Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.



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Becky Parker
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Posted: May 27 2006 at 7:06am | IP Logged Quote Becky Parker
How much free time do your children have?   I am typing our schedule for next school year.(I get it all organized and we practice it during the summer so things are hopefully working smoothly once it's time to hit the books in a serious sort of way.) As I type it I realize that my 12 yo ds has very little free time. There are breaks in the day like a break after lunch, and there is time scheduled for silent reading (he is an introvert who loves to read so this is probably his favorite time of day) but other than that he has little time for himself up until about 4:00. Once football starts I'm afraid he'll have none at all. Just so you don't think I'm a slave driver, the schedule also includes things like tea time which are "on the schedule" but an enjoyable part of our day. I justify some of this because I know that if he were in school he wouldn't be home until 4:00, but I'm just not sure. Any thoughts?
Becky
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mom2mpr
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Posted: June 16 2006 at 7:28am | IP Logged Quote mom2mpr
I am so glad you wrote this and I am looking forward to any ideas from people. I have struggled with this myself and looking to the fall "school" time scares me. My kids(8 and 3) want and need to play but there just doesn't seem to be enough time in our days. Maybe it is an attitude on their part that needs to be changed. I pull and pull them through the day: eat, brush teeth and hair, now time for a walk, now let's do some math,etc. When all is said and done I either give up and let them play so I can rest(unless they want me to play with them)or there is no time because we have struggled and frittered the day away Maybe my expectations of them are too high?
Anyhow, hopefully some insight is on its way
Anne
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lapazfarm
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Posted: June 16 2006 at 9:07am | IP Logged Quote lapazfarm
Becky I think this is something many of us struggle with, especially as the children get older. There are so many things we want them to do and learn that it can take all of their time if we are not careful. It can be so hard to balance it all.
But I try to keep in mind that if I want our education to be like lighting a fire, then rather than suffocating it from feeding it too much, I need to step back sometimes and let it catch and burn.
Downtime is important to all of us. Not only to solidify learning, but for our sanity!But you already know that, I'm sure!
My ds will be 11 this summer. Last school year we spent about 3.5 to 4 hours a day (with lots of breaks) on schoolwork. More if he really got into a project. This included about a half hour of math, an hour of science or nature study, and hour or so on whatever other subjects we are doing that day (history, religion, etc)and an hour or so on our unit study (which could be any subject, really). With unit-studies, of course, these things often get mixed up together, so other than math we will often work the whole time on our unit and cover many subjects. Ds does his writing, copywork, grammar, spelling, etc within the content areas, so we don't do them as seperate subjects. Ds does enough reading on his free time that I don't worry about that as a school subject, either.

I know 3.5-4 hours doesn't seem like much when compared to the public school 6-7 hour day, but I am confident we get alot of learning done in that time.(I am thinking next year it will be more like 4-5 hours as we will be bumping up the level of math and adding in a Latin/Greek root word study. But that still leaves plenty of down time.) We usually start around 9-10 and end by 2ish. The rest of the day is his to enjoy, unless there is something he needs to finish up and he takes his time about it.

I don't know if this helps at all, or is even what you were looking for, but this is how we typically structure our day to ensure ds gets enough downtime.

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