As many of you know, we homeschool. Our state requires that we school 1000 hrs per school year (year is defined by the parents, and we pick July 1 thru June 30 as our school year, and we school year around 7 days a week). 600 of those hours have to be in key subjects, such as math, science, history.....

Anyway to make a long story short, this year for us started July 1, and we hit our 1000th hour today. So, legally we are done, but we will continue on.

For those of you who think we are mean parents making them school 24 hours a day sitting at a desk, that is not the case. It is a matter of what I count and how I count it. For example, I count piano lessons and practice as music, grocery store and shopping trips are included in hours for home-ec (the kids help with the shopping and making the lists). Yesterday the kids went with us to vote an we counted that as history/social studies. Working with my husband on the tractor or lawn mower motor, or changing the oil counts as vo-tech (small engines).

Their TV counts--we like to watch daily "How do they make that" and various shows on the weather channel/history and discovery/tlc channels. I get emails that give the show lineups and plan some of our book reading according to the shows. This works real well to have a video or show supplement what we just learned in the books.

Then we also have the "extras" that don't always get counted such as 4H, Girl Scouts, Bible Bowl, Horse Bowl, horsemanship, and trips to the library.

Next week one of my 10 year olds is starting an internship at my cousins clinic. He is a vet. She picked vet science in 4H, and is going to spend 1 day every 2 weeks with him (through May-weather permitting)in his clinic to learn the ends and outs of running a small business, small animal care, billing procedures, maintaining animal records and such. She wants to be a vet when she is older. My 12 year old is getting ready to do a similar activity at a library in her Grandmas town (we have no library in our county).

We also belong to a homeschool ccop where the kids take classes on Fridays. For this year, they have 3 classes and their winter program left. Then the ooop breaks until Feb next year. Those hours also count as they take creditable classes such as band, spanish, french, business math, Dave Ramsey for kids, weather watchers, art, photography and more.