Do you mean they are supposed to get baths after playing in the dirt?? :lol: I'm curious now how one even logs hours.... not that I plan on doing it right now but I have no clue even how you would do it. Just mark a calendar with the number of hours covered that day and keep a running total?
We used homeschoolskedtrack (free, online) for a while. It tracks minutes/hours for you, as well as days. If we had more reliable internet here, we'd still be using it.
That is pretty much what I do. In NYS we are required to list our hours on the quarterly report. I just jot down an approximate number of hours on my calendar and total them up each quarter. I am supposed to have 225 hours but I am usually some where around 300+ hours and I know I do not bother counting some things I could.
I've never had to track time/day, but I once looked at that scheduler in "A Home School Form-u-la" or some name like that. It's supposed to help you do high school at home. Anyway, each "class period" has a circle divided into fourths, and you pencil-fill the whole thing for a whole hour, 3/4 for 45 minutes, half for 30 minutes.... just guesstimate, and add it up at the end of the day/week/month however you choose.
Lindina, that is a great way to do it! It would be great for my Rylee who is all artsy and no numbersy :lol: I don't plan on switching to hours any time soon, and honestly most of me wants to count every single day as a school day when I'm checking off days because I see them learning non stop, but I'm a planner (not so much a follower througher haha) and need to know what lies ahead (or not).
I just read/watched this this morning and it reminded me of this conversation so I thought I would share. http://www.theunlikelyhomeschool.com/2013/11/why-and-how-to-implement-4-day_25.html
Interesting. I do kind of find it interesting that she talks about cramming 5 days of work into 4 days.... I have no intentions of doubling up on lessons, just taking a longer year than the typical 36 weeks to cover anything that is laid out for a specific number of weeks/lessons.
You kinda schedule year round, right (maybe a little lighter in the summer)? If so, then it should be no problem. She only schools 36 weeks (with time off in there for holidays and sick days) and that's it....even if they didn't finish their books/curriculum. She doesn't school through the summer at all. So, have you started it yet? If so, how's it going?
I think I like your idea of just taking longer instead of doubling up. But I did like how she didn't do everything when she doubles up, just the new concepts and some of the review instead of all of it. My curriculum only schedules 4 days of structured work and has ideas for enrichment the 5th day. It's been working great for us. I hope you find a good fit for your family.
Yes I do kinda school year around.. we start in July end in May (or well we used to ). We would take 6 from like now till New Year and then 8 weeks from May to July that we were "off", and 2 other weeks off as well, so still 36 weeks. We have not made the change yet, but will the 2nd week of Dec. Hubby starts his new shift Dec 8th. We usually are off all of Dec, but we are working this year. I am taking this week and next to do some planning. We have slacked A LOT!!!! this year so far. The kids are being lazy and so have I. I have decided we need some kind of visual schedule.. I wish I had the money to buy supplies for workboxes and the place to put 3 of those tall sets of drawers, but we don't so I'm thinking of using either The Unlikely Homeschool's Task Card System or Only Passionate Curiosity's Time Management System (minus the time slots... only an order to the day).
I think this is a great idea. I was looking at both sets of cards. Either one would work nicely. Now you have the fun of deciding which one.
If I thought I could get away with it, I'd love to go to a year-round schedule, but if we did 4-day as well, I'd definitely have to have more weeks than 36. More like 45, and I wouldn't try to jam 5 days of learning into 4. ... BUT people around here are sort of stuck on the 180 day 36 week school schedule. I also might adopt -- if I thought I could get away with it -- the January-December schedule, like New Zealand and other countries. Divided into 4 "terms", and the major break at Christmas/NewYear. But we have some other holidays that could be difficult to fit in - what do you do with a traditional Thanksgiving week off that everybody here is used to, or the Good Friday and the week after Easter that everybody here is used to...? Fourth of July? only a day, but still. Actually, a big summer break is not that bad -- the kids are home and their parents can pay for their own air conditioning!!!
LOL Lindina, yes, let them pay for their own AC! Actually around here the schools typically have off from Thursday to Monday for Thanksgiving (that includes Monday). Monday is the first day of buck and it's a big deal in NE PA. Oh and the local towns have off the last week of Sept for the Bloomsburg Fair... we used to have off just F or TH/F, but lots of kids miss school due to jobs at the fair or showing their animals from 4H... there is also the BIG traffic issues that spiderwebs into all the surrounding towns (fair week it took me 1 1/2 hours to go 1/2 a mile from the bottom of the mountain into town!). They are off like 1/2 day from the day before Christmas until the day after New Years, and only off Good Friday and sometimes Monday for Easter. They have other random days here and there, then are off like the 2nd week of June till the 3rd week of August. As far as the taskcards are going, I think I want to make my own.... I'm still not sure.
