Ep. 138 - Elementary Homeschooling: How Much Independence Should Kids Really Have? | Smooth Days Part 2

Christy-Faith (0:00)

Welcome to the podcast series, How to Get Smooth Homeschool Days. We're gonna break this up into four parts to take some pressure off your shoulders and bring joy back into your home. Once our kids get into the elementary years of homeschooling, they have a lot more capability. They can read, they can write, and learn some really fun, cool stuff. So why does pushing them keep backfiring? Why are the days so rough? This is supposed to be fun. In episode two of our series, we're talking about the elementary years. This is the stretch where essential tools of learning get built. But there's a catch. An elementary kid will only accept a higher standard from someone they believe is on their side. So we gotta talk about things like disappointment triggers, the math anxiety loop, and how to change your correction to connection ratio without lowering your standards. But also knowing what standards are appropriate. That's really important.

If you are homeschooling an elementary-aged kid, you've probably lived through some version of this morning I'm about to describe. On Monday, your child did multi-digit multiplication or long division perfectly. They looked confident, they understood the steps, and you thought, finally, we've turned a corner. But then today rolls around. You set the same math problems right in front of them, equal difficulty, maybe different problems, but equal difficulty, and they stare at it as if it's written in a foreign language. And you feel your throat tighten, and you try to stay calm, but your voice sharpens just a little bit, and you ask, what do you mean you don't know?

We just did this a couple days ago. And suddenly, what was supposed to be a quiet, calm math lesson becomes a battleground of tears, heavy sighs, and the dreaded head-down-on-the-table meltdown. And that's mild, I know. Welcome to our series, How to Get Smooth Homeschool Days. I'm your host, Christy Faith, and today we're diving into the elementary years, third through sixth grade. Before we dismantle those math meltdowns, and we will, let's take a hot second to zoom out. If you're new to this podcast, or if you've been here since the beginning, I want you to know exactly how we have structured this little series for you. You're right in the middle of a four-part series to match distinct developmental rhythms of a child's life. Episode one was all about the early years, preschool through second grade. That was a lot about matching our expectations with our kids' capacities. If you have a little one, please listen to that. Episode two is today the elementary pivot. The episode coming up after this is all about homeschooling teens. And then the last episode of the series is putting it all together, how to manage multiple kids in all different grade levels. But today though is the elementary pivot. This is a season where the essential tools of learning get built, reading fluency, math fact, automaticity and paragraph writing. It's also the age where your child suddenly looks capable enough to push a little bit, and yet perhaps pushing them keeps backfiring. You're getting resistance, battles, tears. Today, we're going to explore why that happens and how to raise the bar because you want them to grow and you want to stretch them appropriately while protecting the relationship at the exact time. It's possible, I promise. Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about today is cognitive realities and the myth of independent work. The elementary years represent a massive transition and this is the age where moms start looking forward to maybe not having to sit next to their kid for everything. Your child can now read, they can write, they can sit longer than they could at five and pushing them, which isn't a bad thing as long as it's appropriate, it only really works if you know what is online cognitively and what parts of them in their brains are still very much under construction because if you push on a skill that is ready, your child grows and if you push on one that isn't, you get a fight, which leads to a closed off brain, which leads to absolutely no learning. So let's look at the developmental science between the ages of eight and 11 This is when a child's thinking gets organized. One Swiss psychologist calls this the concrete operational stage. It's the age where a child can start to hold two ideas in their mind at once, reverse an operation, sort objects by multiple rules, and follow rules that they didn't invent themselves. But here's the crucial limit. They still cannot reliably reason about things that they cannot physically picture. This means that abstract reasoning, like letting letters stand for numbers, arguing from an unpictured principle, or engaging in deep what-if hypothesis testing might not be possible. They're finding that that type of thinking starts around age 11 or 12 And even when it does start to come online, it remains uneven for years. So what that means is when your nine-year-old is brilliant at fractions and you're cutting up a real pizza, but completely