Counting Hours - Life Skills and Recess Questions

[jina]

Hello. I'm from Missouri. We have to keep a log of our hours. This is my first year doing it since my son is now old enough that I have to. Anyway - I think I remember someone at a conference talking about how they counted household chores as "life skills". Does anyone know if that is okay?

 

My son is 7 and goes through a routine in the morning and evening with things like make his bed, brush his teeth, pick up toys, etc. It takes him about 10-15 minutes each time. So, is it "legal" to count that as 1/2 hour of school each day?

 

What other things do you count in "life skills"?

 

What about "recess" with time outside. Can that be counted as PE hours or does it have to be an organized play time to be PE?

[jina]

bump

[mom2abcd]

Hello. I'm from Missouri. We have to keep a log of our hours. This is my first year doing it since my son is now old enough that I have to. Anyway - I think I remember someone at a conference talking about how they counted household chores as "life skills". Does anyone know if that is okay?

 

My son is 7 and goes through a routine in the morning and evening with things like make his bed, brush his teeth, pick up toys, etc. It takes him about 10-15 minutes each time. So, is it "legal" to count that as 1/2 hour of school each day?

 

What other things do you count in "life skills"?

 

What about "recess" with time outside. Can that be counted as PE hours or does it have to be an organized play time to be PE?

 

I wouldn't count those basic hygiene times. The "head honchos" say we will get to 1,000 hours easily so don't take a chance on counting things like that that those in traditional schools wouldn't count.

 

Cooking, sewing, and other "home ec" type things could be counted as life skills, as could some "shop" activities like building a bookshelf and some volunteering could count as well, I would think.

 

We count recess since that is something they do during school hours.

 

I don't claim to be an expert on this, though. I hope others respond since I'm curious, too.

 

I guess it's always good to err on the side of caution.

[Anita in NC]

Do you guys watch educational shows? You could count those.

 

Luckily in NC we don't have to count hours. If we did I would have counted gardening, canning and a couple of educational shows that we watched this weekend. :D

[A.J. at J.A.]

Hello. I'm from Missouri. We have to keep a log of our hours. This is my first year doing it since my son is now old enough that I have to. Anyway - I think I remember someone at a conference talking about how they counted household chores as "life skills". Does anyone know if that is okay?

 

My son is 7 and goes through a routine in the morning and evening with things like make his bed, brush his teeth, pick up toys, etc. It takes him about 10-15 minutes each time. So, is it "legal" to count that as 1/2 hour of school each day?

 

What other things do you count in "life skills"?

 

What about "recess" with time outside. Can that be counted as PE hours or does it have to be an organized play time to be PE?

 

I am also from Missouri. I only count "life skills" hours for time they are learning a new skill and practicing that new skill. Once they have mastered it and it is just part of their routine, I would no longer count it as school hours. We do not count recess as school time.

 

Our law is "1000 hours of instruction." So unless they are learning a new skill, or practicing a new skill, I do not count it. Our local area has a homeschool indoor skate time twice a month, we do not count that as school hours either. It is physical exercise, but in our opinion, not physical education.

 

It all boils down to your own convictions and your ability to defend your reasoning if you were ever called upon to do so in a court of law.

 

I will say that DH and I are very conservative in what we count as hours. We want to be able to stand before our children, the government (if need be) and God and know that we didn't try to push the envelope on what should be included.

 

I know there are many homeschoolers that count things differently than we do, and that is fine for their family. I am certainly not judging them nor claiming to be an expert, but that is what we do and why.

 

Blessings,

Angela

[jina]

Okay...I guess my "defense" would be this... I am teaching/training them in discipline and consistency. I don't feel like that is something that can be taught by instruction alone, but by repetitive practice.

 

My mother did almost everything when I grew up, as a result I arrived adulthood as a sloppy mess with little no skill for taking care of a house/myself. It was very hard (and still is) for me to try and take care of my household and children in a disciplined, organized way (example: just leave the dishes out after a meal). If I had these skills ingrained in me while I was being raised, it would be "second nature" for me to pick up after myself.

 

My kids also have weekly chores that they do that I planned to count. This could be anything from helping sort the laundry, taking out trash, cleaning bathroom sink, etc. that further train them to learn to take care of themselves/the home.

 

Does it really "matter" what the school would do when you are counting hours? I thought the idea of homeschooling was so that you could teach/train your kids the way that you see fit.

 

We ARE required to have 600 of our 1000 be in "core" subjects. We will do that with no problem - and might very well be well over 1000 hours so even if they threw them out it would probably be fine. I guess I was just thinking that the "extra" hours in various subjects could be in any direction I wanted to train my children (and that is why we count hours they are at church), but maybe I am wrong???

 

Anyone else care to weigh in on if my logic is "off"?

[elegantlion]

I homeschooled in MO for two years. I agree it does depend on your convictions and how you count hours in general. I counted time in literal minutes at 15 min increments (ie: spelling took 12 mins so it counts as .25 hours) I know some people would count each individual subject as 1 hour and call it good.

 

If it were me and you had a routine each morning I would call it Health and mark it for .5 hours. If ds got together with his other homeschooled friends and played (physical activity, not just goofing or chatting) we called it PE.