When I was a kid, we didn't start school until the day after Labor Day, we got Th/F or maybe W/Th/F for Thanksgiving, only the week off between Christmas and New Year, and GF/M for Easter, and the year ended May 31 or Jun 1. Then we got changed to the W before Labor Day, with the whole week for Thanksgiving because they state made the Teacher's Convention M/T/W that week. Gradually they've been starting earlier and earlier, and taking more and more holidays -- first making it a whole week at Easter (either GF and week after, or week before and Easter Monday) -- and making it about two weeks at Christmas/New Year, but taking the odd day off here and there. They get one day off for Fair Day, and kids who show animals or do other competitions just get excused. They've been starting earlier and earlier and now they start school around August 10-12! but they get out around May 15! I makes no sense to me! Instead of earlier and earlier, IMO they ought to start the day after Labor Day and eliminate some of those extra days off, and end at May 31 or June 1. August is hotter than June. It used to make sense, that schedule, when the men teachers and older boys (and some not so old) had to work on farms during the summer bringing in the rice harvest. But with fewer farms and better machinery, there aren't quite as many farm jobs as there used to be, and fewer farm kids are helping in the fields or driving trucks. Now the men (and women) teachers are having to take courses in the summer accumulating CEUs or working toward their Master's so they can be considered "highly qualified". In the parish where I used to work, there are whole segments of the student population, however, who don't come to school until October because they're digging sweet potatoes. Can't afford uniforms and school supplies until they get paid. In the parish I used to work in, they started taking the day off for the first day of squirrel season... even though the actual day is never until Saturday, the men and older boys would take off school on Friday to go scope out their intended hunting grounds, get the guns ready, and such. So the women started taking off that Friday (if the guys get away with it, we can too) to go shopping. So the Board gave up and put it on the schedule as Squirrel Day, which somehow attracted national attention and not in a good way, so they changed the name to Budget Day because it was busting the budget to hire so many subs for the day. For my school, we start as late as I can manage and still get off May 31 (or the last Friday in May), and take our week off for Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and a week and a day off at Easter. That's all the holidays we take.
Hey Lindina, you don't take a Mardi Gras break? We sure as heck do!!! I totally agree with you about starting up school after Labor Day.
NOPE! The public schools take off Mardi Gras, then of course they take off the day before for "American Heritage Day" (they made it up to get another day off) and the day after for "nurse your hangover day" -- I mean, a teacher in-service day. However, sometimes my students take off with or without permission for Mardi Gras, Fair Day, MLKJr Day, and whatever other "traditional" (public school) "holiday". We usually end up starting around the X-teenth of August, which is about ten days later than the public schools, and we do take off Labor Day. I usually get a calendar and mark either May 31 OR the last Friday of May as Day 180. I mark out our Thanksgiving week, two weeks at Christmas/New Year, and Good Friday and the week after Easter. I start at 180 and count backwards, skipping the holidays, until I get to 1, and that's the day we start. Sometimes i have to adjust a day or two here or there, so that we don't start on our church's Food Pantry Day in August, when my DH and the older kids are busy volunteering at the food distribution, and depending on what day of the week Christmas falls on, and whether Easter is early or late.
Maybe this is all part of a wider narrative about preparing a workforce for practices condusive to competitive productivity in the face of healthy competition from overseas - especially Asian - producers, where fewer public holidays are celebrated. (Or else one can dream about protectionism and isolation, in the hope that this issue will go away...)
I just looked at a calendar and blocked out 2 weeks for Christmas/New Years/Birthday Crazy-ness, and 2 weeks at the end of June/beginning of July. If we only count 4 days a week in our portfolio for the district to approve, we need 45 weeks... if I mark something that we do on Fridays then we still only need 36 weeks.. but to get all of Reagan's math (the longest scheduled subject we have each year) we need 40 weeks (of 4 days a week). What does this mean... heck if I know..lol. I think we are going to move into a just keep swimming kind of mode, where when we finish something we just move into the next level/topic/whatever. I'm not going to schedule any other breaks during the year beyond the 4 weeks already blocked out. I don't know if we will need much other time "off" since we are already going to be off almost half of each week. When we need or want time off, we will take it. I'm done worrying about the 180 days to appease the state, if I see the kids doing something any day of the week that I equate with learning, I'll mark it down and call it a school day.... and seriously, when isn't a kid learning something???
