WTM hours vs State mandated hours

[Ritsumei]

So, I added up the hours in the schedules that nobody uses in the WTM, and it comes out to about 14 hours of school a week (1st grade, using the smaller numbers given when there's a range). That's about 2 1/2 hours a day. Sounds pretty reasonable, actually.

 

Then, I glanced at the state mandated hours. Using a 36 week school year, the state wants 23.2 hours a week, or nearly 5 hours a day!

 

Who else counts hours, and what do you do? It's not a huge big thing, cuz Monkey actually misses the cutoff by 3 weeks, so I don't need to be official this year, technically, and can do whatever I want. What I'm wondering is, how realistic are those WTM numbers - can it really be done in that little time? And, if so, what do you do about the rest of the state mandated hours??

[stripe]

Do you count read alouds, physical activities, and educational games? Also field trips to the library and crafts. I would, because I believe these actually are educational.

[~Kirsten~]

Well, thankfully we don't have state-mandated hours here. But I can say that this year for 1st, we probably still don't do 2.5 hours of seat work. We do follow TWTM pretty closely, and I'd say we do 1.5 hours 4 days per week. However, and this is big, that doesn't count the many hours per week that I spend reading to my daughter or that she spends reading to herself. It doesn't count the 2-hour phys. ed. class we go to weekly, or the many other hours she spends running around or playing at the park that could count as phys. ed. That doesn't count the hours she spends coloring, painting, or working on art work (even if it's a structured art project we're doing). It doesn't count the time we spend listening to music, making music, baking together (and working on fractions and math), and so forth. In other words, if I had to count hours for my state, I'd be generous in counting anything that is remotely educational, particularly on weekends.

 

Hopefully people will chime in with their hour counting experiences. I do think the schedules in TWTM are reasonably close as far as seat work goes, if that helps a bit. We could probably get things done in about 4 hours per week if we were actually focused. :D

[SeekingSimplicity]

Do you count read alouds, physical activities, and educational games? Also field trips to the library and crafts. I would, because I believe these actually are educational.

 

:iagree: And count any creative play times, baking (counts as math and fractions) things like that.

[kokotg]

We have state-mandated hours, technically, but we only report days, not hours. I don't really pay attention to the hours...it's 4.5 hours/day, IIRC--my younger kids do less than that, on average (depending on what I "count"); my 4th grader probably does a bit more this year.

[MamaSheep]

I think most states that use hours as a guideline are trying to make sure that homeschooled students get as much education as their public schooled peers. What I think they fail to take into account is that homeschool is much more efficient. At home, when you finish a lesson you put it away and get started on the next subject. At school, when you finish a lesson you often have to wait for the rest of the class to finish. Then add in all the time spent getting lined up, gathered around, and settled down, listening to morning announcements, and goofing off when the teacher isn't looking, and you've used a pretty hefty chunk of your school day. And that's not even taking things like "assemblies" into account. So when you're figuring your homeschool hours there's nothing at all dishonest about including all your breaks and a little play time. In our state we're not actually required to keep track, but we do sign an affadavit stating we'll give our kids a certain number of days and/or hours of education. When I start thinking maybe I'm not doing "enough" I count up all the time spent reading bedtime stories, weekend trips to educational places like festivals and zoos, and three hours of church every week (where, after all, they are learning to sit still and listen to a teacher, if nothing else) and we always come out way ahead.

[Dmmetler]

I figure that when it comes to learning and growing, my DD has about 14 hours of "school" a day. The fact that only about 2 of it is done with books and pencils is irrelevant. :).

[HLDoll]

I don't keep track of hours or days, but with my Kindergartener and 1st grader, we rarely take more than 2 hours a day, 4 days a week to cover language arts, math, Bible and history. Once or twice a week, we do art and science. But like others said, if I had to keep track of hours, I'd be very liberal in counting the time they spend playing outside (mine were out for 4 hours the other day in the snow!), visiting the library, at 4H, reading, drawing/coloring, etc.