lost, when those same fractions are written as dry numbers on a worksheet, they aren't being lazy or stubborn. It's worth investigating. It could be that they are nine. The concrete operational brain requires physical or mental imagery at this age to make sense of even math. So remember that as you're working through problems and material starts getting a little bit more abstract and difficult, be an investigator and try to figure out if they're capable of doing it. And even if they're capable of doing one thing, remember that it's going to be asynchronous, meaning it's going to be uneven and spotty for probably a couple of years. Okay, so next we need to talk about attention span. I did this in the previous episode. It is so important to continue to talk about. So the general rule of thumb for a child's chosen activity is roughly two to three minutes per year of age. Now remember that I said chosen activity. So yes, your 10 year old can disappear into a Lego project or a drawing for a half an hour, maybe longer. But for assigned work, non-chosen tasks, which is a lot of what homeschooling is, you gotta cut that number in half. A realistic baseline for an elementary kid is 10 to 15 minutes of focused work per setting for ages eight and nine. 15 to 20 minutes for ages 10 and 11 And after that, they need a shift. Now it doesn't have to be a full blown recess. It can be a shift to a different subject, moving to a different chair, or taking a quick walk to the mailbox, shooting some hoops, but they do need it. And let's dispel a myth really quick here, like the video game myth, right? I can hear the mom now saying, but he can play Minecraft for two hours. So his 15-minute grammar lesson is just defiance. I know it might feel like defiance, but it is misinterpreting the biology. Video games and grammar worksheets use completely different cognitive systems. I'm holding your hand while I'm saying this, and I'm only saying this so that you can have more appropriate expectations and have smooth days and enjoy your days. Okay, so those cognitive systems, the video game system is pulled along by external high-frequency novelty and reward. Think Slot Machine. The grammar worksheet, on the other hand, requires the brain to steer itself internally, and the prefrontal muscle that does the steering is still growing. This is also the age where working memory expands, which is awesome. Now, remember what working memory is. It's the ability to hold information in your head while you're working on something. Think of it as the brain's sticky note, and you need that in order to work through more complex math problems, grammar worksheets, reading comp, an eight-year-old's mental note holds about three chunks of new information. And by age 11 or 12, it is close to the adult capacity of four chunks. What this means, yay, is that by this age, kids can follow multi-step directions much better than they did at age five. But remember, close to an adult is not an adult. A three-step direction delivered while they are in the middle of telling you a story will still overflow their mental notepad. The absolute best accommodation at this age, write it down. I can't tell you how valuable just the habit of making lists have been for my own home. It reduces anxiety. It allows kids to come back to things, remind themselves, game changer. Even when your kids come to you overwhelmed with anxiety and nervousness, make a list. It's really just problems that are too big for them to solve on their own. And we want to build that skill to help them solve it. And sometimes a brain dump is the best place to start. Okay, we've covered a lot so far, but when we come back, I want to talk about a huge myth in the elementary years. And most people get it wrong. I'll see you on the other side. As you guys know, this show is free to you because our sponsors make it free and I love them. So make sure to click on the links if you're buying that kind of stuff anyway. Man, please click the links and check out what they're doing. We love our sponsors and as you know, podcasts are not an inexpensive thing to produce. So it is a wonderful way to say thank you. And also don't forget to like and subscribe or give me the stars if I deserve it. Those little robots behind the screen, they push out episodes that have a lot of engagement. If you like watching this show and you think a friend could benefit from it, send it to her, comment a word of encouragement, ask a question. We read all the comments and they help boost the show and put it in front of more eyeballs. So thank you so much. It fills my cup. It really does. Homeschooling for kids means I'm juggling roughly 24 different subjects at any given time. And a few years back during a particularly busy season, I hit a wall. I needed some serious help with the heavy lifting of teaching everything myself and managing schedules for four kids. That's when I found BJU Press Homeschool, and we've loved their courses so much that we keep going back. Some families use them for everything and love it. I use them for certain subjects. Either way, total mental load relief. Here's what my mornings look like now. Let