DONE.

We're finished with all our state-required hours for the 2010-2011 school year! We could sit around until JULY (or later, if we wanted a summer break!) and do NOTHING academic whatsoever. Oh, yeahhhh.

Meanwhile, our public school has to do SIX makeup days and one more day for every two missed hereafter. Can I just say that seat time requirements are silly? But I do vaguely understand the rationale behind them. Certainly you can't teach me all I need to know in second grade in three hours per year. So, some committee somewhere fuddles around and thinks of a nice round number - 174! - and requires schools to do that.

Really, I'm befuddled at the whole process. I don't know which committee meets or what their procedures are. It seems to me, however, when we began homeschooling that 1,000 hours seemed a heavy requirement for a small child. Now, progressing further, 1,000 hours doesn't seem to cover all that needs to be done in a given year. I'm sure the amount of time I feel necesssary will increase the longer I homeschool. But if I were to begin homeschooling Rose in kindergarten? I hardly imagine myself working with her for five or six hours each day on solid academics.

I see no differentiation in the DESE guidelines between first and 12th graders in terms of the number of hours required in a school year. But I DO see that it looks as though there is a four-day instead of five-day option. Wonder why no one has proposed doing that here? Would save a boodle on transportation costs, though the school day would be long and children who miss a day of school are really missing a day and a quarter (right? I'd think).