[Erin.minus.thyroid]

I could use some help with planning for our first year of home schooling. I looked up the laws for my state and it says we need to provide attendance records every month. My question is, we dont have to follow the regular public school calendar right? The school my son goes to right now (private) has a year round calendar which I like and would like to continue to use it. This means there are three 3 week breaks in addition to summer break during the year. So how do i go about doing attendance when one month he might only go to school for one week? The form i have for attendance only has a spot for the school year dates, like when it starts and when it ends. It also has spots for how many days were attended each month and days that school year so far.
Do I need to explain this somehow before we start or do i just fill out the form and they dont care as long as in the end 180 days are met? What about absent days? Kids in public school are allowed a certain amount of absent days during their 180 day calendar without a problem, do homeschool kids get sick days too?