[brasilmom]

Our state mandate a number of hours, but yet they are not allowed to knock on my door and ask for anything. I do count in anything that is educational. As an example, she is bilingual by immersion. We do 2 languages in our house, so while speaking to me she does nothing but Portuguese. I count in about 80 minutes a day. Is she sitting down for 80 minutes and doing work on Portuguese language? Absolutely not. Yet, she is corrected about verb conjugation, grammar structure and the such. That for me is education. She has violin lesson, and I do count time she spends practicing and also listening to the cd. Art & physical ed class that she takes is also counted. I do not count read aloud times, and I am not counting little art that we do together. However, I have those on my favor, and if need be, I will certainly clock them up. During summer there is swimming and lots of park time. I agree with MamaSheep. The children is school are not actually learning for 5 1/2 hours. There is a lot of time that is simply wasted...

[Ritsumei]

I think most states that use hours as a guideline are trying to make sure that homeschooled students get as much education as their public schooled peers. What I think they fail to take into account is that homeschool is much more efficient. At home, when you finish a lesson you put it away and get started on the next subject. At school, when you finish a lesson you often have to wait for the rest of the class to finish. Then add in all the time spent getting lined up, gathered around, and settled down, listening to morning announcements, and goofing off when the teacher isn't looking, and you've used a pretty hefty chunk of your school day. And that's not even taking things like "assemblies" into account.

 

Don't I just remember it! I figured one of the "perks" of homeschool would be eliminating all that waiting. Not really a reason to homeschool, but a perk nonetheless!

 

 

and three hours of church every week (where, after all, they are learning to sit still and listen to a teacher, if nothing else) and we always come out way ahead.

 

:lol::lol:We're LDS too, and this cracks me up!

 

 

I figure that when it comes to learning and growing, my DD has about 14 hours of "school" a day. The fact that only about 2 of it is done with books and pencils is irrelevant. :).

 

 

reading bedtime stories

festivals and zoos

read alouds

physical activities (hey - that's jumping on the mini-tramp, there's some time!)

library/bookstore (we tend to buy books, since I don't manage library fines very well :blushing:)

art

piano lessons

independent reading

park time (which often includes nature study around here & wasn't on my "list" of hours)

art/crafts

baking/cooking

 

 

OK, thanks. I feel much better now! There's seat work and then there's school work. I know that the reporting here is pretty easy: we just fill out a form & file it by a certain date, and I don't have to do that for a while, but if we have to move then we could end up "official" a year earlier, depending on when the new state does the cutoff. The whole legality of the situation is, for me, one of the more stressful parts of the decision to homeschool. We can do the education! It's keeping the gov't happy that stresses me! It probably shouldn't, because obviously there are tons of people who manage it, but that's currently my biggest stresser. Thanks for the insight/perspective adjustment!

[blakereese]

I figure that when it comes to learning and growing, my DD has about 14 hours of "school" a day. The fact that only about 2 of it is done with books and pencils is irrelevant. :).

 

:iagree:

 

In second grade my son only does maybe 2 hours of seatwork, but he is learning WAAAAAY more at home than he was learning in ps 6 hours a day, 5 days a week.

 

I know it must be hard to have to fill out paperwork for the state, but keep in mind that you still can hs the way you want and more than fulfill their "requirements". :001_smile:

[2_girls_mommy]

We do WTM too. School is not just the physical act of sitting down and writing. I am in agreement with everyone else. In school they read aloud and listen to stories read aloud. They see videos, they play on the playground and go to P.E class. They sing and do arts and crafts. They act out stories and practice speaking aloud. They have library day and they learn how to navigate the computer mouse. So do we.

 

In homeschool the reading aloud may not happen during your "2.5 hrs" of sit down school time. But it happens. Ours happens when I read a chapter aloud each day at lunch time and when I read picture books at bedtime that coincide with our current history and science chapters, kwim? You may have to drive your child to P.E. in the form of soccer practice or dance class or whatever, but it still counts. etc. etc. etc. We easily exceed 4 hrs on a regular school day of intentional educational activities. If you have to keep track, just keep track of it all, not just the workbook time.

