Keeping track of homeschool hours

[MelInKansas]

Just a thought, what do you guys use for keeping track of hours? Anyone have a really great spreadsheet they want to share?

I need to double check, but I think for Kansas all I have to have is that I did 180 hours of school in a year. I think??? I will be asking the others in my homeschool co-op what they do and exactly what the requirements are.

[cirons]

Hi there,

I don't know what the specific requirements are for your area, but would it work to just look at the total of the recommended box times for each day (eg. 4 hours for Preparing or whatever it may be) and then multiply it by the number of days in the manual. Then as you tick off each day in the manual you know you have completed that many hours. You could note any significant alterations to that and add also extra-curricular activities. This may be easier than 'spreadhsheeting' it! Lol.

Corrie

[Shimmer]

I'm in KS too. I've asked other homeschoolers in my town about the required days of school and how they track it. I was a little surprised at first at how many of them really don't keep a specific record for it. Now that I've been doing it longer, I don't really keep one either besides our family calendar that has our all our activities on it. We do way more than the required amount when you add in all the other stuff you do that qualifies. I do keep binders of some of their work. Looking forward to hearing other thoughts on this.

Here is an excerpt from
http://www.kansashomeschool.org/content/view/27/78/

Kansas public schools must conduct classes for 1,116 academic hours (calculated as 186 days x 6 academic hours per day; academic hours consist of 50 minutes of classroom or instructional time.) Nonaccredited private schools in Kansas must be “substantially equivalent” to this. However, they are not required to follow the local public school's academic year or daily class schedule. Private schools are free to set their schedules and academic years as they choose. In meeting this requirement, homeschools include all activities that are considered part of the school's academic program, including:

Classroom instruction and study time;
Activities related to classroom instruction, e.g., field trips, library research, science fairs;
Non-classroom activities similar to those offered in public schools, e.g., music lessons and performances, drama, sports, 4-H;
Activities specific to the private school's philosophy, e.g., for Christian-based private schools, this could include Bible study, Scripture memorization, church and youth group activities, etc.
There are no specific requirements concerning record keeping related to a private school's academic program. Homeschoolers are encouraged to keep sufficient records to document their program. Set educational goals for the year. Translate those goals into daily or weekly lesson plans. Prepare and follow some type of schedule to help keep your school’s educational program on track. Recommended items for record keeping include lesson plans and schedules, a portfolio of schoolwork, attendance records, grades (if your program allows) and standardized test scores, if available.

[MelInKansas]

Thanks so much for all the KS specific stuff! I knew it was hours based. 180 days, not hours, that makes a lot more sense. Or 186 days I guess actually. Yeah it's confusing that a classroom "hour" isn't really an hour. But it seems to me that all I really need to keep track of is my actual hours. If I stick to my schedule that I've created for myself that should be easy... 2.5 hours of school time each day. Then I do need to add in any other educational activities we do in order to get up to the right amount.

Okay what's weird about this is, the amount of actual "instruction" grows each year. So it seems it would be easy for a 5th or 6th grader to get that 1116 hours without even trying very hard because they might actually have 4-5 hours of school work to do in a day. But my 1st grader... not so much. I will need to think through what other things will count. Chores? We do some things that could be classified as field trips but not that many. I guess their 30 minutes of educational computer time also counts. I bought Rosetta Stone we're going to take a go at that, otherwise I just let them use some of the good online programs that are out there.

[MelInKansas]

I have a follow-up question, I hope someone sees it. So what kinds of things do you count along with your school time? My friend who used to be a PS teacher thought the "6 50 minute hours each day" was still a lot of school to be considered for PS. They are eating lunch, recess, etc also along with the classroom time. So, anything that's like recess, does that count? Chores, do they count? Lessons in how to get along with your sister? (social studies ). I assume any other reading I do with them, or even reading she does on her own? Still struggling with how I will be accounting for 5 hours of school/learning time in a given day, I'm sure it's there I just don't know what to look for.

[faithful2him]

We are in KS.

My boys play soccer through a club here and I count that as Physical Education. The younger son gets about 3 hours a week and the older gets about 6 hours a week for PE. We were enrolled in an art class last semester, but I plan to do our own art things this year, including free drawing time. I plan to have 2 hours a week of that to include.

Any extra reading gets counted.

I didn't need to last year count Sunday School, but I most certainly could for Bible Study.

We also do lots of field trips that attach to science (zoo) and social studies (museums.) I also attach Language Arts to them by writing up a report or giving a report. If we take pictures and talk about them/look through them I include that as Language Arts as well since I believe strongly in oral communication.

I agree it is easier to get more hours in for the older, but board games also built up more hours for the boys, especially the littler one,.

Good luck.

