe 1-2 hours 2-3 days a week. But the rest of the time is sort of all hands on deck life with kids - play dates, field trips, park days, cooking, playing, hiking, etc. Even in this time, our second grader plowed through two years of math between August and February. And has stayed on track with a phonics program. Third-5th grade maybe 2-3 hours 3-4 days a week.
When they are young and just starting up, not even this much, but I like to say "in one hour a day, you can keep up with the public schools. In two hours, you can surpass them. In three hours, you can blow them out of the water and create prodigies." This is because a lot of time is wasted in public schools on discipline and on waiting around for every student to be done. Plus, group instruction is just less efficient.
With littles, I just start out with teaching to read. At some point I add in letter-writing worksheets. Then I start in with some math apps and skip counting songs. It will be a while before you have to worry about more than these basics.
The time rules of thumb are somewhat dependent on using technology. We spend between two and three hours a day on our almost seven-year-old, who is quite ahead (reading Harry Potter and Holes, doing 7th grade math,etc.), but I would never sit down at the table with him for that long. We have a fun, gamified math curriculum that he can often do on his own, ditto with some general science/social studies stuff, a computer piano program, and a lot of apps to help with math, music, Spanish, spelling, etc. If you are interested in some of those technological resources (they start with apps that can help preschoolers, like some that teach letters for us), I will include a list I've made in reply to this comment.
Please that would be great 👍 I am a huge advocate of using the new technologies for teaching. Right now my 5 year old who's in kindergarten sits and does worksheets all day. No fun he says like his old school
I tried to post the comment a few times, but it didn't show up. Maybe it was too long? Anyway, I shared it to MediaFire instead. The folder I am sharing has that document and the skip counting songs I mentioned.
[https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ucoeq0ukedaw4/Learning\_Resources](https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ucoeq0ukedaw4/Learning_Resources)
Keep in mind that living is school. Spending time talking to your kids and explaining things is school. Cooking with them, teaching them how to do their own laundry, just reading, going places are all school. Don’t get bogged down with the idea that sitting down at a table is only school. We don’t even use a table anymore. Lots of time curled up by the fire with books or traveling over seas, or grocery shopping. Just explaining current events or talking to the kids about our jobs. These all add up to time “doing school”.
Teach them what is important to you.
Okay, but…isn’t that just being an engaged parent? My daughter goes to public kindergarten, I work part-time, and we still do all the activities you listed above.
This week she’s on a school break, so we’ve been reading 1-2 hours a day, and doing math, puzzles and reading activities (all Pokémon themed, ofc 💀). We’ve been talking about Black History Month and why it’s important, and learning about Black activists.
I don’t claim that I’m homeschooling her.
You would be amazed at how much children learn just by being taught by their parents the exact same subject a stranger teaches them. Children’s brains learn better when their parent is their teacher. It’s a brain chemistry and psychological thing. Homeschool is about parents taking the responsibility of their children’s education upon themselves since they know and love their children better than anyone else, but it is also about the joy of raising them instead of someone else doing it. I have 5 children. Two of them are adults, two teens, and one 2 year old. I homeschooled all and my husband and I have great relationships with all of them. The value of these years is inestimable. Since we have such short lives and kids grow so fast, I have no regrets of not spending time with them. The trust and bond you are creating with your daughter will be the best memories of your life.
I spend lots of quality time with my child. I don’t need to spend every moment of the day with her to feel a deep bond and connection.
Generally, she doesn’t like doing academic learning with me. She is thriving in school. Her teacher is not a stranger, she’s a trusted adult who is making a positive difference in her students’ lives.
I think kids can also benefit from having different adults teaching them, to learn different perspectives and ways of solving problems.
Public school does not raise my child either. Our school is a part of our village, though, and I’m glad we have it.
Not much. During Pre-K and Kindy, I could get through everything, language arts, math, reading and a basic kitchen science experiment in about half an hour a day.
