Connecticut supervised driving
How to fill out Connecticut’s Parent/Guardian Driving Instruction Log
Connecticut’s log asks for 40 hours, then spends its first page telling you how they have to be distributed: nine lesson categories, each with its own minimum, from two hours on controls and gauges up to eight on handling the vehicle in traffic. Add those minimums together and they come to exactly 40. There is no spare hour anywhere in the requirement — every hour has a category it is supposed to belong to.
Work the nine lessons, then the pages behind them
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Read the nine minimums before the first drive
Controls, gauges and maintenance (2), learning the basics (3), driving in limited traffic (6), handling the vehicle in traffic (8), parking (2), limited-access highways (6), driving at night (5), bad weather and emergencies (3), additional practice (5). They total 40 exactly, which means falling short on one category cannot be made up by driving more of another.
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Record every session on the grid pages
Pages 2 to 6 hold the log itself: Date, Tutor, What Practiced, Amount of Time, and Hours To Date. Each grid page repeats Driver Name at the top, so a log that runs onto a later page needs the name there too.
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Name the tutor, not just the relationship
The column is headed Tutor rather than Parent, and it wants the person who supervised that session. Connecticut’s home-training path puts a named adult behind every hour, and the column is where that is recorded.
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Say what was practiced, in the form’s own categories
What Practiced is the column that connects the grid to page 1. Describing a session as “driving around town” records the time but not the lesson, and page 1 is where the lessons have to add up.
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Keep Hours To Date running
The right-hand column is a running total across every page, not a per-page subtotal — the form says so directly, asking you to “show the total number of hours recorded up to that time”. It carries on from the last row of one page to the first row of the next.
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Total page 1 and have both of you sign
Page 1 takes the hours for each of the nine categories, the overall Total Hours, and the date the 40 hours were completed. Both the parent or guardian and the student sign it. Connecticut certifies rather than collecting the log, so this page is the record behind that certification.
One date, and the two totals it moves
Take a single forty-minute session on January 5 that covered two lessons — controls and gauges, and then the basics. Rows are per date, so a later session that day would join this line rather than starting a new one.
- Date
- 01/05/2026
- Tutor
- The supervising adult’s full name
- What Practiced
- Controls, gauges & maintenance +1 — the second lesson would not fit the cell
- Amount of Time
- 0.67 — the date’s driving, in decimal hours
- Hours To Date
- 0.67 on the first row; 1.53 once the next date is logged
- Page 1 — Controls, Gauges and Maintenance
- 0.33, being half of that session’s forty minutes
- Page 1 — Learning the Basics
- 0.33, the other half
The split happens per session rather than per date: each drive’s minutes divide between the lessons that drive covered, so the grid shows the full 0.67 while page 1 shows 0.33 against each of the two. A second drive that day tagged with a single lesson would put all of its own time against that one, and add to the same grid row. Both time columns are decimal hours here, so the two differ in meaning rather than in unit.
What leaves a Connecticut log uncertifiable
- Logging 40 hours without ever recording which lesson each session covered, which satisfies the total while leaving all nine category minimums unevidenced.
- Assuming extra hours in one lesson cover a shortfall in another — the nine minimums add up to exactly 40, so there is no surplus to move around.
- Restarting Hours To Date at the top of each grid page, when the form asks for the total recorded up to that time across the whole log.
- Treating night driving as something the log splits out per row; here it is one of the nine categories, with its own five-hour minimum, and nothing on the grid separates it.
- Signing page 1 alone — the form has a line for the parent or guardian and a second for the student, and both belong to the certification.
What fills page 1, and what fills the grid
The export writes the grid pages and page 1’s category totals from the lessons you tagged against each drive:
| On the Parent/Guardian Instruction Log | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Driver Name | The student’s name, repeated at the top of every grid page. |
| Date | The date of the practice, with an afternoon and an evening session on it sharing a single line rather than taking two. |
| Tutor | The full name of the supervisor on that date — the column is wide enough for it, so this is a name rather than the initials narrower forms take. |
| What Practiced | The lesson labels tagged against that date’s drives, joined in the form’s own order; where more were tagged than the cell holds, the count of the rest follows as a trailing “+2”. |
| Amount of Time | That date’s total driving in decimal hours. |
| Hours To Date | The running total through that row, carried across pages rather than restarting. |
| Page 1 — the nine category totals | Built from your lesson tags, drive by drive: each drive’s minutes divide evenly between the lessons that drive covered, and those shares accumulate into the nine categories. Practice you never categorized is deliberately left out rather than guessed at, so a category can read blank while Total Hours still climbs. |
| Page 1 — Total Hours | The grand total of everything logged, tagged or not. |
The completion date and both signature lines stay blank — that is the certification itself, and it belongs to the people signing. Worth checking before you certify: because untagged practice never reaches a category, a log can show 40 in Total Hours while the nine categories underneath it fall short. Driving at Night is the one most easily missed, since it fills from the night lesson tag rather than from the clock — after-dark practice left untagged advances your night total in the app without touching that line on page 1.
Frequently asked questions
Why do the nine lesson minimums matter if the requirement is 40 hours?
Because they add up to exactly 40. Two hours on controls, three on the basics, six in limited traffic, eight handling the vehicle in traffic, two parking, six on highways, five at night, three on bad weather, five additional. Reaching 40 without meeting each one means the distribution the form asks for was never achieved.
What belongs in the Tutor column?
The name of the adult who supervised that session. The column is headed Tutor rather than Parent because Connecticut’s home-training path allows a qualified adult, and the log records which one taught each date.
Where do night hours go?
Into the Driving at Night category on page 1, which carries a five-hour minimum. The grid has no day/night split — night is a lesson here rather than a column, so it is recorded by saying so in What Practiced. Worth knowing: driving after dark is not the same as practising the night lesson. Time logged after sunset counts toward your night total in the app, but page 1’s Driving at Night line fills only from sessions tagged with that lesson, so a driver with plenty of after-dark practice can still show a blank category.
Is Hours To Date a per-page total?
No — it runs across the whole log. The instruction at the top of page 1 asks for the total number of hours recorded up to that time, so each row builds on the last regardless of which page it falls on.
Do I hand this log in to the CT DMV?
No. Connecticut certifies the training rather than collecting the log: page 1 is signed to confirm the 40 hours were completed, and the log stays with you as the record behind it.
Track your Connecticut hours
Log every supervised drive and Learner Log keeps the totals ready for the Parent/Guardian Instruction Log.
Still deciding how to keep the record? Compare paper against an app. Not sure where the Parent/Guardian Instruction Log ends up? See submitting a log versus certifying the hours.
Official sources: Official Parent/Guardian Instruction Log. Connecticut licensing instructions. This guide was last reviewed against the official form on ; Connecticut can change its form or instructions at any time, so confirm the current version at the links above. Learner Log is an independent tracking tool, not affiliated with any licensing agency.