This and that on a Monday.

Various things are running through my mind today.  I may (fingers crossed) finally be beating this illness off on my own with no assistance whatsoever from the medical community.  Yesterday, for the first time in 2 weeks my fever was 99.8 instead of ranging between 100 and 101.  Woohoo.  I'm still having a lot of back pain but I suspect that is because our mattress really, really needs to be replaced.  Since I am an un-reformable stomach sleeper, it seems to affect me more than my husband.  I even slept on my stomach while pregnant! 

Also running through my mind is a question about the hours of school on the Homeschool Lounge.     How many hours of school are too many or too few?   How may hours of actual instruction do the public school kids get each day?  How many hours are spent waiting for others to finish, waiting for others to go to the bathroom, lining up, etc?  I don't know the answers to these questions.   I've heard people say that school kids get an average of 15-20 minutes of instruction each day, but I don't know if I believe that. I think they probably get more.   What my husband did with the math was select the books he wanted the kids to complete this year and then divided the number of lessons by the number of days of school and decided how much they should do each day.  I work out different things for the different types of materials that I have them use, with books, a chapter or lesson each day, with DVD or computer lessons its usually a lesson each day.   When they are done with their lesson, they are done.  They don't have to wait for the other kids in their class to get done.  When they finish their schoolwork, they don't have screen time, so they have to spend the afternoon doing something else, besides video games.  This leads them usually to all kinds of activities that could be counted as school, playing guitar, drawing, sewing,, exercising outside and reading, reading, reading.

I was reading on the homeschool lounge about second graders doing 6 hours of sitting down, writing and book work and I don't think that's appropriate. If you have a little kid, take the 6 hours and give the kid 1 hour of outdoor play for recess (this is longer than the schools get, but it is the amount that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends). So now you're down to 5 hours.  Take off at least half an hour for lunch - the schools do. ( 4 1/2).  Do some art.  (3 1/2)  Do a a nature walk. (3)  Listen to some music. (2 1/2)  Watch an educational DVD (2).  REad a book together.  (1 1/2)  Then in the 1 1/2 you have left, do seat work, writing, workbooks, etc.  Or you could mix them up a bit and do the bookwork interspersed with the more fun, active things.   Okay, down off my soapbox now.

Donna asked about my oldest son's plans for next year and it seems that he doesn't really have any.  He needs to finish school, re-take his ACT which he will do in June and get his driver's license.  Then, he's probably going to try and get a job to help pay for college and in the fall be balancing working and studying.  He's leaning towards taking classes at an online school because he doesn't want to have to go to classes.  He came out of the public schools in 5th grade with a desire to never, ever set foot in a traditional classroom again and I see his point.  He's used to working on his own.  As for the other 2 kids, the ones we'll still be homeschooling, I'm starting to hatch all kinds of plans for the fall in my head.  Against my expectations, I'm getting excited about homeschooling again.