I am often asked how I schedule my homeschool day. When I mention all my children will be studying and how many books they read a year, many think my kids must have a very long school day. On average our school day is five hours long. Here is a skeleton outline of my school schedule so you can see how to incorporate a variety of subjects and plenty of books into one school year. My year is divided into two semesters which are then divided into two quarters per semester for a total of 28 weeks.
Daily:
copywork (15 minutes)
narration (15 minutes)
nature journals (15-20 minutes)
spelling (15 minutes)
math (20-30 minutes)
language/grammar (20-30 minutes)
Bible (20-30 minutes)
Latin(20-30 minutes)
As you can see that adds up to approx. 3 hours of school time.
CM method normally keeps class time down to 20-30 minutes until the child reaches junior high age and then it increases to 40-45 minutes classes.
Monday/Wednesday/Friday:
History (20-40 minutes, added time for projects)
Logic (20 minutes, one semester course)
Tuesday/Thursday:
Science (20-40 minutes, added time for experiments)
Friday:
Art Appreciation for one quarter
Music Appreciation for one quarter
Poetry and Shakespeare for one quarter
Science experiments or tests if needed
Spelling test
If Friday is slammed or we are working on a project I will skip copywork, narration and nature journals.
So the average day with ALL activities mentioned is still only 4-5 hours.
Reading:
Each quarter they have a literature book and a biography or historical fiction book to read. We also have a read aloud book for each quarter. That is three books per quarter for a total of twelve books for the year. That is a fairly average amount of books. You can easily add in another twelve for the year. Simply take a book and divide the number of pages by the weeks in the quarter. That will give you the number of pages to read a week to complete the book. You will find that reading a good amount of books is not so difficult when divided up in that manner.
Field Trips:
Field Trips are planned out in advance. I think one a quarter is a nice idea but you can always plan a 1/2 day trip or Saturday field trip.
Most importantly,be flexible. You will begin to get a feel for what lessons or plans you can skip or alter in order to do something more profitable. Plan field trips that go along with your studies so that can count as your class that day. On most days I stick to a routine but I am never afraid to go off of it for a real world learning experience. If you have a day planned that will enhance your studies or add life experience and exposure, then only concern yourself with making up for the basics because we all know it should be called world schooling and not homeschooling.
Related Articles:
The Case for Following a Traditional School Year
So Much Curriculum, So Little Time