Required number of school days? Do you count?

[Mom28kds]

Do you have a required number of school days you are required to go? Do you count them? I have always counted my days but am considering not counting this year and just doing school everyday knowing I'll have gotten in what I need to get in to reduced the stress a little. Not that it causes alot but just to help be more relaxed about school in general and not to feel like I have to do things like the public school. What do you do and what is your reasoning?

[J-rap]

I never actually counted, but I followed the public school calendar pretty closely so figured we were good.

[Ethel Mertz]

My planning software counts them for me. We always wind up with more than the required amount (180). I occasionally check to see my running total just to make sure we're on track - especially when we need a break and I want to feel better about taking a break. But, it's really not that big a deal.

[Farrar]

I've never counted. When they were considering making homeschoolers take attendance I testified that I'd just make it all up.

[J&JMom]

I am in TX and am not required to count, but I do just for myself. I have a planned calendar (which is being tossed out the window this year with my recent breast cancer diagnosis), but I will tally the number of days it will take them to get things done until they are done.  I keep daily records in a planner of what was done on that day and post weekly updates listing the tasks on my blog as I have since I started homeschooling three years ago.  Haven't had a problem wrapping everything up within 165 ish days of schooling or around 34 weeks.

Edited August 3, 2016 by J&JMom

[Arcadia]

No requirements to count. We school through Thanksgiving break, Christmas break and summer so easily exceed 180 days. My kids has a planner each so I could count from their planners.

[Guest]

No requirement here. And no, I don't count.

[wendyroo]

We are not required to count.  If we were, I would completely make it up with a clear conscience; I don't have a clue how you decide what does or doesn't count as "school", but no matter I am sure we do well over what is required.  We do math, read alouds and some type of physical activity 300+ days a year - I would think that alone counts as a big chunk of "180 days' worth" of school.  Add in all the phonics, spelling, writing, science, history, geography, civics, Spanish, art, music, documentaries, field trips and therapy and I would have no problem slapping 180 check marks on random days and calling it good.

 

Wendy

[Miss Tick]

We are required to do 180 days and keep attendance. I have a page with the school year calendar on it. I number the weeks and shade the days we will take vacation. That is my plan for the year. I "x" the days we do school and then keep a tally from month to month of the days we've done school, that is my attendance sheet. I catch it up every couple of weeks.

 

The biggest benefit of all this is that it shows me that it is OK if we take a day off. Especially in the fall. I can get really wrapped up in "making progress" and checking boxes and worried about taking time off. It is easy to let that carry me away.

 

I also use it as a reminder midyear to check how our progress is compared to my goals for the year.

[happypamama]

We are not required to count. If we were, I would completely make it up with a clear conscience; I don't have a clue how you decide what does or doesn't count as "school", but no matter I am sure we do well over what is required. We do math, read alouds and some type of physical activity 300+ days a year - I would think that alone counts as a big chunk of "180 days' worth" of school. Add in all the phonics, spelling, writing, science, history, geography, civics, Spanish, art, music, documentaries, field trips and therapy and I would have no problem slapping 180 check marks on random days and calling it good.

 

Wendy

I'm reques to count at least 180 days by my state, but if I wasn't required, I wouldn't bother counting. I'd just keep an eye on our plans to make sure we weren't letting anything necessary slide.

 

My idea of what counts as "school" is something I can show as a portfolio subject. If they do martial arts class or ride their bikes or swim, that's PE, so it counts as a school day. If they crack open a book of decent literary value (i.e. not picture books or comic books after the learning to read stage), it's a school day. If they're in elementary, and they help me at the grocery store, that's a school day because it could hit social studies (community helpers), reading, math, science, and health, but actually, if they're young enough that that can be a school day, they're probably young enough that they aren't require to have a portfolio anyway (under 8). For older ones, they'd have to do serious investment in a grocery trip for it to count as a school day. I see tons of value in stuff like helping the family or taking occasional mental health days to watch fun movies, play non-educational video games, and read comic books, but I don't count those as school days because I feel like it just invites the state to look closer at me and question me more if I report too many days. So I report a respectable 200-220 days, and I can point to something they did that day that fits nicely into the required portfolio subjects, and that's my criteria.

[BrittanyM]

We are required to meet 175 days and to keep attendance but I haven't been very good about it.

