Questions: Homeschooling & Time

People ask me a lot of questions about homeschooling, and you know what?  That's fine.  I homeschool, I love homeschooling, and I love talking about homeschooling.  A lot.

Seriously, I could talk about it all day, and some days I do.

I get asked so many questions about it that I decided I need to start writing posts about them to help everyone out.  So here's my first one.

The biggest one (at least lately) is the time factor question, and the questions that always seem to overlap with it.  So, here are the questions I've been asked (and asked, and asked) along with my responses.  Hopefully they will help.  Tomorrow I'll put a sort of "Part 2" of this post that tackles the question of scheduling, since those two questions always seem to go hand and hand.

Also, please don't think that just because I wrote this post I don't want people asking me about homeschooling.  I don't mind getting asked questions about it.  Seriously, I don't.  This post is more for people who haven't emailed me yet, or who are too afraid to.  Any questions you have just ask away and I will gladly answer.

How many hours a day do you homeschool?

It varies day by day.  By our old/usual schedule we spend at least 1 1/2 hours and at most 3 hours.  It depends on everyone's mood, how well everyone is able to focus, and what our workload looks like.  On a perfect day, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee do three subjects in the morning for 30 minutes, 3 subjects right before lunch for 30 minutes, and Scooby-Doo does his schoolwork for 30 minutes somewhere in there.  Spread throughout the day we read board books, storybooks, and chapter books.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee will practice their reading, or counting by 5's or 10's, or work on puzzles.  Some days they play school with their dinosaurs or stuffed animals teaching them the same things they or their baby brother are learning.

Right now our schedule is a bit disrupted because Scooby-Doo goes to speech therapy everyday for 2 hours, and we have an hour round trip to get him to and from there.  So, right now we only do schoolwork for about 1-1 1/2 hours each day.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee, on a perfect day, will do 3 subjects for 30 minutes in the morning followed immediately by Scooby-Doo doing his for 30 minutes.  We then clean up, have lunch, load up the car, and take Scooby-Doo to speech therapy.  While he's there we go off to the library to practice their reading and I'll read them some storybooks or a chapter book.  We do this for about 1 1/2 hours everyday.

Is homeschooling your kids hard to do/lots of work?

Ummmm, no.  Actually, it's really easy and loads of fun.  Like I said, we don't have to spend much time on it each day so it's easy in that sense.  Also, it's fun to plan schoolwork lessons around things like Batman.  Or Halloween.  Or Vikings.  Or whatever strikes your (and your kids) fancy.

As far as lots of work, it can feel that way when you start out and you're a bit lost and confused and you're worried about doing it wrong, but give it a couple of weeks (or even months) and you'll find your stride and the work will just kind of disappear.  It's only as hard and complex as you make it.

Where do you find the time?

We have a set schedule in the morning and that really helps (more on that tomorrow).  Otherwise it only takes a few minutes here, a few minutes there.  Plus, you can incorporate homeschooling into any activity.  Baking a cake uses fractions & math, if you have dvd's some movies have a Spanish (or French) language option, you can read signs as you walk your kids to the park or have them read labels in the grocery store.  These are just a few ideas.  You don't have to sit at the table and do worksheet after worksheet and lesson plan after lesson plan.  You can use anything to homeschool your kids (especially with the internet at your fingertips).

Why do you spend so little time on homeschooling each day?  If your kids were in school then they would be learning for six hours or so, not the little time you say.

Every time I get asked this I get amused.  Don't get me wrong, it's a legitimate question, but stop and think back to your days in school.  High school was almost 15 years ago for me, but I can still remember it, and how some days it would take teachers 15 minutes to get the class to settle down and pay attention.  I also remember starting to pack my bag 10 minutes before the bell rang because I just wanted to get away from whatever boring class I was in and go hang out in the hallways with my friends.  I also remember substitute teachers, and how no one would listen to them and just spend the whole class acting like it was a free period.
Elementary school (where we are at right now) is no different.  Scooby-Doo does his speech therapy at the elementary school in our area, so I'm there everyday, and honestly teachers only spend about 15 minutes or so on their lessons for each subject.  A lot of time is spent trying to get hyper kids to settle down and stop talking.  Kids ask for bathroom breaks or disrupt the class in other unintentional ways.  It must be frustrating to try and get 20-30 kids who have a short attention span to settle down and pay attention for a few minutes.
So, when classes are only 45-60 minutes long and half of that is spent on settling down the class, how much are your kids really getting out of school?  I'm not saying don't send your kids to school, I'm just saying be practical here.  In elementary school you are there for 6 hours.  Two hours of that (at least) are lunch, recess, and gym class (need to burn off all that extra energy!) each day.  That leaves 4 hours for class, half of which is spent on bathroom breaks, settling kids down, and shuffling them room to room.  That leaves 2 hours for class, which is pretty much how much time we spend.

Now, my kids don't have extra homework to take home, but they do have unlimited one-on-one time with me to help them get a concept down, no matter how long it takes.  Kids don't get that in school.

I remember 5th grade, and learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  I also remember the unit test and how I was supposed to underline the verbs, circle the nouns, etc. in each sentence.  I remember looking down at that page and not having a clue, so I just started circling random stuff.  I remember handing in my test, and the teacher calling me back to her desk five minutes later.  I remember her saying "I won't accept this.  Take it back and redo it.  Did you even try to answer the questions?"  I remember feeling so embarrassed and humiliated as I walked back to my desk with my test.  I remember moving around some of my circles and lines, and handing the test back in at the last minute so I didn't get called out again.  I don't remember what my grade was, but do you know what else I do remember?  I remember that unit was over, and we never went over it again even though I clearly did not understand it.  My teacher couldn't hold up the whole class because of one kid.  And I also remember not understanding those concepts until high school, when I had to teach them to myself because no one ever took the time to make sure I knew.

Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't send your kids to school.  But while my kids might only spend a couple of hours each day on actual work, we work on something until they understand it.  We don't just wash our hands of the unit and say, "Too bad, he/she had his/her chance and they missed it."

How do you know what your child's time limits are?

Trust me, they'll tell you.  My kids can only sit still for three subjects at once.  Any more than that and I'm pushing it and they are tuning me out.