us take science, for example. My three girls do that one together. They fire up the lesson taught by a real teacher, well-produced, actual teaching, not just click through busy work. And I sit there with my coffee, watch them or make breakfast, and we discuss the big ideas. Every BJU Press Homeschool course prioritizes critical thinking, a biblical world view, and hands-on learning. I just guide the conversation and pick which activity or pages or projects we want to do. And everything's already planned out. They have an online platform included for you called the Homeschool Hub, and it keeps everyone on track, both me and my kids, without micromanaging or nagging. And when I have questions, I call my homeworks consultant. These people don't just help you get set up, they're available for you whenever you need them. It's like having a homeschool expert on speed dial. Go to bjupresshomeschool.com or click the link in the show notes to find out more. I want to talk about homeschool math for a minute, specifically CTC math, who I'm so glad is sponsoring this episode, because you need to know about them. I'm picky about curriculum, and there are a few subjects I won't compromise on, and math is on the top of that list. CTC math is what I use with all four of my kids, and it's an excellent K to 12 math program. Rigorous, thorough, comprehensive, everything I want my kids to have in their math education. But without all the stress, the tears, and me having to learn long division all over again. Here's what happens at our house now. My kids log in, a real math teacher walks them through the lesson 4 to 9 minutes clear, step by step, they do their lesson, and finish up with practice problems. The program grades them, and I don't have to remember how to do fractions with unlike nominators or where exactly they left off last week. Which means, I get to be the mom in the room. I can sit nearby, listen in, encourage, fold the laundry, and watch math get done beautifully. Easier on mom, no sacrifice on academics? Yes, please. Join me and tens of thousands of homeschool families using CTC math for their go-to math curriculum. Links in the show notes. Grab your free trial today, and you'll see why we love it for our kids. Okay, welcome back. The great myth of the elementary years is around independent work. So yes, this is the age where independence becomes possible, but it's also the age where many moms overestimate what their kids can do. This happened to me yesterday. I thought my two seventh graders and my fifth grader could do something alone. It was a page assigned by one of the co-op teachers. And on that page, I think there were three to four separate individual tasks. None of those tasks were outside of their capacity, but put together, it was. Even for my seventh graders, I got a lot of overwhelm. They weren't able to do it. They weren't being rebellious or defiant. They were stressed out. And actually, what happened was, I forget what I had to do. I think I had work meetings yesterday. So in that moment, I needed them to be able to do that alone, and they couldn't. So I said, stop, I'm gonna set aside time tomorrow, and we're gonna do this together. And actually, what I did is I took each of the girls aside individually to do the task. And then we talked about the plan moving forward for them to be able to do it more independently. Now will they be able to do that multi-level task list next week? No, I don't expect them to be able to do it. But I do think that if I walk through it with them and they really learn how to do it well, my guess is by week five, six, seven, they'll be able to do it at a clip, no problem. So let's establish what is actually realistic regarding independent work for these ages. At ages eight and nine, 15 to 20 minutes of independent work on a familiar task is appropriate. So yesterday, that task was unfamiliar. I got zero. So familiar is a practice or a review, nothing brand new that they have to process and figure out. At ages 10 and 11, we're looking at 30 to 45 minutes of independent work with a clear written list and you checking in at the start, middle and end. What is never realistic at this age is expecting a child to learn brand new academic material from a textbook all by themselves or expecting them to self-monitor well. A 10-year-old doesn't reliably notice when they have stopped understanding. I think that's pivotal here. That self-awareness isn't quite there yet. Where you and I were able to read a page and say, oh, wait, wait, I didn't understand that. Let me reread it. They don't have that capacity yet. They still need some help. That's a skill that we want to grow in our kids for sure. But we also want to have realistic expectations. So they could very well quietly do an entire page of math incorrectly without realizing it. And we might initially view that as carelessness or they rushed through just to get it done. And it might not be that. And even if it was that rushing, that's something to address. Noticing that you have lost that thread of comprehension is a metacognitive skill that is one of the very last executive functions to mature. So when something that