[Dinsfamily]

Do you count read alouds, physical activities, and educational games? Also field trips to the library and crafts. I would, because I believe these actually are educational.

 

:iagree: if I had to count hours, I'd be pretty liberal as to what would count, not unethical but liberal. We do a lot of things here that have educational value outside of seat work.

[Haiku]

Then, I glanced at the state mandated hours. Using a 36 week school year, the state wants 23.2 hours a week, or nearly 5 hours a day!

 

 

If a child goes to school, he or she is sitting in a classroom for about 5-6 hours a day. How much of that time is the child actually being directly instructed?

 

I don't count hours. Education is not a quantity. We do what we do and it takes however long it takes, and I defy the school district to come in and tell I'm doing it wrong because we are more efficient than they are! ;)

 

Tara

[KrissiK]

I think most states that use hours as a guideline are trying to make sure that homeschooled students get as much education as their public schooled peers. What I think they fail to take into account is that homeschool is much more efficient. At home, when you finish a lesson you put it away and get started on the next subject. At school, when you finish a lesson you often have to wait for the rest of the class to finish. Then add in all the time spent getting lined up, gathered around, and settled down, listening to morning announcements, and goofing off when the teacher isn't looking, and you've used a pretty hefty chunk of your school day. And that's not even taking things like "assemblies" into account. So when you're figuring your homeschool hours there's nothing at all dishonest about including all your breaks and a little play time. In our state we're not actually required to keep track, but we do sign an affadavit stating we'll give our kids a certain number of days and/or hours of education. When I start thinking maybe I'm not doing "enough" I count up all the time spent reading bedtime stories, weekend trips to educational places like festivals and zoos, and three hours of church every week (where, after all, they are learning to sit still and listen to a teacher, if nothing else) and we always come out way ahead.

:iagree: It's amazing the amount of time that gets wasted in a classroom.

[MamaSheep]

Don't I just remember it! I figured one of the "perks" of homeschool would be eliminating all that waiting. Not really a reason to homeschool, but a perk nonetheless!

 

 

 

:lol::lol:We're LDS too, and this cracks me up!

 

~~Snicker~~ And just think, there's music class for a good chunk of Sharing Time in Primary too.

 

 

 

reading bedtime stories

festivals and zoos

read alouds

physical activities (hey - that's jumping on the mini-tramp, there's some time!)

library/bookstore (we tend to buy books, since I don't manage library fines very well :blushing:)

art

piano lessons

independent reading

park time (which often includes nature study around here & wasn't on my "list" of hours)

art/crafts

baking/cooking

 

 

OK, thanks. I feel much better now! There's seat work and then there's school work. I know that the reporting here is pretty easy: we just fill out a form & file it by a certain date, and I don't have to do that for a while, but if we have to move then we could end up "official" a year earlier, depending on when the new state does the cutoff. The whole legality of the situation is, for me, one of the more stressful parts of the decision to homeschool. We can do the education! It's keeping the gov't happy that stresses me! It probably shouldn't, because obviously there are tons of people who manage it, but that's currently my biggest stresser. Thanks for the insight/perspective adjustment!

 

That's one of the things that stresses me too, and as I say all we have to do is file an affadavit. I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to leap off that cliff if we'd lived in a state where they wanted to check up on me too. Nervewracking! Put as you say, obviously not THAT big of a deal because thousands of people manage just fine.

 

Don't forget to add the time your kids spend learning practical life skills--

 

How to sort dirty laundry (and run the machines, as they get older)

Sock matching

Bathroom sanitation

Table setting

Dish washing

Toy sorting

Bed making

How grocery stores work

Ditto banks, dry cleaners, post offices, dry cleaners, etc.

 

Kids learn about that stuff by reading about it in school, but they learn even better by tagging along with Mom on errands and having chores to do at home. That stuff can be "school" too.

