BJ's Guide to Homeschooling High School - You Can Do It!

Are you homeschooling high school, or thinking about it for next year?  Homeschooling high school is really not so hard.

Looking back, I pulled together some planning resources for the high school years, for Credits, Curriculum, and Transcripts.....

You know, like the saying goes...Lions, Tigers and Bears....... But really, if you have these 3 tools, an understanding of high school credits, curriculum, and transcripts, then you have all that is needed to start your high school journey....with confidence.

First of all, let's talk about high school credits.

1.  Assigning High School Credit

You probably saw my post on credits last week, but in case you didn't, here is a bit about that.

It is not that hard to assign high school credit. 

There are the...................1.  the Textbook method

                                             2.  the Hours method

                                             3.  the Mastery method

This post explains each of them, and all of the work that your teen does can earn high school credit.   

This includes courses that you make yourself, volunteer and paid work hours, internships, time spent reading, etc.  

We did a lot of different kinds of learning, and all of it counted.

Secondly, let's talk curriculum.....

2.  Curriculum Search Resources

First, we started with our favorites from middle school.  I wanted to keep whatever was working  best for my daughter.  For example, we used SOS for math in middle school, and just continued with it for most of high school.  That was a no-brainer.  

My daughter was a big part of this process.  Together, we searched the internet, our favorite blogs and homeschool catalogs, and talked with our homeschooling friends, to find new ideas.  


Here are my favorite resources for your search:

------ There is a great CURRICULUM DIRECTORY at Let's Homeschool High School

This curriculum directory for high school is the most complete one I have ever seen!  And it includes TONS of links, too! 

------ THE CURRICULUM CHOICE

This site is full of curriculum reviews, written by a team of authors (me, too!) who have used the curriculum, at home with their families.  There are reviews of curriculum such as Tapestry of Grace, IEW for literature and writing, Oak Meadow, a number of Charlotte Mason options, and tons and tons of many more reviews, too. 

 At BJ's Homeschool, we used a combination of faith based and secular resources.  My book on homeschooling high school has lots more information on curriculum and how to meet the college's entrance requirements, if your teen is headed that way.

So we looked for things that fit my daughter for her basic high school courses. But what exactly are high school core studies.....

3.  High School Core Studies

Core studies are just the basic high school courses, in math, english, social studies, and science.

What your choose for core studies is most often up to the individual homeschool family.  

Most states do not list what is required for a homeschool diploma. 

If you are unsure of this, just check with your local homeschool organization.

Now that you have resources for finding your curriculum, and you understand what core studies are.  You are ready to search for your own high school curricula.

But before we ordered anything, we spent time talking about my teen's special interests. These influenced our choices for core studies and also became her high school electives!

4.  High School Electives

What is your teen passionate about?  How do they spend their time, when they have free time?  What are their gifts?

My daughter wanted to learn about film making, and also had an interest in political science.  So we did some video making that one of her homemade electives. She learned how to make her own videos, and entered them in various contests.  Then we did a course in Government for one of her social studies requirements.

The beauty of homeschooling high school is that you get to build and nurture your teen's interests and help them to discover their strengths.

Now that we finished talking about curriculum, core studies and electives, let's talk transcripts...

5.  Making your High School Transcripts

Volunteering is a great leadership building activity and colleges love to see this on their applications.

Compiling your transcripts is really not that hard!  

Really! 

Above is a post on that, with a list of what is needed to be on your teen's transcripts.  And if you would like a little help to put them together check out my book below,  which has printables and help for course descriptions as well.

High School was my favorite time, of all of our homeschooling years.  Watching my daughter blossom and grow, during the teen years....That was priceless!

After helping my homeschooled high schooler get into each of the colleges she applied to, I wrote this frugal guide:

Homeschooling High School with College in Mind - 2nd edition 

Paperback and Kindle are on Amazon 

Paperback is at Amazon $11.99

For more info: Homeschooling High School with 

College in Mind - 2nd Edition

Have you seen my facebook group called 

Homeschooling Through High School?

 Homeschooling Through High School 

Join us!