 

 

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[Ellie]

Do you have a required number of school days you are required to go? Do you count them? I have always counted my days but am considering not counting this year and just doing school everyday knowing I'll have gotten in what I need to get in to reduced the stress a little. Not that it causes alot but just to help be more relaxed about school in general and not to feel like I have to do things like the public school. What do you do and what is your reasoning?

 

California does not have a required number of school days, so no, I never counted. If I had been required to, though, I would have had not qualms about counting every day, Monday through Friday, as a school day if at any time children were out of bed. :-)

 

There's a reason I would only count Monday through Friday, even though of course children learn every day. A number of years ago, there was a court case in San Mateo County. The mother had enrolled her children in a private school satellite program (PSP) in southern California, and she used the attendance calendar required by the school, which listed all days for each month, marking children present on each day she did school. The district attorney gave her grief because she had marked her children "present" on a legal holiday. (She was found guilty of allowing her children to be truant, because she could not describe what she was doing to cover the "core curriculum." It had nothing to do with attendance; it was just something the DA used to bully her.)

 

You know how every thing we say can be used against us in a court of law? Yeah. So, the law in California says that private schools are supposed to indicate when children are *absent,* not when they are *present.* IMHO, then, I am going to follow the letter of the law, which means "absent" instead of "present," even though the law does NOT say that I cannot teach my children on legal holidays or weekends or any time I darn well please.

[mamiof5]

Not required, thank goodness. No, I don't count

[happypamama]

California does not have a required number of school days, so no, I never counted. If I had been required to, though, I would have had not qualms about counting every day, Monday through Friday, as a school day if at any time children were out of bed. :-)

 

.

I dunno, Ellie -- when my mom pulled my second younger brother out to homeschool him, my first younger brother asked if she was going to count sleeping time as school time. "After all, *I* sleep through classes all the time, so why not count that time?" he joked. (He did actually sleep in class often, with his eyes open. I've seen him do it; it's freaky.)

[lanalouwho]

I'm not required to count so I don't. At the beginning of the year, I planned which weeks we would take off and sort of loosely mapped 36 weeks of school. But it's really more of a general guide than some hard and fast plan.

 

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[rjand6more]

We are required.  Yes, I count them.  We have weekly schedules down to the day.  Each week has a running total.  I count school as just that.  If kids are sick, no school day.  If we go out for the day, no school day.  If we are home, school gets done.

[Desert Strawberry]

In Louisiana, I did. I had a little calendar-the one-year-on-a-page kind that had little spots for days this month and a running total. I blocked out our vacation days (D's work holidays, planned breaks, their summer classes), and counted up the rest. We were required to have 180 days between annual registrations. Fewer than 180 and it would not be approved. 

I will likely do it again. It was nice to know how many days we had scheduled. One year was 244, one was 190ish. It seems like people often asked how many days we put in. It was handy to have a fairly accurate number. I also felt good knowing our number exceeded the minimum substantially. Especially when we had a lot of sick days, I liked knowing we had a bumper crop of days we could use.

I don't think I need to count days, but I think I will.

[emmaluv+2more]

We have a specified number of hours we must meet. I don't actually count, but I do fill in a time tracking sheet at some point during the year. I estimate and give each subject 15, 30, 45 or 60 min. per day taught. I have never had difficulty meeting the requirement because I count everything (bedtime read alouds, summer camp, vacations, grocery shopping, etc).

[Carrie12345]

180 requirement here.

 

I also have to keep a log but, as far as actually keeping a running tally of our number of days goes, I just circle the dates on a one page calendar in our log book and then count them up every few weeks (or months!)  We've never struggled to meet the 180.

[Saddlemomma]

In Maine, we're required to have 175 days.  I schedule 180 days so we'll have 5 days sick/break days. We never use all 5 sick days.  I exclude holidays 9 from that count (the holidays DH gets from work) as well as the Christmas break.  We don't take a spring break.

 

From so many years of doing this, I know that if we start in late August (this year the 22nd.), that we should finish mid-May.  Therefore, I just count 36 weeks.  Once we finish the 36th week, we're done.

[Runningmom80]

We have an hour requirement.  I don't count.

[mschickie]

We have an hour requirement and I do not bother to keep track at this point.  i did for a year or two but you always end up going over so why bother.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

We don't have any requirements at all in our state but I started keeping track of days anyway. We are year round homeschoolers who take breaks as we need them throughout the year so I always figured we got plenty of days in. One year I decided to go back through my planner and count up how many days we had done school just so I could pat myself on the back for how many more days we had done than the public schools. Oops...We had only done 150 days of school. No wonder we weren't getting through as much material as I felt like we should! It wasn't a big deal when the kids were little but as they got to upper elementary it felt important to cover a little more each year.

