How do you Count Summer Learning?

[rwjx2khsmj]

In my state we have to log the number of days. How do you keep track of summer learning that doesn't take a full day? Do you count it as a school day or part of a day? Do you not count it at all?

 

Two recent examples: We listened to the unabriged version of Peter Pan in the car. Would you count that as school?

 

We attended a lecture series about Galileo. Would you count that as school?

[rwjx2khsmj]

:lurk5:

[littlebug42]

I would definitely count the audio book and Gallileo lecture as school time. Depending on how much time was spent, I would count it accordingly. For instance, if over a period of a couple of days, you listened to Peter Pan, I would probably count that as one day.

[jenn-]

We are listening to Peter Pan right now. :)

 

Do you have a certain number of days you have to hit? If so, do you typically have a hard time reaching that goal during your typical school year? If not, I wouldn't worry about counting the summer days. If so, I probably wouldn't count the Peter Pan if that was the only thing done that day, but would count the Galileo lectures.

[justasque]

You can drive yourself nuts over this. I count days we've done something significant, but I don't worry about being exact over it. When I get to about 10 more days than I need, I quit. I know that our learning is not accurately measured by "days", so I take a reasonable shot at it and let it go. It only matters if there's some question later on as to whether we've done "enough", and since we do a lot (and my kids score well on standardized tests) that's unlikely to be an issue. I would consider your audio book day a school day if you did a couple hours of it. Since the lecture series is probably a shorter time per day, I might not bother counting those days (unless we did something else cool on those days, or were hurting for days that year), but I would include it as part of our "school work". On the other hand, most days my kiddos read on their own for at least an hour, and often do some kind of exercise/PE, so it really doesn't take much more to fill out a robust school day.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We do not count it. We just count reg school year days. Summer is just to keep their brains going. We do math all year long, my rising 3rd grader does handwriting and she is doing botany along with her math. My rising 7th grader is doing math and researching all the scientists in the first module of apologia general science so its not overwhelming for her when she starts it. She does 1 scientist every 2 days (2 days of research per scientist.) We also do math on our school breaks though and do not count it. We only count full school days, if it takes us 2 days for 1 day of school we count it as 1 day.

[Ellie]

Everything counts as learning, but *I* would not take the trouble to count those as part of required school days.

 

With such a simple attendance law as Indiana's, I'd just print one of Donna Young's attendance calendars, check off Monday through Friday until there were 180 days, and file it.