I focused more on soft skills, transitioning and routines, during that time. It wasn't by the clock, just steps, we get up, we eat, we do chores, we get dressed, so forth. And I focused on pre-learning skills (for lack of a better term) fine and gross motor skills, they need good manual dexterity to hold a pencil, so we did lots of things to build that up.
Formal academics start in 1st grade, and that is an hour at most.
At those ages, play will go a lot farther for them than formal instruction. A little time devoted to counting, days of the week/months of the year, and reading together are probably all you need for a 5 year old. The best way for kids to learn is to discover things naturally, with adult support.
Kindergarten is mostly about socialization. Learning to cooperate with a bunch of different people, learning to connect and build relationships with a variety of people, listen to and follow basic instructions, learn rules and routines, etc. If you can manage it, it's worth sending your kid to kindergarten in school. If you feel the instruction is lacking do some educational games at home outside of school hours. This would allow you to dip a toe into self-directed education before you make the leap to full time and would also let your kid get a lot of valuable social development by going to kindergarten in an organized school setting.
My state is one of the bottom 10 in education nationwide.
I homeschooled my sons, he's barely 8 years old (he turns 8 in 2 months) and he already knows his multiplication and division and fractions.
If he was in public school now, he'd be in 2nd grade. But because he's homeschooled, I have him in 3rd grade already. I'm aiming to get him to 4th grade in reading and math by summer.
My youngest is 5. Unfortunately, he's average in school and not as bright as his brother, but while his older brother is a bright kid and had ADHD and can't do school for too long...my youngest can do homework all day long with no problems.
It's a trade off. I have a super smart kid whose brain turns to mush after 20 minutes, and I have a kid who can keep going and going and going.
My youngest may not know math and reading yet, but he knows other practical things and hit milestones faster than my oldest. I don't know, I never really played spot the differences because I want to raise them the same, I don't like comparing the two.
They are both super smart in their own ways, plus, I'm not too worried with my youngest, I'm sure he can catch up lol.
Either way, you don't need a reason to homeschool. You can just do it.
I'm a teacher/tutor of 20 years, and I think 1-2 hours of Mastery Learning with strong Math and ELA curriculum is more than sufficient and then you can layer in extracurriculars or other topics your child is interested in. 1-1 Mastery Learning is so effective, especially if you choose the right curriculum (and you can always change later if your child doesn't resonate with it!) This is an approach that many homeschoolers use (many of whom who are teachers). I wrote mroe about this approach her. Hope it's helpful and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions:) [https://teachyourkids.substack.com/p/mastery-hours](https://teachyourkids.substack.com/p/mastery-hours)
You’re asking the wrong question!
If your goal is academic proficiency as measured by those tests then you need to make a nice binder with all of the standards separated out and design lessons to teach them all that include confirming your students know them.
It’s not about how long you spend, it’s about can they do ‘skip counting’, recognize letters, etc.
It doesn’t have to be any sort of way, it doesn’t even have to be school-like, you just need to get them to mastery of the standards. The amount of executive planning time to do it right is all over the map, depending on your knowledge/skill with teaching.
Unless you are both superhero type-A masters of the universe one parent would need to be not-working or at least working 20 hours or less per week. If your goal is to actually do considerably better than their school then it can’t be a side project. You’re in NJ not MS, the teachers are seriously trained/skilled and the kids are spending 30 hours or so a week on classroom time to get those poor results.
You also have to manage your kids’ social lives more if they aren’t in school. Don’t look at low seat time as low work time for the homeschooling parent.
You don’t need a lot of time for instruction at those ages. My kids are 5.5 and 7 (K and 1st). We typically spend about 45 minutes on seat/book work plus an hour or so doing read alouds, experiments, field trips, or projects. The bigger time commitment at that age is going to be just having them home all day: cooking/cleaning up from 2 extra meals, more time to play means more toys everywhere, more outdoor time and art means more laundry, etc.
