mommydama | (no subject)

It is taking us a solid two to two and a half hours to get through everything in the Calvert K curriculum. And a lot of it seems like over the top repetition. I had hoped to supplement this with some religious ed and maybe start learning Spanish, but that is just too much time spent on school with a five year old! I'm not sure what to do. Mari loves it and asks me all morning when we are doing school (we are doing it in the afternoons), so she isn't anywhere near burning out, but I know I will be soon if we add much more to this. I don't know...any suggestions from Calvert pros?

We are only a week and a half into this, so I shouldn't make any judgements yet, but I'm feeling very confident about my ability to teach Mari right now. I was nervous about it at first because we do tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes, but so far it is mostly like playing together and there has not been a single instance yet of me having to push at all. Of course, so far this stuff is way too easy for her so that might be why I've not had to push. I've looked a little more closely through the books and we'll be getting to more challenging stuff for her in about a month. This must be the famed (notorious?) Review that I've heard Calvert users lament. The first few months are just review so this must be review of the pre-K stuff and a time to help get the child settled into the routine of school. At least I hope so. Otherwise, we really should have started with first grade, not K.

Zoe wants to do school today too. I'm going to have to look and see if I have some workbooks or something to go along with todays lessons that she can do with us. Funny girl. I should pull out our FIAR stuff and do some of it with her and Luci...but that is more time spent on school. I never imagined it would take up this much time at this age.

I'm tired today and I don't really understand why. I got plenty of sleep last night. I want to get out of the house too. I feel antzy. Maybe we will go for a walk today. It is very pretty outside.

Laundry. I hate laundry. I must go do laundry now.

Threaded | Flat

homeschooling takes ALOT of time. 2 hours isn't too bad, especially if she is enjoying it all :) awesome! I have set up my schedule so we are doing schoolwork off and on ALL day. We do cicrle time then two hours (1 hour each) of table work in the morning, then throughout the day we will do the reading, expiriments, life skills, and PE.

Its extrememly time consuming and not easy by any means but definately well worth the effort :)

FIAR is fun, and shouldn't take too long, I think you should definatly give it a go. I am using a modified BFIAR with Dex and Matt this year :)

And whenever its a nice day and you want to go outside, do! its physical education ;) being able to go out and enjoy the day is one of the nice benefits od hs'ing you can always do the work in the afternoon/evening if need be :)

I knew homeschooling COULD take up that much time, which is why we do school on the weekends, and all summer and every holiday just as if it were always a school day...I just can't devote all day long to homeschooling, when I also have babies, and want to cook real food, and just plain don't want to besides. I don't know if that's something you'd be willing to consider, but it has worked out very well for us so far.

Coupla things (per Shell). First, if you are doing everything in the curriculum it will pretty much take 2 to 2.5 hours per day. As you grow more familiar with the material you may find places that you can edit or substitute. The weekly rhythm that we settled into was four days of fairly strict curriculum (which we got down to 2 hours or less per day) and one day of field trips or other activity. Weekends were off.

Second, the repetition is part of the method. At this age, repetition is the key to learning. It helps drill these important foundational exercises into the kiddies' mushy brains. You may get tired of it; she probably won't.

Third, remember that Calvert is a holistic approach. Calvert's Kindergarten is "easy" when compared to some other curricula because the pedagogical method is different—Calvert's purpose is to teach a student how to learn, not to teach mastery of a particular body of knowledge; the knowledge mastery is a great side benefit. The time spent laying this very broad and strong foundation will pay off in a couple of years. Picture a curve that starts very gently at first and then begins to turn at a geometric pace. Calvert's 4th grade year, for instance, would be brutal but for the great foundation laid in the Kindergarten course and built upon with increasing rapidity in the first three grades.

BTW, we always got some of those ubiquitous pre-school coloring/workbooks from the bookstore or teachers' store for the not-ready-for-Kindergarten kids so they could feel like they were "working" too.

Hope this is helpful.

I think it depends on what your goals are. If you're expecting regular academic progress and you have a date in mind by which you want the children in a formal academic setting - whether that's middle school or university - 2 hours of academic work for a kindergartener seems reasonable if it's broken up into half hour chunks.