[littlebug42]

I used to have this dilemma when I had to report hours to our virtual charter. I did count all PE activities, museum classes/visits etc. Also, they gave us time estimates of how long each lesson should take. It never took us as long as they said it would so I just counted the hours that they gave for each lesson. I could not come up with 5.5 hours a day of bookwork. I also counted all reading that the kids did on their own.

[Ritsumei]

If a child goes to school, he or she is sitting in a classroom for about 5-6 hours a day. How much of that time is the child actually being directly instructed?

 

I don't count hours. Education is not a quantity. We do what we do and it takes however long it takes, and I defy the school district to come in and tell I'm doing it wrong because we are more efficient than they are! ;)

 

Tara

 

Actually, I went & looked at the PS my siblings are in. I was only able to find the numbers for the high school, so in some important ways that's apples & oranges, since officially we're doing K this year.:tongue_smilie: However. My sibs are doing about 7.5 hours of school, a full work day! Of that, once you remove passing periods & other time that was obviously not instructional, I got just over 6 hours of classroom time, and the state mandates about 4.7 hours, so they do appear to have some time built in to be "wasted." That school strongly "encourages" all the students to have a study hall, so that could explain the extra almost an hour.

 

But it's still counting all the time you sit in class, waiting for everyone else to do the work you've already finished.

 

However, looking at these numbers brought me to another realization:

 

7.5 hours of school + 30-45 minute bus ride = 8 hour work day.

For "overtime" many of the kids will choose to do extra curriculars, such as sports, theater, newspaper, debate, drill team, etc.

For "double overtime" those kids are going home and doing an hour or two of homework.

 

No wonder public school families seem to have their entire lives dictated by the school schedule! Blech. That's got to be doing damage to the family structure. No wonder folks complain about not having the influence/time with their kids: they don't get any time with them!

[Ritsumei]

~~Snicker~~ And just think, there's music class for a good chunk of Sharing Time in Primary too.

 

 

That's one of the things that stresses me too, and as I say all we have to do is file an affadavit. I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to leap off that cliff if we'd lived in a state where they wanted to check up on me too. Nervewracking! Put as you say, obviously not THAT big of a deal because thousands of people manage just fine.

 

 

The amazing thing is, I live in a low-regulation state, according to the HSLDA. Of course, I am inclined to get stressed over doing it "right." Always have been. So far as I'm aware, I don't have anyone that's going to be looking over our shoulder: I just fill out a form at the beginning of the year. But I still want to be able to keep at least a little bit of my lesson stuff so that, should I need to, I can demonstrate that I'm in compliance by showing them a typical week's work/hours. I just hate that it's expressed in hours! <sigh> I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm inclined to do that too, with this sort of thing.:glare:

[pahansen]

Sorry posted too soon -- the next post is mine

Edited February 2, 2011 by pahansen

[pahansen]

But I still want to be able to keep at least a little bit of my lesson stuff so that, should I need to, I can demonstrate that I'm in compliance by showing them a typical week's work/hours. I just hate that it's expressed in hours!

 

How would you feel about trying what I do?

 

Get yourself some sort of lesson planner book (doesn't matter what, just set up one grid system per child with blocks for each subject and one extra unlabeled block for each day of the week). Then list/plan out what each child is doing each day of the week. If, like me (former HS teacher), you want the structure of knowing ahead, by all means plan. If not, just write down what you've done today. No depth, just "Math, pp. 218-222; Science - evaporation & time of evaporation experiment; etc. In the blank space you can record field trips, library time, PE, whatever else could be construed as school.

 

No, you won't have a list of how many hours, and I would NOT recommend this for someone who has to produce a list of hours at the end of the year. But if you are simply looking to cover yourself "just in case," and it seems like you are, it may make you feel better. I know that the entire day's workload for my 2nd grader will probably only take 2.5-3.5 hours of time, depending, but any classroom teacher/administrator looking at it will see a full day's worth of schoolwork.