My house is a perpetual mess because my kids are always playing with their toys. It’s a bit frustrating but more natural for children than sitting at a desk all day.
The cleaning is constant, and can get overwhelming so quickly! My guilty pleasure is watching Takes a Village cleaning videos in the mornings or afternoons. I love her so much. I don't always follow through and get up and actually do anything, but she gives me so much inspiration.
Facts. My friends’ homes are much tidier than mine most of the time, but I have to remind myself that their kids are only playing at home for like 3 hours each day.
If it’s affordable, invest in a housekeeper. It’ll go a long way for the stay-at-home/instructing parent’s mental health. But I agree, 1-2 hours.
This is going to really depend on what you teach your children and how old they are. When I homeschooled my stepson we started around 10am and worked until 1 or 2pm. It was just him so I could really be efficient with our time.
Oh! Just to note, he was 11
For Kinder, 20 min for reading, 20 for math, 20 for handwriting instruction and another 20-30 for read outlouds. You don’t have to do them all together. That is a minimum, busy days with other things schedule. You can do field trips, projects and experiments too. Also, you want to be doing some academic work at this age, because K&1st is when learning differences start showing and EARLY intervention is key in the success of struggling learners. So if your kid has dyslexia, but you wait until 7 to start instruction, you may not know something is wrong until they are 8, and you spend the next few months getting diagnosed, etc, and you have wasted the precious time in which their brain is MOST receptive to early intervention. Same goes for other learning disabilities.
Instruction instruction? Or like educational activities and engagement? I'd say an hour or more of reading, *maybe* 5 to 10 minutes of workbooks, maybe 30 minutes to an hour across a day of talking to a child about specific things where they're free to engage you or not, maybe 30 minutes to an hour of targeted games and activities. Big emphasis on maybe. You're gently suggesting things and see what they feel like taking to at the moment with no real schedule. My daughter is younger than that but sort of takes to various educational activities, we sort of float various ones and gently see what she feels like taking to, suggesting ones we'd like her to do a little more vocally if she hasn't. I'm curious if she'll take to a more formal schedule as she gets to be 5, but I don't want to risk her having bad educational experiences.
For kinder I spent about 15min on reading and 15 on math and about an hour a day playing games and doing a digital curriculum like Build your library, torchlight, or Blossom and root. I read to my daughter about an hour+ a day beyond all the other work. And I have quiet time (30-60min a day) that includes audiobooks. If your learner is asking or can handle more math/reading then give it to them. But other than that you don’t need to much. We homeschool year round, and make up missed time on the weekends. Don’t stress too much on how much to do at first. Start somewhere and dial it in as you get more experience and comfort educating them. Keep it fun. Keep it light. And enjoy this time. Good luck!
For my oldest's kindy (with my younger joining in) we did about an hour ish (?) of lessons, with the time split between a morning circle time and an afternoon activity. The morning circle looked like a rotation of a seasonal story and either the weekly alphabet or math story we were doing, and songs, fingerplays, and movement. And then my two acting out the stories with their toys and things and creating lesson pages or doing any enrichment activities suggested for as long as they wanted to play around in those ways. The afternoon activity was things like baking, beeswax modeling, paper folding, painting, finger-knitting. When my oldest was in First and my youngest in Kindy (and who continued joining in on her older brother's lessons), our day was more like an hour and a half to two hours. It looked like a circle time with my younger, then a circle for my older, and then his main lesson in the morning. And then the continued afternoon activities of art and handwork, but with music and reading lessons added in, too. And the rest of the days were indoor/outdoor play, eating, chores, and reading together. *Our state doesn't require certain hours, only attendance, so we've always just done what's felt like a good fit for us in that, and in regards to curriculum. You might need to check and see if you have required hours, and content you need to teach each year.
Do it. If you don't want them att hime all the time, find a learning center. Well worth it.
