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My step mom worked as a preschool teacher at a local church when I was homeschooled in high school. I was on a video program with ABeka (which is excellent college prep at the high school level, btw). She was gone for half the day and I was usually done with school by the time she got home around lunch time. On test days, we would work around her schedule so that she could administer tests.
If somebody is around to offer discipline and guidance, you can find programs that require minimal instruction from the parent. On something like an online program or a DVD program, the kids could still be supervised by grandparents without them needing to teach anything. Also, school does not have to be held during traditional hours. My husband works ten hour days and goes in early, so he is usually home around the same time you would expect somebody home if they were working an eight hour day. That still leaves a few hours in the evening when school could be held if you have the stamina for it, or school could be held on your days off. As long as the kids are learning, it doesn't really matter when or where. Some programs require certain time constraints while others are entirely flexible. If you design your own, you control everything, although that can be pretty time consuming.
As for getting through a week of school in two hours, the quality of a homeschool education tends to be better and is not fraught with all of the distractions and transition periods experienced in public schools. If you sit in at a school to observe, you could probably account for only a few hours of actual instruction for an entire week. At home, children don't experience the distractions of fellow students' behavior problems or other distractions that are frequent in a public school setting and they also don't have to transition from one classroom to another only to have to have the next teacher take time out to settle everybody down before instruction can begin. Consider the time needed to take an entire class to the restroom; walking the line there, waiting long enough for everybody to get a turn, taking time to deal with any behavior issues such as little boys shooting alternate targets, getting everybody lined up again, and then walking back to the classroom. That can take 20 minutes or more just for a bathroom break. At home, the same break takes about five minutes, if that. It is just such a different environment that it doesn't take anywhere near the same number of hours to get an equivalent number of instructional hours, and quality instruction at that.
I'm so sick of correcting my kids' teachers. I am strongly considering going back to homeschooling.