 

Homeschooling is more efficient, as is any kind of individualized instruction. I know it will take my son 5 minutes to read his science pages. In a classroom, it may take 15 minutes because children of differing abilities are taking turns reading it aloud. And there is no reason for us to give twenty examples of a math problem if the child understands it on example number one, or three, or seven.

 

Like I said, I would not advise this to someone who will be held accountable for each hour, but I started doing this after the first year at our virtual charter school. In my estimation, our state mandates a ridiculous amount of time/day. Our kids are both bright, and we were completing 2 lessons/child/day in less than the required amount of time. Since I couldn't see punishing my children by forcing them to do even more work, and since I rapidly discovered that no one really checks up on you, I started keeping this information instead. I started obsessing over the amount of education they were getting, not the number of hours of instruction. No one in his/her right mind would believe that the kids aren't learning, and I am satisfied with the knowledge that my kids are getting the appropriate amount of instruction, knowledge-wise, regardless of the time spent.

 

I hope I don't sound like I'm being dishonest. I figure that most of what we do around here is "education," since we're reading books, doing puzzles, baking, and doing a lot of the activities mentioned by other posters on a constant basis. I just don't write any of that down. I can sleep soundly at night because I know that the kids are definitely getting 5.5 "hours of instruction" each day, even if a chunk of it's at the dinner table! (Thing 2 is a total slob!)

 

Next year we will be doing traditional homeschooling, rather than cyber school, and I believe we have a choice between 180 days/year or a certain number of hours of instruction. (Now we're supposed to be doing both.) You can bet I'm going with the former! (And I'll keep track with my little lesson manual! ;) )

 

Good luck!

--Pamela

[Snowfall]

We're mandated to do 4 hours a day, but we don't sit down and do 4 hours of writing or reading or bookwork per day. I do consider the home school P.E. and swim classes at the Y to be educational, so that's 1 hour twice a week. I also consider piano lessons, so that's 30 minutes once a week. I also count practicing piano, playing educational games, reading aloud (except at bed time) and lots of other things to be educational. If I'm being honest, though, I just don't care about that particular stupid rule. The people who make these things up have no idea how much time parents should be devoting to educating their own children. If they did, they wouldn't have the same requirements for kindergarten as they do for 12th grade. So if they're too ignorant to make reasonable rules, I'm not going to bend over backwards to follow them to the letter.

[Embassy]

I count hours, but not because it is required. It is the way I have our schedule organized. We spend about 5-6 hours a day on school, but I count everything including PE, music lessons, read alouds, life skills, educational games, and hands-on activities. We have a small amount of seat work. I do a greater amount of subjects than the public school does though.

[Ritsumei]

How would you feel about trying what I do?

 

Get yourself some sort of lesson planner book (doesn't matter what, just set up one grid system per child with blocks for each subject and one extra unlabeled block for each day of the week). Then list/plan out what each child is doing each day of the week. If, like me (former HS teacher), you want the structure of knowing ahead, by all means plan. If not, just write down what you've done today. No depth, just "Math, pp. 218-222; Science - evaporation & time of evaporation experiment; etc. In the blank space you can record field trips, library time, PE, whatever else could be construed as school. ...

 

 

I'm actually working up a spreadsheet tonight that I planned to do just this with. Some areas will be preplanned (I'm thinking math, science, and history, when we start it), and others I'd thought to fill in as I go, since I have yet to be able to predict how quickly he's going to pick up each concept! Topics that I can pre-plan I likely will.

 

... If I'm being honest, though, I just don't care about that particular stupid rule. The people who make these things up have no idea how much time parents should be devoting to educating their own children. If they did, they wouldn't have the same requirements for kindergarten as they do for 12th grade. So if they're too ignorant to make reasonable rules, I'm not going to bend over backwards to follow them to the letter.

 

:lol::lol::lol:There's a certain amount of truth to this!! The fact is, my friend that told me about legal stuff said that we just file a form & that's the end of it. So I likely don't need to worry. But I haven't learned not to. In that, I'm my mother's daughter, lol!