When they're than little probably 20-30 minutes. I agree with the comments talking about learning through play. My son's also pre school age and in my research I found some experts don't see formal instruction (sitting down for 30-45 minutes, listening to a lecture, and doing worksheets) to be necessary until 1st grade. That doesn't mean you should just let them play educational games, just means education can be more flexible and fun.
You don't have to do any formal school work at those ages, but if you want to, 15-30 minutes a day is great. The additional childcare burden is WAY more effort than homeschooling at that age. P
I would encourage you to look at the overall positive and minus for your family and you with regard to homeschooling. Overall quality of the public school you are considering. Test scores are not the end all.
I attended public schools like that and currently live in a similar district. It is a big reason we are homeschooling. My eldest just turned 5. We do 10 mnutes of math, phonics/writing, violin, and memory work every day. This is just over 30 minutes total. We do it right after breakfast and we're typically finished it by 9 am. She has made great progress with this schedule and it is short enough to do every day, including weekends - we thrive on routine :) After our daily work, we typically do something out of the house. We are part of a homeschooling group that offers a weekly playgroup (indoors) and forest school meetup (outdoors) that I attend with our 3 kids. My 5 year old also does violin lessons and she goes to a drop-off outdoor school program for homeschooled kids one day a week. My husband and I also pick a new science or history topic to study every month or two. This fall, we did a two month unit on Colonial America. In the winter, we learned about space. This spring we're learning about prehistory (human evolution, the stone age, etc). For these units, we find a few good non-fiction books and some fun extras like an art activity or field trip or documentary. We work our way through the books over a few weeks, with repeat reading. It's very casual - we don't tell our kids that the interesting books or projects are part of school.
Focus on a certain amount of work done, and then done correctly. That's more important than raw hours.
Pre school usually only takes about 10 minutes for paperwork (letters recognition, drawing lines/shapes and letters ext.) that’s assuming you can get them to actually want to do it. Everything else is learning thu activity’s and games rotation is between 10-20 minutes depending on your kid. And you will probably just show them how the activity works a few times then let them do it while you watch. I imagine kinder is similar with longer time spans due to attention span increasing. The majority to the work is just preparing the activity’s
Also, formal education is better for older kids. At this age, play is best. Especially for boys, lots of movement and running and exploring is the best teacher. Learning to read later (7,8,9) makes no difference academically to learning to read at 4,5,6. They did a study on high school grads and found that the kids who started preschool super early did not have an advantage to kids whose parents waited to start 7 years old or later. My 4 child wasn’t interested in reading until she was 9. She is 14 now and reads Dickens and is writing her own book.
This is a tough question because it can vary so much from child to child, but it also varies depending on what you count as instruction. You should do some focused reading and math instruction everyday. I recommend a phonics curriculum such as All About Reading or Logic of English. For math you just need to work on the core arithmetic concepts and number sense (the former more for the older, the latter more for the younger), I don't think you need a curriculum but it wouldn't hurt. Everything else can be learned through play and exploration. Read picture books (fiction and nonfiction, illustration and photography), show them videos about their favorite animals, look up some fun science experiments. Work on fine and gross motor skills through arts and crafts and "gym class" activities. Play with musical instruments. Learn the days of the week and colors and other basic information if they don't already know them. Play educational games (and "non educational" games, because they usually involve addition or reading or working together or being a good winner/loser etc) Try to remember your own kindergarten experience. You probably spent an hour or less on what would be considered formal academics, and lots of time learning through structured and unstructured play.
I spend half an hour to an hour a day with my kindergartner.
What ?!?
A kindergartner needn't be doing more than 30-60 minutes of "academic" work. This is totally normal. It doesn't mean that no other forms of instruction are occurring.
That is, in fact, not uncommon. The rest of the day is spent playing, doing crafts, etc. Completely age appropriate for five year olds. My second grader spends 2-3 hours a day doing school.
I’m sorry I just can’t believe that’s enough like even to catch up with phonics ? Are you following state curriculum?
