How Much Time Should Our Homeschool Day Take?

Is there anything cuter than tiny little hands trying to write!?? ?? One question I see come up a lot in regards to homeschooling, is “How much time should it take?” I think most people have an understanding that traditional schools run from around 8am – 3pm, and feel like something is wrong when homeschool takes much, much less time.

This isn’t because our kids are learning less, it’s just because we’re able to be more efficient in an at-home setting with fewer kids to manage. How much time your homeschool day will take depends the ages of your kiddos, the curriculum you choose, and to an extent how many children you are teaching.

Generally speaking you should expect:

Pre-K/Kinder to take 30-60 minutes
1st-3rd, 1-2 hours
4th-6th, 2-3 hours
7th+, 3-5 hours

Our oldest homeschooler is only in 5th grade, but the additional time she needs for school is less from me, and more her working independently on math & language assignments. I should also note that these time frames refer to strictly when we’re working on course material, not all the extra little things when might be doing in the day (like reading, playing educational games, etc.)

Having multiple children to teach can make YOUR day as the teacher longer, since things like math & language require more one-on-one help (especially in the younger years,) so I tend to do those separately with the kids. To “make up” for some of that time we try to do as much family-style learning as we can.

I specifically sought out a curriculum that is geared towards teaching science & history to multiple ages at once, vs having a different course per grade. I’ll have another post that breaks down how I do multiple kids at once during the day, but hopefully this post gives a better understanding of the time needed overall.