Doing enough

pecangrove · #1 07-14-2008, 04:57 PM

How do you know when you're doing enough each day? Do you go strictly by how many pages of this or that gets done, or by how your child is feeling, or by the clock?
Today was our first day of school (he's in K, doing 1st g work). I had gone through last week and taken each day's folder and put in the pages I wanted done that day. It seemed to be plenty, but when we did the work today he finished it all in about an hour and half. Is that enough, or does that sound right?
He did 2 lessons from his Letters and Sounds (a beka) book, 2 pages from his Handbook for Reading (abeka), 3 sheets of addition, his daily calendar math, our free reading (I read short stories to him, or he reads a reader to me), one page from his Health, Safety and Manners book and then he watched a LeapFrog dvd.
Does that sound adequate, or should I add more somewhere?
Thank you!

MamaBear · #2 07-14-2008, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pecangrove

How do you know when you're doing enough each day? Do you go strictly by how many pages of this or that gets done, or by how your child is feeling, or by the clock?
Today was our first day of school (he's in K, doing 1st g work). I had gone through last week and taken each day's folder and put in the pages I wanted done that day. It seemed to be plenty, but when we did the work today he finished it all in about an hour and half. Is that enough, or does that sound right?
He did 2 lessons from his Letters and Sounds (a beka) book, 2 pages from his Handbook for Reading (abeka), 3 sheets of addition, his daily calendar math, our free reading (I read short stories to him, or he reads a reader to me), one page from his Health, Safety and Manners book and then he watched a LeapFrog dvd.
Does that sound adequate, or should I add more somewhere?
Thank you!

Sounds like your ds is doing well. Reading about him doing Abeka Letters and sounds and the Handbook for Reading brought back fond memories of my ds doing Abeka.

What I did with our curriculum was take how many days we were required to do per year and then look at how many pages were in the work book and divide that out . If he finishes early and is up to doing more assignments there is nothing getting ahead of himself in case you have a sick day or something.

Great job!

pecangrove · #3 07-14-2008, 05:07 PM

I know with the letters and sounds book there are 150 lessons, but each one is only 1 page. That's why we did 2 today. Each day of the week will be a little different; for example, tomorrow will be reading/writing, math and science, with misc. stuff like free reading, computer games, etc.
We'll do science and SS each 2x a week with L. Arts and math being our daily base.
I just want to make sure I'm doing enough, and it's hard to tell, esp. at the first of the year.

MamaBear · #4 07-14-2008, 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pecangrove

I know with the letters and sounds book there are 150 lessons, but each one is only 1 page. That's why we did 2 today. Each day of the week will be a little different; for example, tomorrow will be reading/writing, math and science, with misc. stuff like free reading, computer games, etc.
We'll do science and SS each 2x a week with L. Arts and math being our daily base.
I just want to make sure I'm doing enough, and it's hard to tell, esp. at the first of the year.

Are you using the entire curriculum from Abeka?

pecangrove · #5 07-14-2008, 05:33 PM

No, just the Letters and Sounds set, Handbook for Reading set, and then a couple of other books. One is a Health, Safety and Manners and the other is a SS book - can't think of the name of it right this moment!

We have a handwriting workbook, for math we do a calendar math set I made and Miquon, for science we have a workbook and then lots of experiment sets. Then we also have random activity books, arts/crafts, a DVD based guitar lessons thing that DH bought, computer games, Leap Pad books and all kinds of reading books.

MamaBear · #6 07-14-2008, 05:59 PM

Sounds like you have the entire curr covered.

When my ds' were in that grade they would finish early too. We were required to do four hours per day.

Actressdancer · #7 07-14-2008, 06:17 PM

K was at most a 2 hour event each day for us.

Don't stress about Kindergarten. Seriously. Remember that most school districts don't even require it.

ColoradoMom · #8 07-14-2008, 06:52 PM

I can honestly say that we've never gone over 3 or 4 hours for any of the grades we've done, and that pretty much includes k-12.

Last year it was about 2 to 2.5 hours (5th grade)

Next year it will be more like 3 to 4 horus, but only because he wants to do Japanese and it adds 30 minutes to his day everday.

I've heard of families doing homeschool hours like a regular school day - I just don't know what they do with all that time.

Deena · #9 07-14-2008, 07:02 PM

That's about right for K. Sometimes we did only a few minutes, sometimes we did 3 hours. I went with the flow of how the child felt.

This is important: If you assign an amount that you think is adequate for him to get done in a day to get things done in the school year, and he gets it done, does it matter whether it takes 45 minutes or 5 hours? He got stuff done in 1 1/2 hours which is good for K. DON'T "PUNISH" HIM FOR DOING A GOOD JOB AND GETTING HIS WORK DONE, BY GIVING HIM MORE WORK!

It'll work out well. He's still little. Let him be a kid still as much as possible. K doesn't have to be too hard or structured, because they learn so well with hands-on stuff and following their lead to a certain extent!

But it sounds like your plans are good, and solid, and he'll do fine!

Birbitt · #10 07-14-2008, 07:34 PM

That sounds great to me, my boys are also both doing Kinder this year and our days take from 1-2 hours. We do bible, math, phonics, handwriting daily, with science and ss each on two days a week, and we have art and music (which we don't really plan at this age it just happens) they play outside or swim each day as well but I don't include that in school time. So it sounds right to me.