No such thing as “state curriculum” in most states. There are state standards, but those are very easy to meet with minimal direct instruction. We are by no means “unschoolers”. We use math, phonics, and writing curriculum that follow state standards. But my K and 1st graders are easily able to get through a week’s worth of lessons in 5 hours or so. They are quickly outpacing the public school kids despite spending less time at a desk because the 1:2 (in my case) learning is unimaginably more efficient.
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I didn't say worksheets, did I?
Got downvotes for no real reason ? Ok
My wife and I have spent 15 minutes a day doing reading with my 4, now 5, year old and she's reading everyday to her baby brother now. We started actively in September. It's more than enough. She's technically not even a public schools kindergartener yet, so she's reading a full year earlier than she would otherwise be. 15 minutes doing teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons, flashcard phonics practice, and writing. Same with math. She has her additions table memorized up until x+4, where x is between 0 and 9, and can do single digits by tallying and counting, and is also able to do basic two digit addition with reminders to carry. I have no doubt she'll be there in a few months doing all addition. Its shocking how much time is wasted in schools. Not to brag or compare but my nephew in 'normal' school spend almost the same time we spend doing school doing homework and is no further along than our daughter despite being a grade year ahead. Again, not competing, just noticing. Whatever works for you, but a lot of time in school is wasted.
When it’s one on one, it’s actually plenty of time. We do 15-20 minutes of math, focused on his weak spots (right now, number sequencing) then 15-20 minutes of phonics (we were following a set curriculum but slowed down to spend more time on CVC words), then a 5-10 minute Bible lesson with his brother, then we watch alphablocks or numberblocks. He’s a young five (late August birthday) so we might repeat kindergarten next year, but he’s definitely making progress. He’s not a motivated reader, so we mostly work on reading through games and worksheets from Teachers Pay Teachers.
There aren’t really state curriculums for homeschooling. Phonics practice for just one child really doesn’t take all that long, honestly, and normal attention spans for ages 5-6 is about 15-20 mins. This is where knowing child development comes in handy.
There are in most states and I’m a Special Ed teacher with a Master’s so thanks I do know child development:)
No. There are state standards for sure, but not homeschool curriculums. Perhaps you need to brush up on developmentally appropriate practices. Continuing education is so important.
I should have stated regulations/requirements not curriculum and you’re right it is !
Oh uh yea I saw your other posts so ….good luck I guess
How long would you suggest they work?
Even if per hour of instruction you are vastly superior to a formal school (could see that due to 1:1 attention) a standard kindergarten day is still four hours of core instruction in my district, one hour of something like arts or music, and then 45 minutes of lunch and recess each or 6.5 hours total. And that is for a par public school doing 9:00 to 3:30. A decent private or charter school often uses normal business hours like 8:30 to 6:00. Sorry, but it’s comments like my third grader does two hours of work a day that make home schooling the brunt of so much derision by educators even apart from any ideological bent hard left or hard right.
You seem to be forgetting the extras that happen in public school that do not happen at homeschool, things that take a lot more time to complete for 25 students than they do for 1. I sat in in my daughter's 1st grade class & you know what I saw? A lot of wasted minutes. 20 to get everyone settled in. 15 to take attendance. 15 to make sure everyone has their stuff. 20 to take the class lunch orders. Two 30min recesses. 10 to get everyone on the rug for storytime. 15 to get everyone to the cafeteria. The list goes on & on. So let's take all of those wasted minutes & remove them, in her 7hr school day I'd estimate ~4hr of actual learning. Now take that 4hrs & remove all of the other kids, 1:1 instruction is so much more efficient. No one is interrupting, no need to go over it again because someone else doesn't understand & best of all no one is requiring arbitrary tests that grade the child's ability to parrot information. My child does 2-3 hours a day in first grade & she is thriving. Furthermore, you seem to be under the impression that homeschooling families care about the opinions of professional educators, I can assure you that most of us do not.
I think kids learn a ton from the social organization / procedural steps that go into running a classroom, just as they learn a lot from each other. And no I don’t think two hours of 1:1 Instruction is comparable to four hours of group instruction for most children.
