New and need help for High school student

Hi Carrie,

You can do this and it will be such a testimony; praise God! What I would do is look at the curriculum guide on this site and start a ‘skeleton’ schedule for your daughter. Then I would pray and ask God to show me where she is in each of these subjects and what level to start her at. One of the beauties of homeschool is being able to taylor your children’s learning to where they are and where you think God may be leading them.

Our state requires a significant paper trail to prove that the child has actually done the work. Not knowing what your requirements are (and hoping they are less strict than our’s), I will suggest that you start her like you would start your younger children. The content will be what is different.

I’m just going to toss out some ideas and I’m sure others will have more encouragement. As with anything, you can “eat the grapes but spit out the seeds” :). Since narration is key to the the CM method, you could even now work on that with your daughter either with her books she is using now for school, something she is reading for pleasure, or choose a really good book to read together and work on oral narration skills. That could help her tremendously when she actually comes home for school next year.

If she loves art, she will excel in the artist studies you may do. She can teach her siblings for credit. She can delve into nature study with her sketch book and read books and get very detailed science experience that way. I have often thought, though never tested it out, that biology could be easily ‘drawn through’ for credit.

Dance is wonderful, too. She could study the history of dance. My daughter did her research paper on this topic and I learned an incredible amount of other history through it. You can carefully guide her to ask questions about what else was going on besides the dance styles at the time she is currently studying. Also, was there anything going on in the world/country that influenced the dance styles? She could keep a timeline.

As for vocabulary, that will grow as she reads quality literature and gains an interest in what she is studying because it will be according to her bent. I often get in a hurry as we are reading and when we come across a word we don’t know, I skip it. I’m trying to get better at keeping a dictionary handy; that may be a help to your daughter. Also the thesaurus is helpful to expand our vocabulary as we write.

Finally, I would not push it. I have known children that did not graduate with their age-mates because they knew it was just not the right time. It may take an extra year for your daughter to feel confident in her learning. But it’s too early to make that call, of course, I just want to encourage you that there is no panic to cram it all in immediately.

I am excited for you!

Blessings,

Cindy