you did a few days ago vanishes today, don't panic. New skills are highly fragile, especially under fatigue, stress or change. And unevenness is not regression. Don't panic. Now, if you start to see patterns, that's a different conversation. And we have those conversations every day with women in Thrive Homeschool Community, where they're worried. We ask a lot of questions before we recommend that a child get evaluated. And we do that every day because we know what to ask. So I'm not saying ignore patterns here, but I am saying, I think in the elementary years, we expect a lot more of our kids to be more capable of doing. Unevenness in learning is not regression. It's simply what learning looks like as the brain starts to learn how to consolidate information. But that's not all I have to say about retention. That's the stuff sticking in the brain. Because what if what they learned on Tuesday and vanishing by Friday isn't about a tired brain? What if there is an invisible emotional roadblock creeping into your lessons? One that is so powerful, it can literally freeze your child's working memory. And if we're not careful and handle this well, they can start to believe things about themselves that aren't true. We're going to dive into that right after the break. Is your child struggling with attention, memory, reading, writing or math? If you're experiencing this, you know how heart wrenching it is to watch them face these hurdles. You've poured love, time and attention into their education, yet the struggle persists, leaving you feeling stuck and desperately searching for answers. You guys, I want you to know about LearningRx, a proven program designed to help your child's cognitive skills, enabling them to think faster, learn more easily and perform at their best. I'm talking getting real long term help here with things like ADHD and dyslexia. LearningRx is backed by 35 years of research and their results are transformative. Use code HOME50 for $50 off your cognitive skills assessment. Go to learningrx.com or click the link in the show notes. OK, we have to talk about the emotional life of kids in elementary years. And the heavy load of shame. But I don't want to forget first that if you are new to homeschooling or if you're new to the Christy-Faith realm of things, I want to let you know that my website has so many free resources for you from a 101 series on how to homeschool with a free download, sample schedules, a five-minute homeschool style finder, even a homeschool check-in for those of you who have been homeschooling five, ten years, just to make sure things are healthy. Go to christyfaith.com and grab anything and everything you need. We're happy to have you. Let's talk about emotional life. At age five, a bad school day is almost always about physical things, sleep, food, a sudden burst of energy. But by age nine, around there, the emotional variable shifts dramatically. A hard school day in the elementary years is often driven by a core question. Does my mom approve of me? How am I doing compared to other kids? Am I smart? Not smart? Are my parents disappointed in me? By this age, kids can start to name what they feel we want that. And the constant, almost all day long, co-regulation that our kiddos needed in preschool is less frequent now, but still necessary. You know, people want kids to be able to self-regulate emotionally way earlier than they can. I mean, let's be honest, most adults can't do it. And kids certainly can't do it if we can't. They learn from us. So although an elementary kid by this age can wait their turn, handle losing a game or take a no in stride, under a heavier load or stress, when they're tired, embarrassed, or feel criticized, that capacity thins out quickly and they need to borrow our calm. Now I'm filming this towards the beginning of the school year. This week is the week that co-op is starting. And I've noticed as we're layering in tons of new things, getting homework ready for co-op, talking about our new schedule there, that the capacities with the everyday things just aren't as wide. Just this morning, I had a talk with the kids about the learning experience of flexing these flexible thinking muscles and giving ourselves grace when we feel like we have a lot on our plate. It's easy to snap at other people, right? When we're stressed out. So when our kids have a lot going on in their own lives, it's stressing them out. It's not that they're just explosive and that they aren't moving towards self-regulation, which honestly is probably years away anyway. They just become a little bit more needy in a good way. We want you to be the safe person that they go to. And also keep in mind at this age, this is also the window where self-conscious emotions bloom. Things like pride, guilt, peer comparison, and shame. Let's be honest, your nine-year-old knows exactly who reads faster than she does. They are hyper aware of fairness. And this goes without saying, they keep a mental scorecard of everything. That's normal. They still cry when they get deeply frustrated. It breaks my heart when parents say, grow up or you're acting like a baby. They're acting age appropriate. We