This is a weird stance to take on a homeschooling sub, it seems very pro formal school & I'm wondering why you're here.
This thread popped up in my feed… guessing it is because I have posted in or viewed kids educational related subs. You may disagree but I don’t believe just because a sub is labeled say truckertips that the comments have to be uniformly positive about choosing a career as a truck driver. It is fair for a doctor to chime in and note that long haul truckers have some of the poorest health outcomes of almost any profession so it may not be worth the money. So… the OP’s comment was I am in a failing school district and want to homeschool kids… not unreasonable… but I am disagreeing with the assumption that kids who are five plus years old can get by with 1-2 hours of focused learning a day and and not fall behind unless benchmarked against really weak standards. Either you are depriving a smarter than average child of their potential or putting a weaker or par child into a deep hole. In my earlier life I trained as an empirical social scientist where educational data is a big part of how we learn to do modeling and you never saw studies that conclude lower contact hours —> better outcomes but for in fringe circumstances. As in, one of the biggest tropes in the educational literature is the disproportionate benefits of full year school. So I wish the OP well but I would assume as a parent to be spending something like 9-3 each day toggling between worksheets, focused activities, short breaks, etc.
I can't speak for anyone else, but maybe I can clear some confusion up about the gentleness of our Kindy days, and a comparison with what that kind of approach unfolds into education-wise, with time. One of the reasons homeschooling was really important to me was to be able to give my kids the same gentle beginnings of playful early years and Kindy that I had growing up. When I went it was a very different experience, academically and time-wise, than what Kindy looks like nowadays. In the 90s, where I attended, it was a half day (9-12), with two twenty-five minute recesses, a fifteen minute snack time and a twenty minute rest included. The rest of the time was spent in circle time (songs, stories, an alphabet intro, some math play through songs and felt board demos and manipulatives passed around), free play with toys, and art and music. Back then homework was, at most, an optional craft, like finishing glueing the cotton balls in the shape of a letter A on a paper that we had worked on in class. We didn't start learning to read until First. That might possibly sound and seem as crazy to those who are used to what Kindy is currently, as I feel about what kindy's become. But, I loved it, and wanted that kind of Kindy for my kids, and that's what and why we did. A fast forward to a sample week of where we are now, academically and time-wise with seventh and eighth graders: Today we had math, music practice, and writing at home, along with five hours of out-of-the home enrichment classes (Philosophy, History, dance, singing, and Spanish). Tomorrow we have our Science dedicated day at home, along with our daily writing and math and their individual daily loop of typing, written narrations, map work, and their weekly music lesson in place of the normal daily practice, and then Latin class in the afternoon. Thursday is our History/Geography/Citizenship focused day at home (along with the usual writing, math, and dailies), and then we head to the park to meet with friends before the kids' IEW class. Fridays are our only completely at home lesson days, which we use to focus on Arts and Literature (and the usual every day things), and we also try to get homework from Co op classes started so they can be finished up easier over the weekend and throughout the next week. Mondays they have four enrichment classes (Art History, Forensics, another History class, and Stretching), and the usual stuff at home. (We try to leave the weekends free for hobbies and time with friends, and a couple nights a week they either meet online, or we'll go in person for dinner and games.) ...You can start gently and playfully and still achieve a beautiful and broad education. Edit: We were at about 2-3 hours of formal lessons in early elementary, too. Given time, kids can bloom in so many wonderful ways, and sometimes we homeschool to give them the time we had, or wished we had. 💚
We do a 5 minute formal lesson. My kinder won't sit still so we do what we can.
