How do you keep track of your hours?

[TheModestMom]

I'd love some ideas for those of you who are required to keep track of your school hours. Here in Missouri we are required to keep track of 1000 hours, and I'm struggling with figuring out how to get it all written down each day. Does anyone have a great way they do it that is easy to stay on top of? We have a Mac computer, so a lot of the homeschool programs developed for record keeping don't even work. I'm open to using pencil and paper, or computer, I just need a better system than what I'm doing right now.

[Cindyz]

We are not required, but I keep track of all of our time with homeschool tracker plus. I print out the daily to do list and check off as we go along making note of how long it took to complete. I enter the info into the calendar every other day and print out the new to do list at that time.

[Mommyfaithe]

Too much work....I just average out our time. We are required 900 hours for grades 1-6 and 990 for grades 7-12.

 

For the olders... our day goes 9-2:30 51/2 hours per day x 5 days = 27.5 hours per week x 9 weeks x 4 quarters...= 990 hours. During those hours they are required to get their lessons done...or do them for " homework. ". I give us 11 or 12 weeks by the calendar for 9 weeks or 45 days worth of school.

 

For the youngers....9-2, 5 hours per day x 5 days per week= 25 hours...x 9 weeks = 225 hours x 4 quarters = 900 hours.

 

Faithe

 

Eta: phys Ed, art, music, lunch, free time etc. Are part of the day....especially for the youngers. That is how it is done in school...so ok for us too.

[Kalmia]

Scholaric works on Mac. It is $1/per student/month. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but then it is easy.

 

http://www.scholaric.com

[regentrude]

We are in MO, too.

I have an excel spreadsheet for each kid. One row per day, one column per subject. Kids write down how much they spend per subject per day, I enter at the end of the day (or week). Have it programmed to add each row to get time per day and each column to add time per subject.

Do this for each month.

Takes two minutes to set up each month, two minutes to enter each day.

[Matryoshka]

Don't.

 

In my letter every year I put some line to the effect that "since we homeschool year round, we will easily meet or exceed 900 hours." Which is true, even if we do "school lite" in the summer.

 

I would hate being in a state where I had to be more specific (and people say MA is hard?). I crack up over states that require attendance "I couldn't find Johnny anywhere today, so I marked him 'absent'" :lol:

[Mom22ns]

Don't.

 

In my letter every year I put some line to the effect that "since we homeschool year round, we will easily meet or exceed 900 hours." Which is true, even if we do "school lite" in the summer.

 

In Missouri we don't write letters and don't have to turn in the hours, but we do have to keep them. "Don't" isn't a good choice.

 

I keep them in a database (Filemaker). I have a schedule for each child that includes the estimated time for each assignment, then I just record the actual time, either as they do it with me, or I ask at the end of each day. I've tried to get them to write the times down as they go, but it never happens. That is my fault, I've just never enforced it. It is easier for me to ask when my laptop is open.

 

I can see how many hours each child records each day and the total for the week on this main page, but I also have a report that breaks it down into core and non-core (I assign those to each subject), gives me quarterly and yearly totals, as well as totals per class which helps me make sure we're on track for high school credit.

 

It only takes me probably 2 min/day to enter all of our hours.

[NanceXToo]

Don't.

 

In my letter every year I put some line to the effect that "since we homeschool year round, we will easily meet or exceed 900 hours." Which is true, even if we do "school lite" in the summer.

 

I would hate being in a state where I had to be more specific (and people say MA is hard?). I crack up over states that require attendance "I couldn't find Johnny anywhere today, so I marked him 'absent'" :lol:

 

:iagree:

 

Here in PA they tell us we have to meet X number of hours OR days; I basically submit an "attendance statement" with my portfolio each year saying as homeschoolers, we believe life and learning are inextricable, but that we do also use a 36 week curriculum (Oak Meadow) on top of other educational and life learning pursuits, and as such we more than meet the minimum requirements.

 

It's never been questioned and they've never asked us to "prove" each hour of "attendance" or instruction, though we do also have to submit other things here (samples of work, evaluator's letter, log of reading materials, standardized test results in certain grades etc).

[Shellers]

Here's a nice log book. You track the hours everyday per subject (there are columns for nine subjects) with subtotals at the bottom of the weekly page. The hours then carry over to the following week.

[brett_ashley]

i like toggl. https://www.toggl.com/ not specifically for homeschooling, but it's simple, works great and it's free. this is also how i track my computer time to make sure I'm not wasting time.

[3Blessings]

http://missourihomeschool.wordpress.com/missouri-daily-log-ebook/

 

Not sure it will take you to the site . . . it is a log book that you can buy pretty inexpensively through LULU. It looks nice on the website.

 

I haven't used it because I'm not homeschooling in Missouri yet. I will be there for the 2012/2013 year, though, and I'm considering using it.

 

HTH

[elegantlion]

I print a weekly planner and write the hours for each subject next to the schedule. I use a form from donnayoung.org to log the hours, broken into core and non-core classes.

 

I know there is some debate on what constitutes an "hour" in MO. I know some people feel fine about doing a subject and calling it an "hour" regardless of how long it took, because homeschooling doesn't take as long as a school hour, that's the rationale I've heard most often.

