Hours of Homeschooling or Unschooling

[greenfields]

If your state requires a certain number of hours per year, do you record such hours per day or week as a homeschooler or unschooler?

Would a state ever audit homeschooling/unschooling hours?

Our state requires 1000 hours for the year.

Thanks!

[Ravin]

If a specific number of hours were required, and records of said hours were required, and an audit was a possibility, I would keep records.

[Targhee]

I would keep hours because it’s the law, however improbable an audit might be. If an audit did occur and you didn’t follow the homeschool requirements, you run the risk of child welfare/protective services getting involved. Especially if they see you’re unschooling.

So perhaps a good question is what is an easy way to track unschooling hours. I have seen tracking papers online for unschooling before - they were basic like “Today I read ___, practiced ___, watched ___, made ___, wrote ___, built ___, discussed ___, visited ___,” etc where you fill in an amount of time next to the applicable verb. I’m sure there are other ways to document as well, but if it were me I would document to keep in compliance with the law.

[YodaGirl]

We're in a similar boat in our state.  I log time for how long a subject's TE says it should take. Math, for example, takes 60 minutes. That's what I log.  I also log time for what I call "Independent Studies" which might include free reading, legos, educational TV or apps, etc, depending on ages. Cooking dinner?  Culinary arts. 

Sometimes I have to get creative, but I feel zero guilt. Learning is learning.  I think hour requirements are ridiculous. I have some public educator friends who really dislike the idea of homeschooling, and even they say the hour requirement is silly.  Public schoolers don't even have that many hours of straight book-work instruction.

ETA: I use my planner as legal documentation. I have the lesson plans laid out for each day, and I have the daily schedule for each subject equaling the necessary hours. In the back, I keep attendance. If I mark DD present for April 24, then it means she did the 6 hours scheduled for that day, if that makes sense. 

[TheAttachedMama]

Our state DOES require a certain number of hours/school days.   However, it does not specifically require that we keep formal attendance or logs of the hours we school.    So I do not keep formal records.    I make sure I follow the state homeschooling laws to the letter.     I do not do extra.    In our state, we simply need to assert that we WILL school for those number of hours per year in our official letter of notification to the superintendent.  So I send in my notification letter and call it good. 

My kids do take standardized tests each year.  (That is something required in our state laws, so we do it.)   I feel like if I was ever in a situation where my homeschool was being audited, those tests scores (and a few samples of their work) would suffice for my records. 

[Mimm]

In my state (MO) we must do 1000 hours. You are not required to show your log to anyone unless you are under investigation and then only to the judge I think? So, not a school official or social worker or anything like that. I've never known anyone to be investigated and have to show their log to anyone. But still, it's the law and you should comply with the law. I'm sure it does happen and you want to be prepared just on the off chance something weird happens. Our state law is a little vague about what this log should look like. Some years, I just added up all the hours we did in every subject and kept work samples, book lists, etc. Some years I kept a much more detailed log showing how much time we spent in each subject each day, and still kept work samples and so on. I took pictures of field trips and art projects and sometimes made a list of goals, or wrote out a list of what I felt we accomplished that year. I did it differently each year.

[mamamoose]

We have an hourly requirement as well. 1080 hours. It’s just nonsense for a 3rd grader to be honest. But we just cross of days on a calendar and call it 6.5 hours.

[HomeAgain]

Yes.  I set up each subject with an allotted time in Skedtrack.  When he does the lesson or something in that subject, I write it in and check it off.  I can pull up any year and see how many lessons were done/how many hours devoted without a problem, or print of a list at the end of each year with the number of hours at the top and what work was covered all the way down the page.

[4KookieKids]

No, we don't log. But the hourly requirements can be spun a lot of different ways: 42 weeks x 5 days x 5 hrs/day >1000 hours. Or 42 weeks x 4 days x 6 hrs/day >1000 hours. Or 48 weeks x 4 days/wk x 5.5 hrs/day > 1000 hours. And I feel like it's pretty easy to make the argument that we school at least this much. My older kid reads for at least 2 hours most days (halfway done!), practices music at least another hour each day, plays very active games for at least an hour every day (PE!), and spends some family time each evening doing read alouds and singing, so we're already up to 4.5-5 hours most days, even on very laid back days. Once you add in audiobooks in the car, crafts/art time (my kids spend an awful lot of time crafting), and daily hygiene (Health), it'd be hard to argue that we get less than 1080 hours in. :)  On sick days, he may miss "PE", but he reads extra. And for my K'er who can't read well yet, but is still required to have >1000 hours, I do count the time she spends getting read to as "school", as well as the time she spends just looking at books, since she'd certainly be doing this in school anyway.