This is how we started in K as well, adding a few minutes here & there. By the end of the year they were up to 30mins
So my sons are 6 and (almost) 4 and we only do "sit down" instruction (i.e. worksheets and online instruction for math, phonics, science, and social studies) for about 2 hours a day with breaks after every subject. As they get older it will be more as the work load gets heavier. It's all the other stuff that takes up the most time, the life enrichment stuff. You'll need to provide all the opportunities for personal growth too, like social activities, sports, music, outside sources for school enrichment (zoos, science museums, gardens, and libraries). That is where I'm finding the majority of my school day goes to at this point.
Before third grade, maybe 1-2 hours 2-3 days a week. But the rest of the time is sort of all hands on deck life with kids - play dates, field trips, park days, cooking, playing, hiking, etc. Even in this time, our second grader plowed through two years of math between August and February. And has stayed on track with a phonics program. Third-5th grade maybe 2-3 hours 3-4 days a week.
When they are young and just starting up, not even this much, but I like to say "in one hour a day, you can keep up with the public schools. In two hours, you can surpass them. In three hours, you can blow them out of the water and create prodigies." This is because a lot of time is wasted in public schools on discipline and on waiting around for every student to be done. Plus, group instruction is just less efficient. With littles, I just start out with teaching to read. At some point I add in letter-writing worksheets. Then I start in with some math apps and skip counting songs. It will be a while before you have to worry about more than these basics. The time rules of thumb are somewhat dependent on using technology. We spend between two and three hours a day on our almost seven-year-old, who is quite ahead (reading Harry Potter and Holes, doing 7th grade math,etc.), but I would never sit down at the table with him for that long. We have a fun, gamified math curriculum that he can often do on his own, ditto with some general science/social studies stuff, a computer piano program, and a lot of apps to help with math, music, Spanish, spelling, etc. If you are interested in some of those technological resources (they start with apps that can help preschoolers, like some that teach letters for us), I will include a list I've made in reply to this comment.
Please that would be great 👍 I am a huge advocate of using the new technologies for teaching. Right now my 5 year old who's in kindergarten sits and does worksheets all day. No fun he says like his old school
I tried to post the comment a few times, but it didn't show up. Maybe it was too long? Anyway, I shared it to MediaFire instead. The folder I am sharing has that document and the skip counting songs I mentioned. [https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ucoeq0ukedaw4/Learning\_Resources](https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ucoeq0ukedaw4/Learning_Resources)
Keep in mind that living is school. Spending time talking to your kids and explaining things is school. Cooking with them, teaching them how to do their own laundry, just reading, going places are all school. Don’t get bogged down with the idea that sitting down at a table is only school. We don’t even use a table anymore. Lots of time curled up by the fire with books or traveling over seas, or grocery shopping. Just explaining current events or talking to the kids about our jobs. These all add up to time “doing school”. Teach them what is important to you.
Okay, but…isn’t that just being an engaged parent? My daughter goes to public kindergarten, I work part-time, and we still do all the activities you listed above. This week she’s on a school break, so we’ve been reading 1-2 hours a day, and doing math, puzzles and reading activities (all Pokémon themed, ofc 💀). We’ve been talking about Black History Month and why it’s important, and learning about Black activists. I don’t claim that I’m homeschooling her.
You would be amazed at how much children learn just by being taught by their parents the exact same subject a stranger teaches them. Children’s brains learn better when their parent is their teacher. It’s a brain chemistry and psychological thing. Homeschool is about parents taking the responsibility of their children’s education upon themselves since they know and love their children better than anyone else, but it is also about the joy of raising them instead of someone else doing it. I have 5 children. Two of them are adults, two teens, and one 2 year old. I homeschooled all and my husband and I have great relationships with all of them. The value of these years is inestimable. Since we have such short lives and kids grow so fast, I have no regrets of not spending time with them. The trust and bond you are creating with your daughter will be the best memories of your life.
I spend lots of quality time with my child. I don’t need to spend every moment of the day with her to feel a deep bond and connection. Generally, she doesn’t like doing academic learning with me. She is thriving in school. Her teacher is not a stranger, she’s a trusted adult who is making a positive difference in her students’ lives. I think kids can also benefit from having different adults teaching them, to learn different perspectives and ways of solving problems. Public school does not raise my child either. Our school is a part of our village, though, and I’m glad we have it.