 

Now I just number the days in my planner as we go. Sometimes I pre-plan a week or two, sometimes I use the planner more as a journal to record what we've done after the fact but I always number the days AFTER we do them. This has helped keep me accountable and we get so much more done now. I can see at a glance if we're being consistent or taking too many days off.

 

I have my own set of criteria for what I consider a "school day" and it changes depending on the season. But typically, a field trip will count for a full day (even our recent summer trip to Six Flags), travelling/road trips (seeing new places, audio books and radio dramas, geography games), or any day where we do 3 subjects (even just Bible, Karate class, and watching Magic School Bus). During the official school year I might have higher expectations but it depends. I try to allow for a variety of possible learning experiences but I don't usually count everyday things like chores, grocery shopping, or playing outside unless I am specifically teaching something or they are learning some new skill.

Edited August 4, 2016 by 2ndgenhomeschooler

[HS Mom in NC]

No requirement here.

 

We do 36 weeks of school (it's fairly standard and it works for is) and I plan accordingly.  I plan for the week with 5 days worth of work and we complete it in 4 days so we can have Thursdays off for PE and socializing.

[ScoutTN]

We are required to do 180 days. I counted the first few years, but I don't anymore. We are always well over.

[Sahamamama]

I've never counted. When they were considering making homeschoolers take attendance I testified that I'd just make it all up.

 

:001_wub: Farrar, you are my kindred spirit.

 

[Ellie]

I've never counted. When they were considering making homeschoolers take attendance I testified that I'd just make it all up.

 

I love you, Farrar!!!

[GoVanGogh]

We don't have any requirements at all in our state but I started keeping track of days anyway. We are year round homeschoolers who take breaks as we need them throughout the year so I always figured we got plenty of days in. One year I decided to go back through my planner and count up how many days we had done school just so I could pat myself on the back for how many more days we had done than the public schools. Oops...We had only done 150 days of school. No wonder we weren't getting through as much material as I felt like we should! It wasn't a big deal when the kids were little but as they got to upper elementary it felt important to cover a little more each year.

 

 

I count for a similar reason mentioned above. The first two years we homeschooled, I didn't count as we went, but decided to count at the end of the year. We had around 125-130 days each year. It felt like we schooled so much, but I think that was because I think about homescholing so much (making lesson plans, researching curriculum, etc.) I always felt like we never got everything done! Well, we weren't because we weren't sitting down and "doing school" near as much as I thought/felt like we were.

 

I am thankful that I have counted - not so much for counting number of school days, but recorded what we have done, what curriculum we used, etc. We have a child that received a late diagnosis of a birth-related injury due to our pediatrician's negligence. We (husband and I) were initially charged with medical negligence, though that was quickly dropped when I presented boxes of medical and educational records. (The educational records were very much needed, as they showed the different aspects of the child's injuries and how it impacted their life, thus helped the specialists and therapists with their diagnosis and treatment options.) I know that is a 'worse case scenario' for why to keep records, but I certainly never envisioned it when we started homeschooling nearly a decade ago. I have always felt having too much info recorded (for my own benefit) would be better than needing something later and struggling to remember the details.

[MerryAtHope]

We have a required number of days but are not required to do any reporting. I do count for my own reference. I like to know where we are in our year, and if we are more or less on track with where I want to be. I have a simple set of checkboxes at the top of my weekly schedule, and I just count and keep track there. I think I'd find it more stressful not to count. If I thought we'd be to about a certain point by a certain date, and we're not there, I can easily know if it's because we've taken extra days off, had sick days, or if the issue might be with something else (possibilities: work habits, a mismatch between curriculum and child, a good match but child needs extra time, and so on). Because I can see the issue easier, I can know how to adjust things or adjust my expectations for that year. 

 

Counting days might be stressful if you let the counting have final say. I use it as a tool to help me know what to adjust within my homeschool--I get the final say in whether we are doing enough, too much, not enough, etc... 

[G5052]

No requirement here. During the first year I put a number on each day that we schooled -- 1, 2, 3, 4. etc. in my personal calendar. So I could see by Christmas how many days we'd done.

 

We were well over that, and I never tracked it again.

 

Later on when my teens were earning a P.E. credit, I marked the same way for each hour of martial arts to make sure they got the hours in.