How Long Should a Math Lesson Take? A Montessori Homeschool Approach

A question we hear often at ShillerLearning is: "How long should this math lesson take my child to complete?" With a personalized approach to education, there is no single right answer. Some children grasp a concept right away; others need repetition over several days or even weeks. Both are completely normal.

Follow the Child's Lead

Every child and activity is different. Some children grasp an activity's concept right away and need no further practice to retain it permanently, yet they insist on repeating the activity anyway. These children may not need further practice, but they enjoy the satisfaction of an activity they have mastered. Let them explore, whether for five minutes or two hours, until they are finished. If they can work independently, that is perfectly fine.

Such active interest is a positive sign. The child wants to repeat the satisfaction that comes from successfully completing an activity. What may appear to be repetitive actions to a parent may actually be the child achieving closure on the activity. A child may become anxious if the activity is taken away before closure is reached. Closure may also occur naturally when the child or parent becomes frustrated. When frustration arises, you may say: "Let us put this activity aside for now and come back to it later."

When a Child Needs More Time

There will also be times when you wish a child were more enthusiastic about repeating an activity they did not fully grasp. When the child or parent becomes frustrated or restless with a particular activity, simply mark it as one that needs more attention next time. We recommend circling the activity number and noting it in your Completed Work Tracking Sheet, then moving on. You can read more about the tracking sheet and other learning management tools here.

For a child to grasp principles fully, the decimal system activities in particular need to be repeated often. One decimal system activity may be repeated once or twice each week for several weeks. Addition and multiplication tables also require several weeks to complete.

The Incremental Spiral Method

Among ShillerLearning's innovations is the Incremental Spiral Method, which ensures that bite-size activities cover syllabus topics clearly and thoroughly at each age. Because topics need to be revisited regularly at increasing levels of difficulty and abstraction, children do not learn addition or all aspects of a shape all at once. As a result, children build both math skill and self-confidence at the same time.

This technique was inspired by a study in which two groups of children each had five minutes to work on the same memorization problem. One group had a single five-minute session; the other had five one-minute sessions interspersed with one-minute breaks on a simple, unrelated activity. The second group had significantly better results, despite spending exactly the same total time on the problem. This is why activities on related subject matter are spread throughout the lesson books.

ShillerLearning's goal is for students to speak and write mathematics clearly, accurately, and concisely, based on a solid understanding of mathematical concepts. This personalized approach to the question of lesson length is how we achieve that goal.

Build Math Skills with ShillerLearning

Math Kit I
Pre-K to 3rd Grade

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Math Kit II
4th Grade to Pre-Algebra

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