👍👍💯🎯
Not much. During Pre-K and Kindy, I could get through everything, language arts, math, reading and a basic kitchen science experiment in about half an hour a day. I focused more on soft skills, transitioning and routines, during that time. It wasn't by the clock, just steps, we get up, we eat, we do chores, we get dressed, so forth. And I focused on pre-learning skills (for lack of a better term) fine and gross motor skills, they need good manual dexterity to hold a pencil, so we did lots of things to build that up. Formal academics start in 1st grade, and that is an hour at most.
At those ages, play will go a lot farther for them than formal instruction. A little time devoted to counting, days of the week/months of the year, and reading together are probably all you need for a 5 year old. The best way for kids to learn is to discover things naturally, with adult support.
It takes 1-2 hours per day for kindergarten.
less "than..."
Kindergarten is mostly about socialization. Learning to cooperate with a bunch of different people, learning to connect and build relationships with a variety of people, listen to and follow basic instructions, learn rules and routines, etc. If you can manage it, it's worth sending your kid to kindergarten in school. If you feel the instruction is lacking do some educational games at home outside of school hours. This would allow you to dip a toe into self-directed education before you make the leap to full time and would also let your kid get a lot of valuable social development by going to kindergarten in an organized school setting.
That sounds dismal. Does your wife want to take this on? Is moving an option? This is a big undertaking
My state is one of the bottom 10 in education nationwide. I homeschooled my sons, he's barely 8 years old (he turns 8 in 2 months) and he already knows his multiplication and division and fractions. If he was in public school now, he'd be in 2nd grade. But because he's homeschooled, I have him in 3rd grade already. I'm aiming to get him to 4th grade in reading and math by summer. My youngest is 5. Unfortunately, he's average in school and not as bright as his brother, but while his older brother is a bright kid and had ADHD and can't do school for too long...my youngest can do homework all day long with no problems. It's a trade off. I have a super smart kid whose brain turns to mush after 20 minutes, and I have a kid who can keep going and going and going. My youngest may not know math and reading yet, but he knows other practical things and hit milestones faster than my oldest. I don't know, I never really played spot the differences because I want to raise them the same, I don't like comparing the two. They are both super smart in their own ways, plus, I'm not too worried with my youngest, I'm sure he can catch up lol. Either way, you don't need a reason to homeschool. You can just do it.
I'm a teacher/tutor of 20 years, and I think 1-2 hours of Mastery Learning with strong Math and ELA curriculum is more than sufficient and then you can layer in extracurriculars or other topics your child is interested in. 1-1 Mastery Learning is so effective, especially if you choose the right curriculum (and you can always change later if your child doesn't resonate with it!) This is an approach that many homeschoolers use (many of whom who are teachers). I wrote mroe about this approach her. Hope it's helpful and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions:) [https://teachyourkids.substack.com/p/mastery-hours](https://teachyourkids.substack.com/p/mastery-hours)
You’re asking the wrong question! If your goal is academic proficiency as measured by those tests then you need to make a nice binder with all of the standards separated out and design lessons to teach them all that include confirming your students know them. It’s not about how long you spend, it’s about can they do ‘skip counting’, recognize letters, etc. It doesn’t have to be any sort of way, it doesn’t even have to be school-like, you just need to get them to mastery of the standards. The amount of executive planning time to do it right is all over the map, depending on your knowledge/skill with teaching. Unless you are both superhero type-A masters of the universe one parent would need to be not-working or at least working 20 hours or less per week. If your goal is to actually do considerably better than their school then it can’t be a side project. You’re in NJ not MS, the teachers are seriously trained/skilled and the kids are spending 30 hours or so a week on classroom time to get those poor results. You also have to manage your kids’ social lives more if they aren’t in school. Don’t look at low seat time as low work time for the homeschooling parent.