HIGH SCHOOL PLANNING (pls give insight)

Do you mean resources to use (curricula) or high school planning resources (like the ebooks from Lee Binz)?

We are in our first year with a high schooler and it is going well.  A few things to remember:  Your child is still the same person they were yesterday, so don’t suddenly expect them to jump to some new level of work and workload.  It is something you should have been working toward (slowly increasing over middle school). For example we started by increasing our science workload expectations in 7th/8th, and our reading difficulty. If you haven’t been, then start now and gradually continue in 9th grade increasing expectations.  Also, remember that while you want to do enough work to count for a credit, your child does NOT have to do all that in one 9 month period.  Keep track of what they do all 4 years and any time they reach enough work to count for a credit then write that in on their transcript. (So, an example – my daughter is only doing 1/2 of Apologia Biology this year, and the other 1/2 next year.  We’ll count it as 1 credit when she completes the course.  At the same time, she’s doing a herpetology course that will be a full credit by the end of next year as well.)

I’m planning for high school as well.

One thing I’m excited about is Harmony Fine Arts.  I was wanting to do more with DD’s artist/composer studies for high school and this program looks really interesting.  It uses a few large books, DVDs, and CDs, but it’s spread out over 4 years.  I still need to figure out how it will work out credit-wise, but she’ll end up with both regular art credits and fine arts credits.

I know we’ll be continuing with MUS and adding Apologia’s Physical Science.  My younger DC are doing Christian Kids Explore Physics, so I’m hoping we can do some family experiments together still…I’m also looking at getting the Thames and Kosmos physics workshop.  For history, we’ll continue with SCM.  Four years of the Visits To series should give her a geography credit as well.

I’m still figuring out Bible, Latin, and language arts.  I have ideas for these, but I’m still not at peace with anything.

Honestly, I can’t pick a certain curriculum or planner that was a must have with my son. I tried different planners but have found a simple, inexpensive one to work best. I’m a paper and pencil kind of gal. 🙂 We are required (here in FL) to keep a portfolio and an educational log each year so those served as my records.

Before my son started highschool, I simply jotted down some of the ways that he could attain the credits he needed for highschool graduation. I wrote down the names of the courses and how many credits he would get for each one.

Now, of course we changed much of this through the highschool years but it gave me a starting place and peace of mind to have an idea of what we might do.

Sometime during the summer of each highschool year, I would jot down the courses my son had taken the year before and the credits he had earned. I would then jot down the courses and credits I was planning for the next year. It was a very simple, easy process.

When my son graduated, I used a free transcript generator I found online but it’s super easy to make your own as well.

Our evaluator told us not to worry about electives as homeschoolers usually end up having too many and having to pare down for the transcript. This was true for us. You’ll be amazed at how many of your child’s personal interests and real life experience can count toward electives. Of course, foreign language is considered an elective here in Florida and colleges do expect to see 2 credits in the same language on a transcript. That’s for 4 year schools though. Community Colleges will admit just about anyone. 🙂

The two things that I can wholeheartedly endorse from my son’s highschool years are to have your highschoolers read a lot of great literature and to continue with living books for history.

My daughter starts highschool next year and I am planning her years quite a bit differently than her brother’s. Ambleside Online has been huge in the planning process. I go there to get inspiration and a frame for my plans and then fill in the book slots with some of their books and some of my own choosing. I plan on using Apologia at this point and we are really enjoying our science lessons. We are finishing up General Science now and preparing for Physical Science. I plan on using Math U See all the way through highschool as well.

Over all, please don’t stress! Highschool is really just a continuation of what you’ve been doing all along. Your student will have to knuckle down a bit more but really, isn’t that true of each year of homeschooling? Each year our children should be challenged to rise to a new level and highschool is no different.

A few days ago I watched a bravescope by Julie Bogart of Bravewriter. I don’t use Bravewriter and I don’t know much about Julie Bogart but I saw this particular bravescope being praised somewhere else, became curious and watched it. The title is something like Things I Didn’t Do in My Homeschool. It’s very eye opening and all over her children (I think one may have chosen a different path)  have been accepted at 4 year universities. She shares that she didn’t teach so many things that homeschool parents stress over and yet her children are doing wonderful in college.

I’m not recommending her style of homeschooling. I’m a die hard CM fan. 😀 I just think it’s a great reminder not to stress over the highschool years.