Let's chat about:

choosing curriculum 
high school electives
assigning high school credit
making transcripts, how to get started
long range planning tips

writing a college essay
preparing for college writing 
freaking out!

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled through high school.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, highschool, 
college, gifted/2e and wrote -Homeschooling High School with College in Mind, 2nd Edition,   She offers homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting,  and has had some of her articles picked up by the Huffington Post.

Want to stay in touch?

Subscribe, Pinterest, Facebook 

No spam ever.  
Just encouragement for your homeschool in your inbox.

Copyright, all rights reserved, BJ's Homeschool 

Thanks for respecting my copyright, 2020

Homeschooling Children with 2e or ADHD

Summary:  How we homeschooled our 2e child with attentional and sensory processing issues.  Sharing our favorite homeschool elementary curriculum choices plus how we set up our days, to meet her child's needs.  #homeschool2e #homeschoolADHD #homeschoolelementary



Do your kids struggle with attention issues?  Or are they very active, have difficulty concentrating, or show signs of ADHD?

When my niece was young, she was a very active child.  She had difficulty concentrating on verbal directions.  She also was a sensory seeking child. 

Homeschooling was ideal for her, as it allowed me to adapt things to the way she learned best.  

With her difficulty with auditory processing, ie, concentrating on verbal directions, listening to the teacher talk in public school at the front of the class would have been a big struggle for her.

We wanted her to have the daily support of learning at home.  I tried a number of things to facilitate her learning, and through the years, these issues became less and less of a problem.  

I happened to have a background in Occupational Therapy, so I drew on that as we homeschooled our daughter.

My niece is now a college grad.  She made Dean's list her first year there, and is studying in their honors program. 

How we went about homeschooling her, when she was young... that is what I would like to talk about today.  

During the early years of preschool to 2nd grade, we focused just on the 3 R's, and did not concern ourselves with science or other subjects until later.  

Not that you need to do that, that is just how we approached things, as developing a strong background in the basics of math, reading and writing.

At the same time, we followed her interests, too.

First I'll be sharing about the curriculum we used during these early years.  

Then I'll talk about how we set up our homeschool day......with those all important breaks, and more.

1.  Early Elementary Curriculum Choices

So let's start with the beginning and how we did phonics.....           

Phonics

We chose Explode the Code (ETC), starting with the Primers. 

The approach used in ETC is great for visual learners, and my niece. It eliminated the struggle that we had with phonics previously, when her learning was more auditory (listening) based, although we did some auditory work, too, as she learned her sounds.

Reading

My niece wanted to be independent in things, even before she knew how to, which was a challenge sometimes.  

We started with the Bob Books Readers, after she finished her ETC primers.  She loved the funny little simple stories in these very early readers.

We then moved to the "I Can Read"series, and then just continued with their next readers, also picking from what they had at the library.

Going from one reader level to the next really helped to gradually build her reading and comprehension skills.  

For fun she loved getting audio books from the library to read independently.

We also liked some of the workbooks from Evan-Moor.  These provided a helpful structure and fun hands on activities at the same time.

We set up in a special reading corner........with a shelf that blocked out other distractions in the room.  It can be a nice break where your child could snuggle up with a book, anytime. 

Handwriting

My niece didn't struggle with handwriting, but lots of kids with sensory processing issues do.  We chose a Handwriting without Tears book.

We used a multisensory approach to handwriting, included making letters in finger paint, cutting, play dough play, etc. Click here for 9 Fun Ways to a Mature Grasp.

For more fun and easy ways to help with handwriting, to build up the small muscles and more, here are the posts from my series called Handwriting Helps.......

 Small Muscle Games

Teach Your Kids to Write

 Aids/Devices for Grasp

 Develop Hand Strength with Clay Fun  

Helping Struggling Handwriters

Math

We used Math U See, after spending our preschool/K years just doing math using manipulatives, math play, and making patterns. 

Learning to make 2 or 3 part patterns introduced her to the patterns of math. This was done with beads, etc.  Much of math work can be play and done on the floor.  Giving lots of control to your child in their lessons, with guidance, can help a lot with our ADHD kids.

