How Many Hours to Homeschool
How many hours should you homeschool? That’s one of the top questions from homeschool families. When I first started homeschooling my daughter, I tried to resemble a structured 7-hour public school day. I’m a former teacher so I just assumed our homeschool day needed to be similar. I soon realized that wasn’t working. So I did some research and saw that generally a homeschool day is much shorter than a public school day. So I made some changes. I started planning out 1-2 lessons per day that lasted less than an hour. I use The Good and the Beautiful curriculum [HERE] I also started incorporating daily outings, extracurricular activities, and weekly field trips. This significantly made homeschool better for us.
Why Homeschooling Takes Less Time
I found the chart below to be very helpful for homeschool families. This chart outlines the hours per day to homeschool by grade level with minimum and maximum hours. Homeschool hours are typically shorter than public school hours because homeschooling eliminates aspects of a traditional school like class transitions, distractions, waiting for other students, and student-to-teacher ratio.
Key Points
- Homeschooling offers individualized learning for the child
- Homeschooling can have higher engagement with child
- There is less transition time between subjects with homeschooling
- There is less distractions with homeschooling
Research to Support
There is a lot of research to support homeschooling hours being shorter than public school days. The image below is via the Illinois State Board of Education Research. It’s important to understand that guidelines for the amount of hours to homeschool might vary based on the state you homeschool. You can find out if your state requires a specific amount of homeschool hours [HERE]. This chart is a helpful baseline for homeschool families that simply want to understand how many hours per day their child needs to be doing academic school work. Remember that every homeschool family is different. Also, kids learn in different ways that might require more or less time.
Additional Daily Activities
It’s important that your homeschool day is more than just academic school work. Within your daily homeschooling routine you can add in going to the park, taking a walk, or exercising. As a homeschool family, there are going to be daily tasks that I have to do and I use these as simple teaching moments. When I go to the grocery store, I teach my kids about the importance of eating fruits and vegetables. I also include math lessons with my kids counting the money to give to the cashier. Some weekly activities to consider is having your kids involved in homeschooling co-ops and/or extracurricular activities such as sports and clubs. As a homeschooling family, there are lots of teacher discounts you can receive when you sign your kids up for extracurricular activities.
Schedule/Routine
Your homeschooling day doesn’t have to resemble a structured traditional school day. However, I believe it’s good to have a daily or weekly rhythm/routine for your kids to follow. I believe most kids thrive best when there is some level of structure within their homeschool day. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can be flexible and change things up to what best fits your family.
I hope this was helpful information as a general guideline on how many hours you should be homeschooling your child. Remember to do what works best for your family dynamics and have fun with homeschooling. Check out my blog Benefits of Homeschooling at the Library
XOXO,
Ashley
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