Guideline 1
School officials may consider the subjects the child will study, the length of the homeschool year, and the hours that these kids will be taught. While some school officials may consider hours of instruction in each subject, they may not dictate the exact way in which the subjects will be taught.
Subjects the child will study:
First of all, you will have to consider the lists of the core subjects such as mathematics, science and technology, history and social science, English, foreign languages and the arts. Other subjects that may be included in your child’s area of study may include orthography, reading, writing, the English language and grammar, geography, arithmetic, religion, drawing, music, the history and constitution of the United States, the duties of citizenship, health education, gym and good behavior.
To follow these guidelines parents can list the subjects that they plan to cover when drawing up their proposal. A simple list of them should be good enough, since the school is not allowed to dictate the manner in which you teach anyway.
You may want to use key phrases or paragraphs that will be of help to convey the flexible nature of homeschooling:
Topics that will be placed in the education proposal may include, but do not have to be limited to, the following:
[Child’s name here] will use a developmentally-appropriate and integrated curriculum. We will plan her learning process together, based on her interests, so that while it is impossible to state in advance which specific topical areas we will cover, we expect to cover the following subjects during this school year:
We will be practicing learner-directed educational skills; [child’s name]’s course of study is based upon his/her specific interests. His/her range of interests is quite broad and his/her learning will be created accordingly. [Child’s name]’s education is to be holistic as well since learning often occurs in the context of normal life experiences. His/her school year will extend 365 days a year for this reason.
The curriculum is a statement of things [child’s name] has learned and, based on that, of things s/he will continue learning throughout the year. Topics have a tendency to mix together and activities and discussions during the year will reflect a wider picture than what can be expressed in a list of isolated subjects previously mentioned.
Of course, if you are following a boxed or self-made curriculum for your child, you can simply outline what you plan to cover for the year, while still allowing for some level of flexibility in your plan. If you do not want to write an outline, you can create a photocopy of the table of contents from the curriculum instead.
Length of the homeschool year:
Cities and towns are obligated to operate the public schools for a minimum of 180 days. However, it does not go so far as to state that the length of a homeschool’s year MUST be the same as a public school year. However, you must ensure that your homeschool year will meet or beat 180 days.
Many homeschool families choose to write that their homeschool year extends 365 days a year, which means that it easily exceeds the minimum 180 days of a public school because of the life lessons that are often taught. In any case, you should make a note that the length of your homeschool year will be somewhere between 180 days and 365 days a year.
Hours of instruction per subject:
Parents may want to calculate the hours of instruction based on the way in which they homeschool, which does not have to be an exact replicate of what the public school’s offering, however it should equal it in how thorough and effective it is.
You should keep in mind that the definition of instruction is a loose one and includes such activities as independent study, field trips, computer-aided learning, and presentations by people that are not teachers. Also, it helps for you to know that following a schedule is not an important consideration in a home school where the use of time is different.
Some parents choose to write that they will meet or exceed the 900 (elementary) or 990 (secondary) minimum hours of teaching. If your local school officials insist on your adding more detail than this, you will want to submit an estimate of hours per subject per year. But when you do this you will want to preface it by including a statement such as “Because of the flexible nature of homeschooling, the following is just an estimate of the hours of instruction spent per subject”
If you are interested in knowing how the public schools allocate their time, schools have curriculum guides that define how much time will be spent on each subject per week. These guides should be made available to you upon request. Schools are not authorized to go so far as to ask for an hourly or daily schedule.
If the school official is insisting on an hourly daily or weekly schedule, you will want to accompany the above with this quote, which was conducted by from Brunelle: “While following a schedule may be an important consideration in a public school where preexisting schedules need to be maintained and coordinated, the perception and use of time in a home school are different. The plaintiffs can observe and accommodate variations (from child to child, subject to subject, day to day) in the learning process and teach through a process that paces each student.”