Numbers and Patterns - another fun math resource

"Seeing" how math works is the ticket, but "Doing" is the best for early math, counting buttons, making cookies, and the fun of subtracting them. lol.  That is how my daughter learned to love math!

Art

And don't forget art!  We did a lot of arts and crafts, fingerpainting,

clay work, and some handwork, too.  Making it into a routine can also be a help.  

Handwork such as weaving, hand sewing little projects, etc can be a great way to develop attention span, direction following skills, and more, while coming up with a finished product.

The finished product can be a great help for building confidence.  And building attention span can be a lot more fun with projects, than just with homeschool lessons, of course.

Handwork activities can also be helpful go-to activities for fun and for when we had a hard day.  

All of these activities can help build attention span and concentration skills, while giving her a creative outlet.  

For more on elementary homeschool curriculum that we liked, please click here.

My friend from 7 Sisters Homeschool also offers an extensive list of quality Elementary Curriculum Resources here - Favorite Homeschool Curriculum for Elementary Grades.

2.  Setting up the Day

Attention Span Issues

Young active learners often do better with short learning periods, such as 15 or 20, or 30 minutes at a time.  Adding in a break in between each session, as needed, where your child plays, watches an educational show on tv, etc is often essential.

Rewards Can be A Help

My child liked to earn stickers, which she chose each week or two from the book store.  Earning stickers gave her a concrete reward. We always went over her sticker chart at the end of the week, to give her extra attention for her efforts.   

Every so often, we went to the dollar store, and got little toys that she then earned with her stickers.  

Nothing like stickers to build up and instill motivation for learning and completing one's work.  

Adaptations 

 Direction Following  

Whenever there are directions to be given, I always had my child play with a small toy for a figet.  This helped to lessen anxiety and concentration tended to improve.  

When there were two part verbal directions to be given, such as for simple chores, I would say the direction first, then ask her to repeat it to me.  

Later, when she was older, she preferred to write down any directions that were given.  That technique can help all the way through middle school.

Kids who have difficulty with verbal direction, tend to be visual learners.  That is why homeschooling can work so well.  

I could set her work up so that she could learn visually, instead of the way it would have been done at public school, with the teacher giving multiple verbal cues and directions all day.

Some kids like to use weighted blankets, and find that that helps calm their nervous systems.  

Even regular blankets can do that. This can gave some deep pressure, which could be very calming.  Some kids also benefit from weighted vests, which can provide that same deep pressure.

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled through high school.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, highschool, coll

ege, gifted/2e and wrote -Homeschooling High School with College in Mind, 2nd Edition.   She offers homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting,  

and has had some of her articles picked up by the Huffington Post.

Want to stay in touch?

Subscribe, Pinterest, Facebook 

No spam ever. 

Just encouragement for your homeschool in your inbox. 

Copyright Revised 2021 @ BJ's Homeschool

All Rights Reserved

7 Ways to Prepare your Middle Schooler for College -

How to know if your teen is ready for high school, with tips to prepare them to be ready.  

Do you have middle schoolers at home, who are thinking about the college option? 

The other day I spoke with a homeschooling family, whose middle schooler was interested in going to college, when the time came.  

She was thinking about college for her daughter, and she wondered if there were things that she could do now, to help prepare her young teen with that future goal.

During our discussion, I came up with seven factors to look at, for your middle schooler, with the college option in mind.

Let's start with English skills: 

1. Whatever English curriculum you are using, take time to discuss what you read, using some literary analysis.

Does your curriculum, whether published or homemade, include critical thinking questions to discuss?  Is your child beginning to analyze what they are reading?  

There are, of course, many options for middle school English.  In our home, we used Oak Meadow, and also 7 Sisters Literature and English courses and lit guides.

Oak Meadow English 8 is all about introducing the components of good literature to your middle schooler.

We love Oak Meadow's focus on hands on learning, and how it works to meet the child when he is: head, hands and heart.

