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How Many Hours a Day Should You Spend Homeschooling?
Just as each homeschooling family educates their children differently, the time spent engaging in education each day will vary from home to home.
When starting your homeschooling journey, it can be hard to determine if you’re doing things right, and some families may feel like they’re not doing enough.
Modelling homeschooling hours with traditional classroom-based learning is not necessarily suitable for home-based education. This article will look at homeschooling hours and how they differ from conventional schooling.
Government Expectations
Within Australia, each state has their own recommendations and requirements. However, as long as you’re reporting your child’s progress by outlining detailed learning experiences, the time spent educating is up to each individual.
During the global pandemic, the NSW government released a teaching and learning model indicating how much work each grade level student should complete daily. While this is a suggested framework for students learning from home while schools were shut, some homeschooling families utilise this as a guide.
Formal Lesson Hours
Structured lesson hours in a homeschooling environment are generally not documented, as long as there is a record of work being done. Accounting for each hour isn’t necessary, and time spent on ‘bookwork’ will vary depending on a range of factors, including the following
1. Homeschooling hours are different to classroom-based learning
Learning from home doesn’t require set hours or structured learning each day. Teaching comes in many forms and the flexibility of home learning means that your child doesn’t need to be sitting at a desk for 6 hours a day for education to be valuable.
While the opportunities to learn may not look like traditional schooling, the experiences present themselves in a manner that takes learning to a whole new level.
2. Age of the Child
Your child’s age will also determine how much time they spend in structured education. A Foundation-aged child will not spend as much time in formal learning as a child in Grade 7.
A child in Grade one can easily spend 1-2 hours working on core subject areas – English, maths, science and technology – with other experiences such as artistic pursuits, music, swimming lessons, and language lessons added throughout their week.
The plan Euka provides will keep you on track for each of your children to complete their required work within the 12-month time frame.
3. Other planned educational experiences
In the traditional school system, there’s a lot of lining up, assemblies, waiting for resources, lunch breaks, morning tea, and more, which all contribute to the 6 hours spent at school.
When homeschooling, learning doesn’t necessarily stop after the formalised part of your day .Whilst the bookwork may be done within the first few hours of the day, the remainder of the day may consist of learning instruments, meeting with other homeschooling families, doing science experiments and more activities that expose your child to learning.
4. Child’s ability to concentrate
There are many reasons a family may choose to homeschool. The individualised style of learning may appeal to families with children who struggle to concentrate within a class setting.
To ensure their children get the best out of their learning experience, formalised bookwork may take place for a few hours a day rather than attempting to capture their attention for a long period of time.
5. Time blocks
Rather than scheduling every minute of their family’s school day, some families consider their goals and what needs accomplishing. By doing this, they can break the work down into blocks of time rather than exact minutes of the day.
The day can then be shaped by your child’s interests and can be expanded on if they are intensely engaged in the subject matter.
Taking this approach allows flexibility and variation, two common reasons families enjoy the homeschooling environment.
Review and adjust as needed
Just as a teacher in a traditional classroom, you sometimes need to change things and adjust your day. Reflecting on how the week went, looking at any issues and where your child is at in their learning enables you to determine whether your child needs less or more time on their formal studies and how it can be achieved.
The flexibility of homeschooling allows parents to change things to suit their child’s learning style and create new rhythms as needed.
Choose Homeschooling Hours That Suit Your Family
There are many reasons why families choose homeschooling. Whether it be the flexibility, individualised style of learning, family dynamics or a less rigid learning environment, the benefits of homeschooling are infinite.
Trusting the routine that works for your family is the best measure for knowing how many hours are suitable for your family. It will look different for everyone. Some families may follow the Australian term schedule; others may accommodate their child’s schooling four days a week instead of five.
So, how many hours should you homeschool your child each day? It depends on what works for your family.
At Euka, we help homeschooling families by providing a full Australian curriculum that your child can work through at their own pace. Our offerings are flexible while still enabling kids to reach their learning goals.
Ask us how you can incorporate our program into your daily home education teachings that fit within the hours you choose to work within your family dynamics.
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