If you live in a state that requires keeping record of hours or school days,

[lynn]

Do you get through curriculum in that time period or stop at day or hours (what ever it happens to be)?

 

Do you pick up where you left off or start the new school year with fresh?

[Dana]

Our state wants 180 days.

 

I've just picked up where we left off. Depending on how long a break we take (generally not over 1 month), I may start up with a bit of review.

Most of the materials I use (apart from math) don't have specific grade levels attached to them, so it's no problem at all to be using them with my son (he doesn't feel ahead or behind... it's just where he is).

[regentrude]

Our state requires me to log hours. I keep an excel spreadsheet for that.

We start where we left off. We do not use any curriculum that has numbered lessons or such - but we would, naturally, finish the math book before starting the next one, irrespective of whether it is the middle or end of the school year.

[Ellie]

Do you get through curriculum in that time period or stop at day or hours (what ever it happens to be)?

Happily, I homeschooled in a state with neither requirement (California), so this will color my answer, I'm sure (and it's pretty brassy of me to reply, anyway, since you asked peeps who *do* live in states where they have to record hours or days. :laugh: )

 

At any rate, it would not occur to me to allow legal requirements to stop teaching when I reached a certain time of day which reflected how many hours the state thinks I should teach. o_0 And since learning happens 365 days a year, I would just keep doing what I was doing, even if it happens to be more than the number of days that the state thinks children should be learning. If my Official School Stuff was less than that (and I can't imagine that it would be), I'd evaluate all the the thing we were doing and probably find that the dc were actually learning during the rest the required days, and I'd count those days, too.

 

Do you pick up where you left off or start the new school year with fresh?

 

In our house, the year begins January 1 and ends December 31. :-) We usually just pick up where we left off.

[Donna A.]

We have to count hours in our state. Our year (per state hs'ing laws) runs from July 1 through June 30, so I just make sure we do at least the # of hours required between those dates. (I stop counting when we've met the requirement.) The counter starts over at 1 on July 1st, but otherwise, we just keep going. We don't have a specific start-and-stop date as far as the curriculum or books themselves go. We just stop when we finish a course and begin the next level.

[Doodle]

While this is the first year I need to officially report number of school days, I have been following the required 180 days for previous years. I end up with some completed curriculum and some carry overs. Math is one that we consistantly complete.

[Mom22ns]

I report hours. My kids wish I would stop when we meet the requirement. I keep records because I'm required to. I homeschool to educate my children. The two tasks are quite independent of each other.

[Samiam]

My state requires 180 days but I could care less.

 

We've always homeschooled year round, for the most part, with just a few weeks off in July. Last year we took the whole month off, and we'll do that again this year. So while I do track our attendance because I use HST+, so it's super easy do to, we school way over the 180, usually in the 210-220 range.

 

We start first week of August, and end mid-to-end of June. If we haven't finished a curriculum by that point, it's probably because I was pretty much burned out on it and taking it slower, so we'd just be done with it at that point, and move on the the next thing when we started back up.

[Samiam]

I keep records because I'm required to. I homeschool to educate my children. The two tasks are quite independent of each other.

 

Yes, and yes, to what she said!

[Lolly]

I have an online calendar. I check off days on it. (We are required 4 hrs a day for 180 days.) Honestly, I check the days off for the entire grading period either at the very beginning of the school year or at the end of it. It probably is somewhat close to what has happened... It is a formality the state requires. It is stupid. I give it no thought or care. We use curriculum until I decide it is done. Usually, that is when we get to the end of the book. The "calendar" doesn't mean a thing. If something hasn't been completed in that time frame, we usually just keep plugging along. As someone else said, the keeping of the calendar and school are separate/independent tasks.

[boscopup]

My state doesn't have requirements (we just have to report "absences" - when are we absent from homeschool?), but my cover school requires 160 days. We usually school about 200 days. We start at the end of June or beginning of July, and we go to the end of May (stopping when the school kids get out). Our curriculum is all over the map - we rarely do anything in exactly 180 days. ;) So some books will carry over to the next year, and most will switch levels mid-year. Not a big deal. My kids span a range of grade levels in their work, so we just go until it's time to stop.

 

Like Ellie, it never would have occurred to me to stop teaching at the point of reaching minimum state requirements. I teach my kids, and make sure that while I'm doing that, I meet the minimum requirements. But mostly, I just teach my kids. I'm also fairly flexible in what I call a school day, so some of those days counted are days where we watched Mythbusters and considered that "science". :D Most days, we work hard and do everything we're supposed to, but like the public schools, we sometimes need a movie day or something. ;) If we school during the week, I count the whole week, even if we only did 4 days. Usually we've done 5 days of work in that 4 days.

