Hannah and I compared notes the other day. We each have 3 children; our eldests are first-grade boys. They’re very different kids, and we school them differently. Hannah teaches fewer "subjects" — IIRC, there’s math, reading, copywork, some art study, and music — but spends much more time reading aloud, and reads much richer stories (with a sprinkling of graphic novels, i.e., Tintin comics). I’ve provided Oscar with more "subjects" and done less reading aloud. He has spelling now, and Spanish, and catechism, and art, and history. We did recorder for a while but have suspended it (just too much at once). I have a stack of geography workbooks that I offer occasionally, too. And of course there’s math, reading, copywork.
I like doing many different things, each fairly short. The downside is that our days feel a little bit more chaotic as I try to remember everything on the list. Maybe I’ll switch to doing each subject on fewer days, spending more time per day? Math two days a week, two lessons a day? Still, it seems, so much of these early grade studies are skill building (reading, spelling, math facts, letter formation, Spanish pronunciation) — and short daily practices are supposedly better than longer, less-frequent practices.
Maybe I need to plan lessons by the week instead of by the day, so that the individual days are a bit more flexible.
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