s/o school start date, how many days?

[athomeontheprairie]

In the other thread, many said they follow their local school calendar. That has me curious about something.

The homeschool requirements in my state are 186 days. The local school only attends 170 days (minus any snow days). See the problem here?

Just curious how others handle this? (It isn't an issue for us, as we completely ignore anything the PS is doing...) I plan for 37 weeks (which is only 185 days) to get through our purchased curriculum. But those weeks also include group trips and activities as part of school. 

 

maybe the question is, how many days of school do you schedule? What is the homeschool requirement in your state (if you have one) AND how many day does your local school require?

 

[mytwomonkeys]

180 days for us

 

ETA - that's what the public school does and what is required of homeschoolers as well

Edited July 11, 2017 by mytwomonkeys

[iamonlyone]

Homeschool requirement here is 1,116 hours in a twelve-month school year.

[hellen]

I school year round so I don't plan a certain number of days. I added up our calendar recently and we were around 190 for June 2016 through June 2017.

 

ETA: We don't follow the school calendar at all. For example, this year the kids had school work on 4th of July. We'll take 3 weeks off in August though. Last year, the kids did school work on Thanksgiving but we took the next week off and went to NYC when it was less busy. The kids have learned to accept it.

Edited July 11, 2017 by hellen

[regentrude]

No, I don't see a problem  - the children live in their home also during weekends and summers, and learning happens during those times as well. 

 

My state requires hours. I never had trouble coming up with enough hours. But if I counted days, I'd have a lot more than 180 days during which educational activities took place.

[happypamama]

I really don't know how many days are required for the public schoolers, but homeschoolers in my state are required to have 180 days. So we do 180 days. We typically log about 200-220. In of the opinion that they're learning 365 days a year, but I feel like logging that just invites extra scrutiny. And by log, I mean a calendar with days checked off on it.

 

Sometimes requirements for homeschoolers vs. public schoolers are different. In my state, as long as homeschoolers cover health and PE sometime in grades 7-12, they don't have to have credits of either. Public schoolers here have to have either half or full (I forget which) credits of both in high school. Such is life.

[Rebel Yell]

My state requires 180 days (and does not define what 'counts' as a day- could be 15mins, could be 10+ hours) OR 900 hours (elementary) 990 hours secondary (grades 7-12). The public school law (which homeschool law is a section of) says the school year runs July 1 through June 30. We have filing deadlines, but nothing in the law says we have to complete a grade level, no more no less, in that time frame. The law is more of an annoyance than a detailed plan, KWIM?

 

I have always done "official subjects" starting the day after Labor Day, and ending the Friday before Memorial Day. That would be math, English, science, history, foreign language. I still "count" almost everything they do over the summer and breaks as school work, so even if there are only 175ish days during the "official" school when I consider myself "on duty" for grading and reviewing, we easily get almost as many days/hours on other days to fulfill the legal requirement.

 

Also, when they finish a text/subject, it is done for the year and I assign credit (high school) whether it is finished in February or the last day in May. Only once did I have a child working on the last "official" day. She had some history reading to catch up in, and literally finished it on the way to and in the church parking lot right before a youth group event that evening. I was fine with her finishing later, but she wanted to be DONE.

[Alice]

Our state says that homeschoolers are supposed to have the same number of days/hours as public school kids. Which is 180 days or 990 hours. However, we don't ever have to report hours or days so I don't really worry about counting them or keeping track. 

[Carrie12345]

180, homeschool and public school.

 

This year, we'll have around 60 days of co-op(s), and I would guestimate about 20 days +/- for events, activities, and other classes. So I'm trying to schedule subjects into 100ish days.  :huh:   It's only 2 or 3 subjects for the teens, so it's not impossible, and we do work year round, well over 180 days.  It just makes planning a giant mess!

