Homeschooling: Counting the Hours

The state of Wisconsin requires "...a minimum of 875 hours of instruction each year..." That's five (5) hours per day for one hundred seventy-five (175) days. That sounds like a LOT. I mean, that's a lot of instruction time. 

The thing I like about requirements, after coming from two states that had none, is that it gives me an excuse to make my children work through the days when they just don't feel like it. 
I can say, "Hey, it's not me, I would gladly let you take today off, but the state says we have to log these hours."
It's also a good excuse to get started early this year. We took some time off to move and get settled into our new home, and during this time I've been working on organizing my library and writing lesson plans. I am excited to get started. When the kids resisted, I just reminded them that have hours to log (I even made each child a piece of graph paper with their 875 squares). I said we might as well get a head start or we'll be crying in June when all our friends are done and we're still trying to fill in our squares. They relented, and the school year began.

So, I'm thinking about these little squares and wondering, besides sitting at the table while I talk at them, what activities do we count as worthy of filling in a square? What hours count as "hours of instruction"?

I had planned for today to be a day off, so no hours to log, right? We did our household chores - I scrubbed the grout on my kitchen floor and it's awesome... but, that's a blog for another day. After chores, we spent the rest of the day at the beach. That's not "instruction" is it?

But, then, Noah learned how to catch frogs, and how to let them go. Life Science 

Jacob learned that somersaults in the sand and somersaults in the water are entirely different things, but both are fun. Gravity, water tension, buoyancy...  

Ethan learned to use his goggles without letting them fill up with water. suction, air pressure, water...
 pressure...

Tyler learned how to identify the backs of snails in the dirt and recognize them among the rocks, and when he accidentally swallowed some water that he was sure had a minnow in it... our day quickly led to a lesson in the human digestive system. Geology, biology

Caitlin found a clam? or maybe an oyster? that she brought home and dissected in hopes of finding a pearl. biology with lab

This group looks like a class to me.

 I've never dissected a clam before...

 "Can we make clam chowder?"

"Whoa! Intestines??"

How can I not count these as "hours of instruction"? With this in mind, I wonder what will happen when I've chalked up 875 boxes and I still want them to sit at the table and listen to me talk at them... How will I convince them to go along? It may be time to hide the graphs.

BTW: We confirmed that Caitlin's catch was a clam, so no pearl, but she did get a pretty neat souvenir shell.