expect a child at this age to cry still. And make no mistake, this is where they start to be more intuitive. Our physical presence is noticed. They can hear microscopic shifts in our voice. They read our nonverbal cues. This is where you start having kids ask, are you mad at me? It's because they're reading nonverbal cues. They hear the tiny sigh. They see the fleeting look of frustration on your face. And it's hard for them. They don't know what to do with that information. It's so important that you stay that safe person. We want secure attachment. So there was a major developmental review, found that how parents are involved in learning matters far more than how much. This is what this means. Parental involvement that is warm and supports the child's own active efforts builds them up. But involvement that carries negative feelings like frustration, disappointment, or heavy control, chastisement or punishment, actually hurts academic outcomes. Even if you're spending hours sitting at the table, sitting next to your child for two hours with an edge of tension in your voice is not support. So, if that's you right now, I hope this sheds some light for you to look a little bit deeper into what's going on in you and in your kid. And I am not saying that from a judgmental place. I really struggled with this in my early years of homeschooling. I am a card carrying member of high expectations and what I would call now pretty harsh parenting. It backfires. But not only is that type of day emotionally hard on everybody involved, but it adds a massive cognitive load. And unlike five year olds, elementary kids remember, right? A preschool blowout is forgotten by lunchtime. But a nine year old remembers tone, tension, a sigh. And they do begin to build a narrative about themselves. Now, I am not being shaming here. I am just delivering truth. And no matter where you are right now, you can heal. I had to face this myself. We don't want our kids telling themselves, I am bad at math or mom gets mad when we do school. This is why shame is the most dangerous emotional variable at this age. In the early years, we deal with refusal. I won't or the meltdown, which is I can't. But at eight to 10, shame enters the chat. Identity shifts. I'm bad. I must be stupid. I always mess up. I am just not a math person. Interestingly, research on math anxiety shows it can appear as early as first and second grade. It actually hits kids with the strongest working memories the hardest. Now why? Because the mental worry and anxiety consume the exact same working memory notepad that the brain needs to solve the math problem. The kid who freezes is literally experiencing a cognitive block caused by worry. One famous study found that when parents are anxious about math themselves and help their kids frequently with math, their kid actually learns less math over the year and becomes more math anxious. So the underlying signal is crystal clear. If math makes you tense, your tension is acting as the roadblock in the room. And the fix isn't to stop homeschooling or say I tried homeschooling and it didn't work. Don't sell yourself short. This is an opportunity for you to grow, to source differently, to get help. It's something to work through. So what does this all mean? How does this change what my day to day looks like? We're gonna get practical right after this. Hey, shout out to Summit Health Share for sponsoring this episode today. I love Summit Health Share, partially because it's my husband's company. What I think they're doing over there is absolutely incredible and life-changing for many families. What is Summit Health Share? Well, first, let me start with one of my rants about health insurance. Need I say anything? Probably not. But the copays, the denials, the in-network, out-of-network nonsense, having to get permission to see your doctor, paying thousands a month and then them still fighting with you every time you need just basic healthcare. I believe so much in the freedom that comes with leaving health insurance and moving to health sharing. Now, it's not health insurance, but it does replace it. And it's been around for over a hundred years. With Summit HealthShare, most families and companies save 40 to 60% and they have a 98% customer satisfaction. You get to see any doctor that you want, even holistic ones. No networks, no permission slips. You ladies know how I feel about freedom. I want medical freedom too. Summit HealthShare has different plan options depending on what your family needs. You might just need major medical and that's great. On our plan, we get a little bit more and we get free labs, free office visits, free prescriptions and no copays. Our family of six has saved $1,000 a month. And if it sounds too good to be true, it's not. It's actually how healthcare should work. We've just been accustomed to overpaying for our healthcare. And a lot of us don't need to do that. So if you are on traditional health insurance at all, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to summithealthshare.com. When you get to the home page, you'll see the savings calculator. Go ahead and click that. It takes only two