[Arcadia]

How many days of school do you schedule? I don't schedule

What is the homeschool requirement in your state (if you have one)? No requirement

How many day does your local school require? My local public schools has 180 teaching days. The school year typically run August 15th to June 15th for them. Two weeks for winter break, one week for spring break.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

Our state doesn't have a requirement for number of days or hours for homeschoolers. I don't plan a specific number of days either. I look at the calendar for the upcoming year and roughly block out some off weeks (Thanksgiving week, 3 weeks at Christmas, the week after Easter, after 6-10 weeks of school when I think we'll need a break) and then split our curriculum up into the weeks we have. I just set goals to be at a certain page by a certain date and check periodically to make sure we're on track and then adjust as needed.

 

I count days as we go for my own benefit. I know learning happens all the time but I only count days where we are working through some of our curriculum, going on an educational field trip, or for other specific educational activities. There were a few years that we just didn't seem to be getting through much of what I planned. I started counting days and was surprised to discover that we were only doing "official" school work about 120 days a year. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by that but we homeschool year round and would just take days off here and there. We were taking more days off than I realized. Counting as we go helps me stay on track. We can still be flexible and take days off but I can easily see when we're taking too many. I count from July 1 - June 30. Last year we ended up with 185 days (or 190?). I try to have 30 days by the time we start our full schedule mid-September.

[purpleowl]

Our public schools have 180 days scheduled. No day/hour requirements for homeschoolers.

 

I don't keep track of days/hours. We go year-round, but we also take time off when I decide we're going to take time off. I just make sure we're making what I consider reasonable progress academically. I have progress goals in my mind, like "we should probably be through this much of this math book by Christmas" or "we should finish this novel by the end of the month," and I check from time to time to see if we're on track to meet those goals.

Edited July 11, 2017 by purpleowl

[mykidsrmyjoy]

Our state requires homeschoolers to get 140 days in, but the cover school we are enrolled in requires 160 days, so that's what we do.

[theelfqueen]

Colorado requires 172 days averaging 4 hours per day. I submit my notification with the minimum hours (688) rather than number of days and track hours rather than days. It's a better fit for us.

 

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[Jkacz]

I schedule school work for 180 days plus Stanfords and field trips. We start the school year when public school does and go full days until the boys finish those 180 days. Once they finish, they start the next year by doing 1 1/2 to 2 days worth of work per week over the summer so they start the year about 18-20 days ahead and can take days off during the school year and finish earlier than the public schools.

[Tanaqui]

In elementary school, the requirements are the equivalent of 900 hours in ~180 days. In high school, it's 990 hours in the same amount of time. I was flabbergasted to find out that a private school on the Island has only 165 days of school. I had no idea that was even legal. I'm still not quite sure it is.

[tdbates78]

My state only requires 9 months of homeschooling and a standardized test each year, neither of which gets submitted.

Edited July 11, 2017 by tdbates78

[TravelingChris]

I am no longer homeschooling but I think that most states we lived in had a 180 day requirement if any. I didn't plan out in advance normally. We schooled mostly year-round though we took off for moves. We usually lost about a month for that. Most vacations were educational simply because that is what my family tends to prefer. We did schooling on weekends, on holidays, at night, lots of times. I don't necessarily mean we were doing all subjects on all days because we were not. But most days were at least partially educational. I did not count any days we went to an amusement park although we did go over physics, marketing, sociology, etc. there. But although I wasn't an unschooler in that I did require certain subjects and we did use educational material, our general philosophy was that learning can occur in most anywhere and anytime and we should foster that. In fact, although my children are now all grown, all of them and my dh and I still love learning and do it a lot. Even us watching a tv show together usually takes much longer than the show time since we end up looking up so many things and discussing so many things.

[Seeking Squirrels]

We are required to do 180, but we don't have to turn anything in or report to anyone. But just in case it's ever called into question, I keep a rough attendance. I have a single page year-at-a-glance calendar that runs July-June and I highlight any days we do school. I count field trip days or days we don't do book work but do baking, art, or things like that. Every once in a while I count up the highlighted days to see where we're at just to keep myself in check that we're not taking off too many days. We do school lightly/here and there through summer, so by starting the calendar in July we can have a nice head start before local schools start up. 

 

Schedule-wise, I just plan out the work and we do the next thing. I split it up roughly over 36 weeks, but this is mostly so I can check that we're keeping a decent pace, I don't follow it to a T. 

