How much writing to do?

Homeschooling
1

I finished my first year of homeschooling my 1st and 3rd grader a couple of weeks ago and am trying to plan for the upcoming year when I will add a kindergartener to the mix. Our curriculum is via an online school that I use as a guide and build off of that material to suit our needs. I am trying to determine how much writing you think is necessary per week. Last year, my first grader was required to write too much each day and became burned out. She went from loving to write to hating it. I don’t want to repeat that mistake. My plan is to take the 180 writing lessons and modify/tweek the lessons so that we write 3 times a week to include a journal entry of their choice for one of those times. The other two days would be focused on literature with no “real” writing time. Do you think that approach would be a huge mistake? I realize that writing is important, I just don’t want burn out for my new 2nd grader and 4th grader. The kindergartener will be different. I appreciate any thoughts.

Thank you

2

Honestly, I think your new plan sounds great! I ran into the same problem with my 1st grader last year- she ended up so burnt out on all the writing plus seatwork (we are doing Abeka) that some we just ended up doing out loud, I cut down as much writing as I could. This year I am also doing something different, including counting a journal entry for one day, and I will have her do most of the writing parts of the seatwork this year to count towards handwriting, and we are using Handwriting Without Tears this year, which has a lot less work as far as the handwriting papers go.

3

Great. Thanks for the reply and encouragement.