minutes. And when you see those numbers, what you should be paying for the healthcare you need, you are going to be grabbing the phone so fast because healthcare is a serious thing. And you're going to have really personalized questions. And they are used to answering all of them. Tell them all of your concerns, all of your questions. And they will tell you full stop if this is going to be a fit for you or your family. And tell them that you listen to the show because I want you to have the VIP treatment. Go to summithealthshare.com today and the link is in the show notes. This podcast is also brought to you by The Christy Faith List. Now hold up because I want you to know what this is. I'm really proud of what The Christy Faith List has become. It started really scrappy just compiling recommendations because I was fed up with guessing which businesses and providers and doctors weren't going to give me a hard time when I walked through those doors. And I had tons of friends and family members with nightmare situations where they felt like they were walking into an ambush situation just when they were trying to get help for their families. And I was sick and tired of the discrimination that homeschool families were getting. But since then, it has grown into a massive directory of colleges, businesses, doctors' offices, reading specialists, occupational therapists, homeschool graduates that are in business themselves now. You name it, all in one place. Because why wouldn't we want to do business with the people who share our values and actually want to work with homeschool families and not give us a hard time? It is completely free for homeschool families to search. And if you are a business owner or part of an organization that loves homeschool families and wants to reach more homeschool families and grow your business in that way, please sign yourself up. We want to know who you are. It's the place where homeschool families support the people who support us. Go to thechristyfaithlist.com today. So let's talk about how this plays out in our everyday lives. If your child is tensing up during a lesson, here is the golden rule, two explanations, then stop. If you have explained a concept two different ways and they still don't understand it, here's your permission to not try to do a third, fourth or fifth explanation in that same sitting. Each new explanation adds stress and cognitive load, especially when you explain it another way and they still don't get it. Now they're starting to be consumed with, I'm not getting this. By explanation three, your child is no longer trying to learn math. They're using 100% of their brains to manage their frustration and maybe even yours. So instead, close the book and calmly say, this concept just needs some time to cook in our brains. Let's put it away, do something we already know how to do, that's on our list today, and we'll take a fresh look tomorrow. Now, does this mean that maybe you will work slower through your curriculum? Yes. Does this mean that you should panic about not finishing your curriculum by the end of the year? No. If you are a momma listening right now and you are stressed about covering all of the material that you need to cover by the end of the school year, please stay in our ecosystem. Read the chapter on de-schooling in my book Homeschool Rising. The faster I can break you of that lie that you tell yourselves, that lie, it's almost an idol. I feel like it has a chokehold on so many of us. The faster I can help break you free of that, the faster you're going to move to homeschool days and this homeschool life that you absolutely love. And not because you're doing less or giving up, because you actually have a better understanding of what educating a child actually is. A child isn't a bucket to be filled. The ancients said that so long ago. It's a fire to be ignited. And education is more about skill, not content. Okay, let's get into the nitty gritty and talk about academics. A common trap for elementary homeschool moms is treating every subject as equally urgent. We're finally at the age where we can do more, and we want to do more. We have shiny object syndrome. Everything is cool from the coding class to karate to basket weaving to nature walks to read alouds to classical music. You name it. It's so exciting. I get it. It really is so exciting. And you can do all of that. You just can't do all of it at once. If we treat every single homeschool subject with equal weight, you are going to end up with an exhausting 6-7 hour day, a burnt out child, none of your responsibilities done, and the constant feeling of being behind. How do I know? I was there. In these elementary years, your primary job, make no mistake, is to protect their sense of wonder and their love of learning while also being responsible for three main academic hinges. One, reading fluency. Two, basic numeracy. So math, including math fact automaticity. Very important. I tell all parents of elementary age kids, do math twice a day, do the curriculum, and then later on in the day, practice those math facts, the multiplication tables, the addition, the subtraction, all of that. We