[montanamom]

We have to keep track of hours in MT also. My daughter is in Beyond this year and I need to record 4 hrs/day for 180 days, so I also was struggling with how to 'fill up' the hours as well as the extra 2 wks that we're required to school over what the HOD manual is written for. I finally decided to use my daughters violin practice time for 30 min of music, and the rest is from the Beyond manual: 30 min for L.A, 15 min for emerging readers, 15 min for storytime, 1 hr for math (we will extend the written activity or add some MEP math), 15 min for history reading, 15 min for poetry, 15 min for Bible and 45 min for the rotating box. My daughter tends to take her time (creative/perfectionist), but I'm sure that some day's she'll get done quicker, but figure that that's ok since schools generally have alloted time periods and if a child gets done sooner, they just occupy themselves. Since you need 5 hours you could probably also use chores for lifeskills, a walk for nature/science PE, worship/personal Bible time as extra Bible time, time at the library as library skills, and free/independent reading time as extra reading time. For keeping track of the hours I just printed out her schedule with the designated time allotments for each 'subject' and the total daily school hours and then will keep track of the days that we follow that schedule...maybe that would work for you in KS also!

Pam

[Rhyah]

We have to have 1,000 hours here in Missouri, with 600 in the core and 400 can be in whatever. This is the first year I'm recording hours, since you don't have to start until your child hits 7. I had planned on doing our hours in 30-minute increments, until I sat down and tried to plan a schedule and realized that breaking it down by minutes, even 30 minutes, would end up driving me crazy. I'm just using one of those daily planners to record hours/lessons, and to make it easier I just divided the amount of hours by the weeks scheduled in HOD. It came out to a little less than 30 hours a week to finish in 34 weeks. To meet my state requirments, I just created a schedule from 8-2 and that's how I'm logging my hours. I'm not logging it each and every day based on what we do. My schedule basically looks like:

8-8:30 - breakfast/get ready for day
8:30-9:00 - science
9:00-10:00 - reading/language arts/handwriting
10:00 - 10:30 - break
10:30 - 11:30 - social studies
11:30-12:30 - cooking/art/music/ other elective
12:30 - 1:00 - lunch
1:00 - 2:00 - math and anything else we need to finish up

That gives me 6 hours a day, which actually puts me over the 1,000 hours a year, and clearly lays out our schedule should we need to prove that we homeschool. I would say read your laws really well. Missouri doesn't require us to actually show our records to anyone unless someone actually reports you for not schooling your child, so there' s no need to have a minute by minute record. I've heard some people say they count chores as home ec., but we don't. Plus, we will have field trips that count for some hours and will make up for any sick days or what not where we may not get any hours in that day.

[MelInKansas]

Thanks so much for all the helpful advice! yes, it's the same here, no one will actually look at my records unless we get reported for some reason. In fact, I was trying to figure out if I had to actually tell them WHICH children are enrolled in my non-accredited private school (which school-age children anyway). I did at least get the private school registration done.

The main thing is I need to track. We're almost through our first week so I want to get in the habit of doing it now.

[ForHisGlory]

Hi there! I may be redundant, but just wanted to give you some ideas of what I have used to count as hours (though we have never lived in a State that had guidelines for hours). I have counted PE at the local gymnasium, fieldtrips (science, math, social studies, etc.), cooking and laundry (life skills/home Economics), library visits (we did those 1 or 2 x's per week--count as reading/language arts), Boy Scouts (it depended on the activity done at the pack meeting that night, but I believe I counted it as science, social studies, etc.). Hope this helps!

Also, for tracking what we did, I am super old-fashioned and like it "on paper." I used the Homeshoolers Journal from Christian Book Dist. Excellent resource!

[my3sons]

Hi Melissa! I would not add things to your day to get to a certain amount of hours, or make more work for yourself than necessary by creating some elaborate tracking format. The fact is your dc are getting all they need by simply doing all of the HOD guide they are using. I explained how to go about doing this in this thread...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6114&p=44730

There are also many other good ideas already in this thread and in the one above I linked you too. I think it is important to remember that one of the reasons we are homeschooling is to be able to structure our days like we want to, as well as to be able to choose the academic program we wish. HOD has your bases covered, so I'd just type up a one page standard schedule that amounts to the time you need (similar to the example I provided in the above link) and write the dates you did school as well. That should be just fine. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[MelInKansas]

Thanks Julie. No, I wasn't really thinking I needed to add more things to our day or that the education from the HOD guide wasn't sufficient (it is far and away sufficient as far as I'm concerned). I was just trying to think through how the things we already do could be counted, what seems right to count and what doesn't. When I told my friend who used to be a PS teacher that homeschoolers are required to show the same number of instructional hours, 6 hours a day for 186 days, she said that was ridiculous because in a classroom there's no way they can get that amount of work done because of the amount of time spent doing crowd control, the amount of time that students who get their work done quickly just entertain themselves, etc. That made me feel a lot better.

But I want to obey the law and show that I am doing the work I should be doing. Thanks for that helpful link.