This week I've been asked several times by different home ed families "How long a day do you spend doing sit down work"? This was a good question because as an unschooling family we keep sit down work to the bare essentials ( or at least what the bare essentials are for our family which are English and Math) so my answer was a surprise to them (and me once I thought about it!). As a precursor to the rest of this blog I will mention that we are hitting all the targets set out on the national curriculum for my eldest's age group and exceeded them in some areas too!
A common misconception about home education is that it has to replicate school with the length of the work day. The reality is that depending on age the work day for home ed children can be as little as 10 minutes! Do we get all our "work" done in 10-15 minutes? YES! Do the kids still spend hours each day learning? YES! Do I think they would benefit more from longer work sessions? Absolutely NOT! Now lets break down why.
The length of an average school week is 32.5 hours with each day lasting around 7.5 hours, including an hour for lunch (this is the standard that I've seen from forums online since every school varies).
OUR average planned learning time each WEEK is around 2.5 hours, excluding extra curricular activities like sports clubs. You're probably thinking "But Ellie, that's ridiculous! How can your children possibly learn everything they need to know if they're spending less than 8% of the time used in schools?!?!"
The answer is simple, I'm not trying to teach a class of 30 who all have different learning styles and attention spans, who all pick different things up at different speeds for every subject AND having to try and keep those 30 children engaged, quiet and in their seats for prolonged periods of time.
I'm just teaching 1-2 children who's learning styles I know and can plan for accordingly. I don't have to do any sort of crowd control on a daily basis so we don't have to spend days or weeks going over the same thing when half of us don't understand because we have to teach it a certain way, we can adapt our technique or move on and come back later.
Teachers can spend hours a day preparing students to move from one lesson to the next, especially in a primary setting with very little time actually spent on the lesson that needs learning! As home educators we don't face this challenge, at least not on a large scale (there are obviously "eugh not MATH" moments and delay tactics to finishing phonics books but for the most part these are short lived and we can still finish our tasks in 10-15 minutes.
So how do you know how long you should be spending each day/week with formal lessons or learning? Well that entirely depends on what you/your children's' goals are in terms of their education but a good rule to remember is:
Age*2=Attention span
Age*3=MAX attention span
Obviously this varies per child but generally speaking children only have an attention span of
2-3 times their age! So a 5 year old at their most engaged would be able to spend 15 minutes on a task before losing focus, interest and most importantly the ability to absorb the information you are trying to give them.
So, how long should YOU be spending on "lessons" each day? Honestly there is no right or wrong answer, only the very scientific method of trial and error to find out what will work for your family and each child as an individual. But isn't that one of the main perks to home education in the first place? Being able tailor to your individual children's needs and learning styles?
When our first September of Home education rolled around 2 years ago I FAILED. Badly. I was so set on recreating school at home, so sure the only way to go was set lessons and timings and demands on number of worksheets finished in a day that I forgot WE set the pace. We set the rules and the reason we didn't send Calliope to school was because we didn't think it would work for her (insert face palm here).
After that initial failure and realizing it didn't actually do any harm to my daughter that she wasn't sitting down and doing worksheets for set 15 minute periods every day we found a flow that works for us. And that flow doesn't have time restrictions on activities! They just take as long as they take and if they need to have a pin put in them after 2 minutes because the focus isn't there, that's what we do.
Becoming more flexible with my expectations has allowed me grow into a much better home educator (and mother). It's one of the hardest things to do. Letting go of what is so ingrained in most of us, the school structure, is so freeing. It opens up so many different learning pathways and I really recommend trying an unschooling method at least for a little while to help you understand your children's learning styles and what makes things click for them. It may be that you end up going back to worksheets and sit down lessons. maybe your children flourish with getting problems and knowing they can solve them. This was (and still is) the case for my husband who likes to find solutions, it's actually in his jog title now! And there's nothing wrong with heading back to that in the end. But why not take the opportunity so few get?
So what happens next? You've finally found your child's learning style, you know their attention span on most days BUT you also know it's time for them to be doing a little more? This is the position I'm finding myself in at the moment. My daughter is finishing up her second year of "school" and my youngest is now showing too much of an interest in getting started for me to be able to divert into just playing.
For my youngest it's simple:
Don't push anything too much
Adapt down the lessons I'm already doing with Calliope
Listen to when he is finished, don't force him to finish
For my eldest it's a little more challenging. I know she can do more than she is. I know she's capable and shown signs of boredom at not being pushed.... But.... because of the earlier mentioned failure when we first started home education she can be very resistant to change!
I'm going to learn from my mistakes. As I'm making changes to our learning routine, remembering that gradual progress is essential and the results will follow. Transitioning from 30 minutes to 2 hours of lessons needs to be a gradual increase rather than a sudden leap. This gradual approach means we all have a smoother adjustment AND we can find our limits more easily. I'm saying WE rather than just Calliope because I know that if I try to go from teaching for 30 minutes a day to 2 hours overnight whilst still trying to achieve all the regular household maintenance, food prep and social groups I won't be able to keep it up for long either! . Remember, it's not about rushing through the process but about embracing the journey of learning and improvement at a pace that suits your family.
So back to the original question, how long is a home ed week?....
It's as long as you need it to be to achieve your family goals.
For some this will be up to an hour a day, for others 5 hours a day. There's no right or wrong way of doing it or set schedule that your child needs to follow and no set path they have to take when it comes to home education.
But whether you're starting out from preschool age or diving in fresh from a school placement start out small and work your way up. You can always add in more later!
How long do you and your children spend on sit down learning a week?
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