don't want our kids counting on their fingers when they're getting to more complex math problems like long division. And three, communication skills, both verbal and solid paragraph writing. Now, I didn't start formal writing programs with my kiddos until third and fourth grade. I have four kids. Some of them started in third grade, some of them started in fourth grade. It just doesn't make sense to make kids learn how to write paragraphs when they're not cognitively ready to do it. So I watch and I wait, no need to pull our hair out, asking kids to do stuff they're not capable of doing yet. And if those three hinges are pretty solid by the end of fourth grade, what that's going to do is all their future academic subjects in upper elementary and middle school, even high school will become infinitely easier. So these are the years where you set up the foundation for future success. Bells and whistles are fun and do them, but don't think that those bells and whistles are as important as these foundational skills. Here's what's realistic developmentally. Third grade is that big shift. We want to start seeing the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Keep reading out loud to your kiddos because listening comprehension is still years ahead of their independent reading comprehension. It's also where they get exposed to more advanced vocabulary and fall in love with story. Math at this age focuses heavily on multiplication and division and of course, math fluency and writing focuses on crafting one exceptionally solid paragraph with clear topic sentences and details. And I do like a variety of writing styles too. But the thing about the paragraph is it also requires the organization of ideas. So although writing a poem and feeling the feels and writing those down are great, amazing exercises, we also want our kids to be able to communicate clearly, which means the prioritization of ideas. And during these years, an entire school day should take no more than two to three hours of focused instruction. Now will it take longer because you're taking breaks and yada yada? Yes. But if you were to actually condense into that seat time, the learning time, two to three hours. Fourth grade, age nine-ish, math moves into multi-digit multiplication, long division and equivalent fractions. This is the year where multiplication facts are a must. In fact, if your kids are not on the road with these, I would stop. I did this with one of my kids. When we went into this and they didn't have the automaticity with the math facts, we stopped the curriculum to shore those up. It took about a month. I mentioned this in my book, Homeschool Rising, so important, and I'm glad I did it. Writing now expands to several paragraphs on one topic, simple research reports, and a day runs three to three and a half hours, probably longer because you're taking breaks, and eating, and sharpening pencils, and snuggling, and reading aloud. All right, fifth grade, math introduces fraction operations with unlike denominators and decimals, writing moves to multi-paragraph pieces with a clear introduction and conclusion. It's a big year. Science and history can now use a real spine. This is where they can start to chew on really fun ideas. You know, nothing too heavy, nothing traumatic, but this is where things can start to get interesting. And your day is going to run three to four hours. All right, sixth grade, age 11, math enters the doorway of pre-algebra, right? We got ratios, percents, basic equations. Writing is now moving to arguments supported by evidence. Now, this is more on the expository side. I'm not talking about the creative writing side in this episode right now. And a meaningful chunk of this school day, we want to work towards more independence. We want to set our kids up to be capable to start managing their own day with our support, not with us abandoning them. Remember what I said earlier in the episode about the expectations that we can hold regarding this. What I don't want you doing with an 11 year old is trying to do every single subject with them every single day and pushing them farther than what they're ready for. It's just not necessary. Like there's no sense teaching a complex five paragraph essay when they haven't really nailed down paragraph writing. And please don't drop the family read aloud just because your child is in junior high. They love it. And a word on the math facts. They've done studies about what makes math facts sticky. And it's a little bit every day, not like a big Friday session of drilling. In our home, we do it in the afternoons and it's very short. And I have all different math learners in my home and they all have mastered their math facts. Go as slow as they need, review consistently and build that rock solid floor. So in this age range, a big homeschool trap, because we are the teacher, we are the mom, we are the household manager, it is so easy for everything to come out of our mouth to be a directive or a correction. Pick up your pencil, check number four, sit up straight. Stop poking your brother. Did you do the kitchen? Did you empty the dishwasher? Did you change the laundry?