"Through this course, literature became something that my daughter looked forward to each day....She enjoyed learning about plot, setting, point of view, and characterization. But she when she got to symbolism, and foreshadowing, she was..." click here to continue with my review   

For many more ideas for middle school english, go to The Curriculum Choice, and search for middle school English.

2.  Write a lot! 

Encourage all kinds of writing, fiction, essays, reports, biographies, autobiographies, etc.

We all know how important writing skills are to the college student.  How is your child doing with their writing?  Do they have a chance to practice different types of writing? Are they finding a way to express themselves in the  written form? Use their interests to craft writing assignments which will be meaningful to them.  

One year, my daughter was really interested in airplanes and the airline industry, so that became the focus of her research report that year.  Another year, she was wanting to try her hand in story writing...so we focused on that, but still asked for some essay writing, to continue to build on those skills, too.

One of my favorite simple resources for writing, is the Spectrum Writing series.  I liked it was simple to use, and was full of writing prompts throughout the book. include different types of essays to write.  There are easy to follow instructions for each assignment, and they include a wide variety of writing skills to practice. 

The Curriculum Choice has many helpful reviews of writing curriculum, including IEW, etc.

3.  Consider using a composition evaluation service.

How do you know how your child is doing with their writing skills?  One resource that we found for that was from Write Shop, who will evaluate essays that you can send in to them.

4.  Encourage free reading.

Kids who read a lot, develop strong vocabularies. We  know that.  That will help a lot with college entrance testing, SAT, ACT, and college itself.  My daughter loved reading science fiction and adventure stories, and we encouraged that.  It doesn't have to be limited to good literature.

5.  Math - Get Pre-algebra done.

Most colleges ask for algebra 1 in 9th grade.  So a good understanding of pre-algebra during middle school can really help.  We used Teaching Textbooks, then went to Switched-On-Schoolhouse's, which helped my daughter with retention. There are many great resources for pre-algebra. 

6.  Consider providing practice in test taking.

We used hands-on approaches in our homeschool, with lots of unit studies.  But somewhere in 7th grade, we began to incorporate some quizzes and tests. 

Test taking skills are key to success in college.  And starting in middle school gives your child plenty of time to practice.  I hated to add this in, but starting in middle school gave my daughter plenty of time to get used to tests, and not be anxious about them.  Knowing how to take tests has helped her so much in college.

7.  Encourage their budding interests.

It's never too early to encourage our young teen's special interests.  And isn't this one of the reasons that we homeschool, anyway?  

My daughter's interests in irish dancing and student government activities, with Youth and Government, helped her get into college.  There are many ways to show your child's leadership skills, volunteering at church, assisting in a class in co-op are just a few.

Colleges want to know what your child is really about. They see lots of applications from students who are just doing activities to build up their applications.  But they want to see students who have interests that are real, and our homeschoolers can excel in that.

These are my favorite tips for preparing your middle schooler for college, while keeping the flavor of your homeschool strong.  

What would you add to the list?  Homeschooling is a great way to educate our kids, and to prepare them for future endeavors in their life, including the college option.

Below is a picture of my daughter's first day on campus, after graduating from our homeschool.  

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled from day one.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, high school & college and wrote the book - Homeschooling High School with College in Mind.   She offers free homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting. 

Want to stay in touch?  

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This post was shared on my favorite linkups here.

Copyright, 2017, All Rights Reserved

The Art of Simple Book Making- Your Child is an Author!

This article tells how to get your kids making little books, from just construction paper and crayons or felt pens.  Get your kids writing, or creating stories which they can then dictate to you, as they will learn so much from that!

Do you have a little writer in your family?  

When my daughter was little, she loved to tell stories and enjoyed make believe, dressing up in costumes, and creating stories with her stuffed animals.  I wanted to find a way that she could do that, with a simple book making activity.

She was just learning what written words meant, and loved following along during our story times, but she was not yet ready to put the words on the page herself.  She enjoyed describing her artwork to me, and loved it when I wrote her words for her, on the paper. 

Today, I'd like to share how we made our simple books, discussing:

- Setting up the pages
- Encouraging your child to write their own story
- Doing each page, using a sample story
- Early literacy skills that your child will be learning