Usually 4 to 5 hours a day. A high school student must be almost self-taught. The 186 days and 1116 hours are indicative. Your children are not expected to sit in a seat for 6 hours a day making workbooks.
This would force the state to apply a double standard that would be of no use in court. I consider reading aloud to be independent of the formal time at my school table, but to save time I like to keep my reading aloud relevant to what I'm teaching. While homeschoolers spend an average of two to three hours a day formally studying at home, there are generally no requirements requiring them to do so. And while that number increases with each grade, it's only about two hours at most for elementary school students and four hours for high school students.
The point is, even though your children may be in school for six or more hours a day, they don't spend all that time listening to academic instruction. Remember that in public schools, all those hours when children are “going to school, they don't actually go to school.” So we sat down and studied our workbooks (which normally cover two to three subjects a day) for about three hours a day. I once read that no student who studies at home should devote more than three hours a day, three days a week, three weeks a month to formal schoolwork. Chances are, you don't have 34 students to fight with during your school day, and while both of you will face disciplinary issues, you don't need to attend, check homework, attend assemblies and fire drills, computer classes, etc.
In most places, you don't need to keep a record homeschooling hours official, although some state governments recommend that you devote a certain amount of time to each specific topic. For example, young people who study at home tend to study only one to two hours, while older homeschoolers study six to seven hours. For some of us who are trying to work from home or are still doing essential work, even an hour or two sounds difficult. EVERY DAY, from August to December, it seemed like guilt was trying to invade my home with the idea that “we weren't doing enough.”.