 

However, I tend to be a letter of the law person in this case. I mark hours in 15 minute increments. Like today he did math for 1.5 hours, history for an hour, etc.

 

The state law also reads that the hours are to run from July 1-June 30 school year. So when ds was younger we logged a lot of hours outside of the nine year month to reach the 1000 hour quota. At his current level we can get our hours in during the traditional year.

 

It can be a pain, but it honestly only takes a few minutes a day.

[lluv]

I use homeschoolskedtrack because it's free and online. I can look/update it anywhere (on my tablet, pc, or smartphone) which is a big plus for me over homeschool tracker plus. I think skedtrack has updated some features recently, and I've been satisfied with it so far.

 

It does have a learning curve, but it isn't too hard. It automatically tracks the hours for you based on what you've scheduled and what you mark as complete each day. Whenever I adjust our schedule, the calendar tells me if I'm short any hours (which is actually kind of annoying to me since I don't have to track hours).

[Starr]

Too much work....I just average out our time. We are required 900 hours for grades 1-6 and 990 for grades 7-12.

 

For the olders... our day goes 9-2:30 51/2 hours per day x 5 days = 27.5 hours per week x 9 weeks x 4 quarters...= 990 hours. During those hours they are required to get their lessons done...or do them for " homework. ". I give us 11 or 12 weeks by the calendar for 9 weeks or 45 days worth of school.

 

For the youngers....9-2, 5 hours per day x 5 days per week= 25 hours...x 9 weeks = 225 hours x 4 quarters = 900 hours.

 

Faithe

 

Eta: phys Ed, art, music, lunch, free time etc. Are part of the day....especially for the youngers. That is how it is done in school...so ok for us too.

 

:iagree: Every day is not the same in ps or hs but the hours average out. What's important is getting the work done.

[nukeswife]

In Missouri we don't write letters and don't have to turn in the hours, but we do have to keep them. "Don't" isn't a good choice.

 

I keep them in a database (Filemaker). I have a schedule for each child that includes the estimated time for each assignment, then I just record the actual time, either as they do it with me, or I ask at the end of each day. I've tried to get them to write the times down as they go, but it never happens. That is my fault, I've just never enforced it. It is easier for me to ask when my laptop is open.

 

I can see how many hours each child records each day and the total for the week on this main page, but I also have a report that breaks it down into core and non-core (I assign those to each subject), gives me quarterly and yearly totals, as well as totals per class which helps me make sure we're on track for high school credit.

 

It only takes me probably 2 min/day to enter all of our hours.

 

I'm in a state that doesn't require me log anything, but I like to anyway. Would you be able to and willing to email a copy of your page. I love how it looks.

[Mommee & Baba]

I keep track by inputing it all into homeschool tracker. When we complete a lesson/subject I click complete, type in the minutes we spent, and the date we finished. Then the program will give you an overview of the hours you've been in school thus far from first day of school to present.

[lakshmi]

...

I would hate being in a state where I had to be more specific (and people say MA is hard?). I crack up over states that require attendance "I couldn't find Johnny anywhere today, so I marked him 'absent'" :lol:

 

LOL.. I am in an attendance state. And I've never so eloquently described the wackiness of attendance as you did.

 

I use homeschoolskedtrack because it's free and online. I can look/update it anywhere (on my tablet, pc, or smartphone) which is a big plus for me over homeschool tracker plus. I think skedtrack has updated some features recently, and I've been satisfied with it so far.

 

It does have a learning curve, but it isn't too hard. It automatically tracks the hours for you based on what you've scheduled and what you mark as complete each day. Whenever I adjust our schedule, the calendar tells me if I'm short any hours (which is actually kind of annoying to me since I don't have to track hours).

 

Yes. Mac means Skedtrack or Scholaric at this point. I love Skedtrack and I hate scholaric.

 

I don't need hours but somehow feel reassured seeing it.

 

The only bad thing about Skedtrack, or really any hour tracking, is that you have to do it.

 

For me, I set up the school year, set-up the course, then input all the activities for all the courses. For me that meant going through the books, and typing Lesson 1, Lesson 2,etc, and/or page numbers for what seemed to be a lesson in something like phonics.

 

I do have to go back and change this based on what we get done. Skedtrack makes it easy to change the amount of time. For example, if I made the default time for math 30 minutes and it actually took us 60 I can change it.

 

Or if we did only have of Lesson 1, I can change the activity to reflect that and to make sure that we do the rest of Lesson 1.

 

I love Skedtrack it has totally changed how I get things done. I don't know why, it just worked for me in a way that paper, excel or anything else did. But having Mac I did feel very limited in what I could do.

 

hth

[bagel270]

I use hslda's MO form. Members can download an Excel spreadsheet.

[Mommy2BeautifulGirls]

I use homeschoolskedtrack because it's free and online. I can look/update it anywhere (on my tablet, pc, or smartphone) which is a big plus for me over homeschool tracker plus. It automatically tracks the hours for you based on what you've scheduled and what you mark as complete each day.

 

:iagree:

 

When you set it up, you can use the WTM guidelines for how long your subjects take each day. :)

[Mom22ns]

This is a 2 year old thread. I'm sure the OP has figured out how to track their hours by now.