Homeschool World Forum

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Usually, the number of hours you have to put in is per year, not per week. Rather than wear yourself out trying to do 5 hours of instruction per day, switch to a year-round schedule of 12 hours per week (12 hours * 50 weeks = 600), with 2 hours of instruction per day, 6 days per week. This should be a lot more easily manageable. Also, with a little creativity, almost anything can be counted towards your x hours per week. Cooking in the kitchen? Have your son participate and call it Home Ec. Same with gardening, or any outdoors activity (Phs Ed), or so on. The majority of the hours should be put in on core subjects, but they don't all have to be.

What state are you in? I can look up your specific yearly requirements.

I have never heard of nor do I know anything about being compensated for home schooling so I can not speak to that. But I do know that your school day while you are home schooling will not require 6 hours. Home schooling is much more time efficent than public school. There is no roll to be taken, no assemblies, no class to keep in order, etc. For a 7th grader you are more likely looking at 4 hours a day. And a 7th grader should be able to work fairly independantly. The time the teacher spends with him each day or once a week is probably the only help he will need. You will be surprised at how quickly he will be able to "catch up" while working at home. Of course I know nothing about his medical needs, but as far as his schooling goes you would most likely be able to keep your full time job and home school him. It sounds like all you need is a responsible adult he can stay with while you are gone.

Good luck!

You may find the California thread in the Homeschool Law forum useful. Apparently there aren't any specific requirements on how many hours you have to put in per year, but the rules may be different (as in, they have more scope for manipulating you...) if you want special ed services under an IEP.

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Do keep us posted on what you find out. I'm interested to see where this goes.

Again best of luck to you and your son!!

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Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to anyway....

I find it impossible to meet the time requirements in my state. Not because I'm so busy, but because I can cover everything covered in school in about 1/4 of the time. So, here is what I did:

I got homeschool tracker (a wonderful product by TGHome Soft and well worth the price http://www.homeschooltracker.com/) and "scheduled" our school. We may or may not follow the schedule. Anyway, I gave 1 hour for english, 1 hour for math, ect and recorded the assignments. Everytime Brianne completes an assignment, I check it off and grade it (state requirements). It will take her about 10 minutes to do her english work, but when I check off the assignment she is credited with a full hour. Basically, I'm padding her time but in a way that is totally legal when your auto mechanic or attorney does it.

Generally, I don't advertise that I do that. I'm not sure if it could get me in trouble. Basicially, if your son is learning everything that he needs to learn to meet your state requirements it doesn't matter if he does it in 6 hours or 2. And, 2 hours is closer to what he'll actually need.

Randi

That sounds like it might be OK.

We do so much educational stuff outside of our school subjects that I don't care very much whether my state-required 4 hours get done every day or my state-required 172 days get done every year. For example, DD recently competed in the Geography Bee. It was on a Saturday. I didn't officially count that as one of our school days, but it was 4 hours and it was educational for all the kids. So if one other day sometime during the year gets short-changed, it all works out.

Ramona