BJU Press Blog

How Long Should a Homeschool Day Last?

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Have you ever heard the question: “How long should a homeschool day last”? Maybe you’ve even asked yourself this question. You can relax because there’s really no right or wrong answer. But if you’re concerned, here are some things to consider about the length of your school day:

  • What criteria are you using to evaluate your school day to determine why it’s taking so long? Choose a schedule that works for your family—not one set by other families’ clocks.
  • Do your children learn better by studying the lesson and then doing all the homework immediately with concepts still fresh in their minds? Or is it better when they have a more regimented routine with “subject hours” in which to learn their lessons and then use the remaining time for homework? Remember that you are always in charge of the schedule (even when using Distance Learning). How you organize the day may vary depending on what works best for you and your children.
  • Are your children goofing off or really struggling? Evaluating their activities during lesson time by noting any distractions or excuses to get up from the lesson could key you in on how well your child is learning.
  • How involved are you with your children’s progress? It’s important to make sure they comprehend and properly apply the information they learn.
  • How are you balancing extracurricular activities in your regular day? Do music lessons or sports overlap with academic lessons, pushing them back and extending your day? Have your other children bring independent work to complete, or watch Distance Learning video lessons in the car.
  • How many breaks do you take during the school day? How long do you take for lunch? Making a meal every day takes time (for you and your children); try getting ahead with food preparation. If your kids are older, they can serve themselves with something like DIY Lunch Stations.
  • Are your children studying every subject daily? Keep in mind that each subject is a minimum of a full semester of study. So in order to stay on schedule, they may need to study a subject only two or three days a week rather than daily.
  • Do you have your children estimate the time they think it will take to accomplish a task? Both average and special-needs students often benefit from a physical timer to help them stay focused and to learn to complete tasks within certain time limits. If you give your child the responsibility of choosing the time limit and finishing within the allotted time, it can help him develop analytical estimation and scheduling skills.
  • Are you able to prepare ahead for material that will be covered? Being prepared is a major part in keeping you and your children on the track to academic success and regular routine.

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What Does Math Look Like?

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Typically we don’t think about math as something to look at. It’s a field of study, not a physical object, but being able to see math is a skill that can be invaluable to children. Let me explain.

I regularly volunteer as a math tutor at a ministry that helps adults obtain a GED. Every student I work with learns at a different pace. Some of my students move through the material quickly, doing much of the math mentally. They see the patterns and are able to apply them to new material as they progress.

Other students are able to work though the math, but much more slowly. They stick to procedures, writing out each and every step of all the problems but never really understanding how the math works or how it could be used. It’s usually not a matter of difference in ability; it’s that the one group is able to visualize how math works while the other can’t. This difference probably has a lot to do with how the students were exposed to math when they were in the elementary grades.

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Visualizing Not Just Repeating

Memorizing steps and formulas and then practicing them over and over might allow someone to pass a test, but it doesn’t promote retention. It also doesn’t train children to be good problem solvers. Teaching children to visualize how math works helps them build the problem-solving skills they will need as they move into advanced math.

Let’s look at an example page from our Math 5 that does a great job of showing this idea in action. (Example is from BJU Press Math 5 Student Worktext, page 129.)

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A student could solve these comparisons by changing the denominators to come up with the right answer. That’s a correct way of solving these math problems, and Math 5 teaches that approach. However, as the lesson shows, it’s also important to learn how to solve simple math problems mentally. By using strategies like thinking of ½ and seeing if each fraction is more or less or comparing the denominators, students are able to easily solve simple problems, check their answers, and learn new concepts more quickly.

Learning to See Math

When teaching math, parents should—in my opinion—approach each problem from various angles, even if the child gets the correct answer immediately. Use visuals such as money, cut-out shapes, and manipulatives to show how a problem looks both physically and on paper. Reinforce knowledge by asking questions whenever possible instead of just explaining how things work. As children learn to visualize math, they’ll begin to see math as a series of meaningful challenges to overcome as opposed to a boring list of problems to work though.

For more teaching tips like these, be sure to sign up for our homeschool email.

RETURN

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The Lord’s appeals to His people to “return” to Him testify to the certainty of our wandering. Before the Fall there was no need for Him to issue such a call to Adam and Eve. Sin brought about the awful separation, and we came back only by divine intervention. Only God’s grace can bring our heartbeat back into sync with His own.

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“Return, O Lord, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies’ sake” (Psalm 6:4). “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). “For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not” (Isaiah 30:15). “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee” (Isaiah 44:22). “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7). “And they worshipped him [Jesus], and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:52).

GOLDEN THOUGHT: Let him return unto the Lord,
and He will have mercy.

[Excerpt adapted from Wonderful Words by Stewart Custer (September 21 reading).]

Teaching Grammar the “Write” Way

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Teaching Grammar

Do your children dread the part of the day devoted to writing and grammar? Maybe they have trouble seeing the correlation between grammar and good writing, or maybe they view grammar as boring, impractical, and repetitive. Before college, I felt the same way. So how did I end up with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in English? It all started with a different approach to the subject.

English was my least favorite subject in high school. It was hour after hour of workbooks, rules, and more exceptions than rules. Once I turned in a short story that I had spent hours writing and was disappointed in my grade, not because it wasn’t higher but because it was based solely on the fact that I hadn’t made many spelling errors. In contrast to the drudgery of English, math class was exciting, fun, and challenging.

