How Long Does a Trail Guide to Learning Day Take?

Because the Trail Guide to Learning series is an all-inclusive curriculum, covering everything except math, families considering the curriculum often wonder how long they can expect to spend on it each day. The length of time can vary according to your children, but most families can expect to spend 2-3 hours a day when in younger grade levels, and 3-4 hours a day for Older students. During that time, you and your students will be covering:

• Copywork or dictation
• Reading - both independent reading and read-aloud assignments
• Spelling/word study
• History or science (on alternating days)
• Geography
• Writing/grammar
• Art and/or music
• Related hands-on activities

The text is written to the student, but it is intended for regular parent interaction. Typically, my kids and I do the majority of the work together, as a family, which was the vision of the authors - for families to enjoy learning together.

How are the Trail Guide to Learning lessons scheduled?

Because each daily lesson is completely laid out for the parent to be able to just pick up and go, many families go through each daily lesson exactly as it is scheduled in the book, while others have found that it works better for their families to rearrange the lesson order. 

Many families with older children find that it works best to complete lessons in which the whole family participates in the morning hours. This allows older children to do their independent work in the afternoons while the teaching parent focuses on helping younger siblings.

This always worked well for my family. We would save assignments such as independent reading, art, and music for the end of the day so that each child was able to finish those assignments, and math (which is not included) at his own pace. Other families like to reverse this order, with older children working independently in the morning and the family working together in the afternoon.

One of the wonderful benefits of Trail Guide is that it was designed with homeschooling families in mind. It was written by homeschooling parents, for homeschooling parents. It offers the ultimate ease-of-use by having all of the lesson planning done for you, but there is plenty of room to rearrange and tweak to suit your family's needs.