 

In high school, I'll be a lot stricter with the hours/days tracking to make sure we're doing enough for credits, but for elementary? Nah. You can do quite a bit in just a couple hours for a lower to mid elementary student.

[Χά�ων]

DS does not know the state laws for attendence and has no reason to know at this age. We go until we are done each day and we do something each day.

[Mommy to monkeys]

Our state requires 900 hours per year. . . We have to report quarterly and I have a heading titled "hours" next to which I put "225+". NY has relatively stringent homeschool laws and I haven't had any problems reporting in that manner thus far.

[Myra]

Another New Yorker here......I have never addressed the number of hours or days on any of my quarterly or year end reports at all. I just say at the end of the year that "My son had met and exceeded the New York State requirements for homeschooling for grade such-and-such." That's it no hours, days, results or names of achievement tests....very generic. You might be able to say something like that......

[mom31257]

We are 180 4.5 hour days. I don't watch the clock, but I do schedule our curricula so that it is finished in those 180 days. I just divide each subjects chapters, lesson numbers, or units by 36 weeks. I figure out how many pages to do each week to be finished by the end. I try to plan most things so they can be done in 4 days a week in case we have co-op, field trips, etc.

[Dmmetler]

We have 180 days as well, which are technically supposed to meet the school day minimums (I think 4.5 hours for an official "day"). I just go on to the next thing when we're finished. So far, this year, we're on target to finish everything but the official science book by the time PS lets out in May (some things earlier-and if so, we'll just move on to something else), and DD does a separate lab class which doesn't match the book, plus has been very involved in researching and learning about snakes in general and her pet snake in particular, so I figure that even if we only get 1/2 the Earth Science curriculum finished this year, she's still going to have exceeded "third grade" science. We go into more depth and higher level within those 180 days than what I've seen PS do, although I admit DD doesn't do nearly as many projects with written papers.

 

 

In practice, DD does better with a consistent routine, so, in general, if we're home, we do at least some "school"-although there are times of the year when "School" consists of "practice math facts on Mathletics, watch a Netflix video or a Brainpop or two, do a page in a copywork book, and read something" (taking maybe an hour) because MOMMY needs a break!

[JennyD]

My state (which I believe is the same as the immediate pp, TN) requires 180 days of at least 4 hours each. In terms of actual schooling, we just do our thing, and I keep general records and work samples for my own benefit. For the paperwork, I register with the school district in August and then in late May, when public school lets out, I print out the official school hours form and fill it in in a way that looks reasonably conventional.

[Ellie]

We are 180 4.5 hour days. I don't watch the clock, but I do schedule our curricula so that it is finished in those 180 days. I just divide each subjects chapters, lesson numbers, or units by 36 weeks. I figure out how many pages to do each week to be finished by the end. I try to plan most things so they can be done in 4 days a week in case we have co-op, field trips, etc.

 

 

Isn't ironic that GA requires 4 ½ hours, 180 days, and you have to turn in attendance records but you don't have to actually justify those hours/days? :-) If I lived in GA, I'd just be submitting those attendance records and not worrying about what I did, 'cuz I have not doubt that children are learning *something* for at least 4½ hours every day. If I felt more compelled to do Official School Stuff for that many hours, I'd also include co-op and field trip hours, because those are learning situations, and furthermore, children in public school are counted "present" the moment their feet cross the threshold, regardless of anything that actually goes on in the classroom, KWIM? :laugh:

[mom31257]

 

Isn't ironic that GA requires 4 ½ hours, 180 days, and you have to turn in attendance records but you don't have to actually justify those hours/days? :-) If I lived in GA, I'd just be submitting those attendance records and not worrying about what I did, 'cuz I have not doubt that children are learning *something* for at least 4½ hours every day. If I felt more compelled to do Official School Stuff for that many hours, I'd also include co-op and field trip hours, because those are learning situations, and furthermore, children in public school are counted "present" the moment their feet cross the threshold, regardless of anything that actually goes on in the classroom, KWIM? :laugh:

 

I don't see how I could have done 4.5 hours of purely academic work when ds was in K and 1st. I figure if I pick curriculum covering all the subjects the state requires and even extra, and we finish that curriculum in those 180 days, then we should be good. To me church, co-op, field trips, "pe outside", etc., all count toward school time. We now only report attendance once a year online. We still do standardized testing every 3 years, but we just keep it for our records. It's a very easy state in which to homeschool.