[HomeAgain]

We have 900 hours, 36 weeks to meet our requirements.  Since we're doing 4 days a week, that means my 2nd grader has 6h15m of school scheduled those days.

[RootAnn]

My state has an hours requirement. High school is higher than K-8. I generally plan 30 weeks during the school year (including a few weeks that have only four full working days due to a field trip). We do 'light school' during the summer. 

 

I schedule out just about everything but math to get it done in 150 days or less. Math never ends.

[katilac]

I always plan 180 days of actual school work, not counting trips to the zoo and such. That's just the "standard" amount of school time to me. We don't have to count, but I do for a few reasons.

 

*We didn't always use resources that were broken down in lessons or that had a neat finishing point.  

 

*We don't like long days, so we have more days instead. 

 

*When younger, my kids did better with structure and without really long breaks. 

 

*I'm in an area where homeschoolers often seem to overestimate what they're getting done, and underestimate how much time they're taking off, so I've always been overly sensitive to NOT doing that. 

 

*More to the point, I just can't git-'er-done in less time. Lots of days is less stressful for all of us. 

[Zoo Keeper]

175 days required for public, private, or homeschooling.  We start the day after Labor Day and keep on until 175 days are up--usually sometime in May for us.

[HeWillSoar]

We don't have requirement although I have followed the ps shedule of 180 days.  This is the first year that I'm doing our own schedule and instead of a teacher's workday here and there and random holidays, we are going to take chunks of time off.  I think it puts us at 175.  Mainly, I just want to have enough weeks to finish our curriculum.   When my kids were in public school, the last week was mainly cleaning out desks and watching movies.  It didn't seem like they did much.

Edited July 11, 2017 by HeWillSoar

[3 ladybugs]

I live in a state that has no requirements for us (homeschoolers). I have tried to keep track of days in the past but it was just confusing as DH does things on the weekend and I do stuff during the week so if you were to look at it it would look like our son never gets a day off! I assure you that isn't the case! We school year round as I am always trying to get subjects that he is weak in to correspond to ones he is strong in. Never ending battle!

[FaithManor]

We school about 200 days per year. Sometimes 220.

[athomeontheprairie]

No, I don't see a problem  -In my state, IF you follow the requirements of 186 days AND follow the PS schedule, which for MY district is ONLY 170 days. You are failing to meet the legal requirement by 16 days. Obviously this is not a problem for everyone. My state seems require more days than others. It's not an issue for me, as I don't follow their calendar. the children live in their home also during weekends and summers, and learning happens during those times as well. Obviously this is true. It's also true for Public School kids with parents that are involved in their lives. But school doesn't get to count those days in their calendar. And if a family in PS goes on a trip during the school year, the kid is truant despite the fact that learning is taking place.

 

 

My state requires hours. I never had trouble coming up with enough hours. But if I counted days, I'd have a lot more than 180 days during which educational activities took place.

I'm a little surprised at the number of hours some states require. Ours is MUCH higher than some of the ones given. Which surprises me, since our state has no enforcement of the law :)

 

 

Home-based education in CO requires 172 days. Pretty silly, as the ps doesn't meet that many. THIS. This is what surprised me when I looked at our districts calendar. I dutifully kept a calendar for many years, circling dates, though we "homeschool" under the private tutor option. We always ended up with way more days, especially as the kids moved into college classes. They always had homework on the weekends. This year? I have a tidy little calendar with every single day circled!

[ashfern]

My state requires 180 days with 4.5 hours per day. But when we did public virtual school we learned that 2.5 hours was counted as a day for public school. Don't know why they expect more from home school kids. We count field trips & museum days just like public schools do.

[....]

We have about 200 school days per year.  I don't plan them ahead of time, but I roughly know when we take off from school (like we try to take December off).  We're in Texas and I don't think we have a "certain number of days" required.  

[....]

But when we did public virtual school we learned that 2.5 hours was counted as a day for public school. Don't know why they expect more from home school kids. 

 

What????!!   :huh:  OK, never mind, we do 400 days of school per year, then.   :tongue_smilie:

[DawnM]

I never counted.  We just did what we did.  They are all now in school and doing fine.