I left for college excited about being a math major. Reluctantly, I also signed up for the first of three required college English classes. In that class, I began learning some new things. I found out that I could arrange paragraphs in a way that made my argument more convincing. I realized that I could replace linking verbs with action verbs to give my essay strength and vitality. I caught on that writing poetry was more than just finding words that rhymed. My papers were graded on content as well as spelling. I started to love English, and I discovered that I was actually more competent in that area than in mathematics.

Maybe your children share my pre-college feelings about writing and grammar. But the good news is that by using two helpful teaching methods, induction and integration, you can interest your children in English and improve their long-term comprehension of grammar.

Induction

Deduction starts with a general rule, from which you make specific applications. For example, you can give your child a list of auxiliaries (helping verbs) and tell him that be, have, and do can also be used as main verbs; then he can underline all the auxiliaries in an exercise.

Induction, on the other hand, is examining specifics and then creating a general rule. To teach inductively, you would give your child several sample sentences with verbs and auxiliaries and then let him generate his own list of auxiliaries. Using this list, he would determine which auxiliaries could also be used as main verbs. Induction allows children the opportunity to investigate or discover something themselves, stimulating their curiosity and their eagerness to learn more.

Integration

To give the facts of grammar a real-life context, integrate your grammar lessons with writing, vocabulary, literature, and speech. Your child could compose a piece of writing and then revise it, changing the passive-voice verbs to active voice and noting the difference in tone. Ask your child to explain why some sentences should remain passive and why others sound better in active voice.

Maybe your child does not like grammar, or maybe he learns quickly and becomes bored. With inductive activities and creative writing assignments, you can spark interest and improve long-term comprehension. Remember that language is a gift from God, unique to beings created in His image, so it’s important to understand it and use it well. Using a fresh approach to grammar might even reveal some hidden talents. Who knows? Your reluctant grammar student could turn out to be an English major or a writer someday.

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Written by Dana G.

5 Field Trip Tips for Fun and Learning

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Ask any child what he or she remembers most about the school year, and the answer will probably not include desks, worktext pages, or textbooks. I know my own memories as a homeschooled child don’t involve a lot of those things. Instead, I remember the extraordinary days—the day we took off school in the middle of an Illinois winter to go ice skating after watching the 1998 Winter Olympics™, the day we spent at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the day we spent at a wildlife reserve learning about animals native to the Midwest prairie lands. In other words, I remember the field trips.

5 Field Trip Tips

Field trips are an important part of any homeschooling experience. Children of any age can benefit from the opportunity to see and experience new things. But before you start filling up your homeschool calendar with field trips, consider these tips

1. Choose a destination that fits the maturity level of your children.

For young children, consider visiting places where they can see something happen (like candy-making) or touch something (like a fire truck or a baby lamb)—someplace they don’t have to be particularly still or quiet. Although older children might greatly benefit from a trip to a history or art museum, young children would likely find such an outing tedious.

Also, be aware that many planetariums, museums, and botanical gardens may confront your child with nonbiblical worldviews such as evolution, materialism, or liberalism. Before you go, be prepared to help your children think biblically about these issues, but remind them to be gracious and polite to the staff and other visitors who hold these views.

2. Remember that field trips are supposed to be fun.

Don’t stress your children out by threatening to give them a test after a field trip experience or loading them down with pages of questions to answer. Instead, consider making a field trip journal or simply ask your children basic questions such as “What was your favorite thing about the trip?” or “What is one thing that you learned today?”

3. Avail yourself of local and inexpensive options.

Field trips don’t have to be expensive or time consuming. When my family moved to central Illinois in the mid-1990s, we were surrounded by farmland and were hours away from big tourist attractions. Therefore, most of our field trips were local—and often free. We toured the local library, a local fast-food restaurant, and the railroad yard. We identified trees in a local arboretum and went on nature walks. Call around to local businesses to find out which ones offer tours. To keep costs low, consider coordinating a field trip day with another homeschooling family in order to get group rates.

4. If possible, use field trips to reinforce the content your child has already studied.

Hands-on experiences will help your child retain knowledge and may even provide the “spark” he or she needs to study something further. My husband often relates how his love for history grew out of visiting many American history sites during his high school years. My now second-grader benefited greatly from visiting Jamestown Settlement (the living history site, not the actual site) after studying Jamestown in the 3rd edition of Heritage Studies 1. She was fascinated with early Native American life for weeks afterwards.

5. Be over-prepared.

Spontaneous field trips may sound fun, and sometimes they do work. However, planning ahead will save you and your children from potential disappointment. I’ll never forget the day my mother and I planned to take my children to a petting zoo for the afternoon. We packed a picnic lunch and traveled almost forty-five minutes only to find out that our destination was closed for the day.

So do your homework. Know exactly where you’re going and whether you need to make reservations. Call to confirm the trip a couple of days in advance. You might want to even make a Plan B in case it rains.

Now what? Perhaps the hardest part of all: loading the kids up in the car and hitting the road. I know how hard it is to go anywhere when you’re a homeschool mom, but it will be worth it—I promise! Enjoy seeing the spark of excitement in your child’s eyes. Treasure the flood of words that will come as they recount the wonders of new discoveries. Savor the time away from the textbooks and assignments. Make some memories. But be prepared to answer the inevitable question: “When will we have another field trip?”

The Olympics is a trademark of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).