 

We did first and second grade in MO and since those school years are lighter time wise. I did want to know how much time I was spending on school. We also counted time spent watching science or history shows as school. Our first year it did take counting those things to reach our 1000 hours. I mean a school day took us about 2 1/2 hours for first grade, even if we did 5-6 subjects I didn't feel right calling it five hours on my timesheet, kwim.

 

We counted Wednesday night church, not Sunday. I don't remember why now, but that is what we did.

 

HTH

[Donna A.]

Okay...I guess my "defense" would be this... I am teaching/training them in discipline and consistency. I don't feel like that is something that can be taught by instruction alone, but by repetitive practice.

 

 

We're in MO, and for my youngest (who will be 7 in the fall, so we're counting hours this year), yes, I do this because she's still very young and needs time and practice to master those skills. And besides, her "academics" don't take nearly as long as her sisters' academics, so we need the hours. A public schooled 2nd grader isn't spending their entire time in the classroom doing "true" academics, either. A lot of what they do learning how to behave in the classroom, socialize, etc. IMO, the needs of a 2nd grader are very different than an 8th grader. That's what bugs me about the MO laws and this business of counting hours. There's no distinction between a 2nd grader's time or an 8th grader's time, so it's left up to our discernment. The other thing is that there can be a wide range of maturity level amongst 7yo's. One 7yo may be fine with 5 straight hours of some type of academic work every day. Other 7yo's would never make it to 3 hours, let alone 5.

 

That said,, by the time your 7yo is, say, 9 or 10, I wouldn't count those skills you trained him in at age 7 anymore because he should have them mastered by that time. He'll be learning new skills at age 10. And then other new, more advanced skills at age 13, and so on. So what you could legitimately count will vary from year to year, IMO. Just make sure you can justify it before a court of law, and show documentation of his progress. You'd need to journal it in some way... perhaps a written summary of how he's doing, pictures of him learning a new skill, pictures of the finished work to show how he improved in making his bed from the start of the year to later in the year, that sort of thing. Or perhaps you could use a chore chart or Home Ec book of some sort to show the specific skills that you're working on.

[mom2abcd]

We're in MO, and for my youngest (who will be 7 in the fall, so we're counting hours this year), yes, I do this because she's still very young and needs time and practice to master those skills. And besides, her "academics" don't take nearly as long as her sisters' academics, so we need the hours. A public schooled 2nd grader isn't spending their entire time in the classroom doing "true" academics, either. A lot of what they do learning how to behave in the classroom, socialize, etc. IMO, the needs of a 2nd grader are very different than an 8th grader. That's what bugs me about the MO laws and this business of counting hours. There's no distinction between a 2nd grader's time or an 8th grader's time, so it's left up to our discernment. .

 

MO law is frustrating, isn't it?

 

from http://www.chef-missouri.com/FAQsFrame.html

 

How much time should formal instruction take each day to maintain my child at grade level?

 

To fully understand my answer, you must first understand the difference between a classroom set-ting and a tutorial setting. In the elementary grades, 3_ hours of every day are spent taking attendance, collecting lunch money, lining up, moving from one part of the building to another, lunch, recess, and using the bathroom. Of the remaining time, much is consumed by preparation, getting materials ready, moving from one group to another, disciplining, incessant review, busywork, inconsequential chatter, and irrelevant interaction. Furthermore, studies show that children receive only 2_ minutes of one-on-one time from their teacher.

 

When a child is ill, a visiting teacher spends about three hours catching up the student for the thirty hours missed. In junior and senior high school, only about fifteen minutes of every class period is spent in actual teaching.

When children first received a public education, they attended for only three to four years compared to the thirteen-year educational prison term of today.

 

The following example clearly exemplifies the significant difference between tutoring and classroom teaching. My friend’s sister-in-law, who is a teacher, worked with my friend’s daughter. When the sister-in-law was finished, she told my friend that what she had accomplished with her niece in one hour would have taken three months to accomplish with her own first grade class.

 

So 2 to 3 hours of structured instruction each day is sufficient to maintain your student at grade level and about 4 hours for high schoolers. The rest of the day may then be devoted to art, crafts, music, sewing, physical exercise, family responsibilities, hobbies, reading, gardening, playing, solitude, fel-lowshipping with other homeschoolers, community service, or a home business.

 

According to Samuel Blumenfeld, “Of the 117 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, one out of three had only a few months of formal schooling, and only one in four had gone to college.†Yet these men were intellectual giants.

[Donna A.]

Thanks for posting that, Mom2abcd!

[Confuzzled]

Hi, I'm in O'Fallon too!

 

I don't log "life skills" as school hours. I don't count regular play time outside but I do log organized recreational activities like skating or bowling as PE. Most subjects I count one lesson as an hour instead of logging actual time spent. I don't count the church service but I count Sunday school because it's instructional time. I also count Wed. evening church activities because it's also instructional and includes choir. I also log American Heritage Girls and dance lessons. I start logging in July and we usually hit the 1,000 hour mark in January or February.

 

It looks like there's a lot of room for interpretation and in my opinion you should just do whatever seems right to you. (HSLDA may, however, have different advice!)

 

Kris