Deciding What to Teach in High School...

I have had a few people ask me how I decide what to teach my high school student.  I am sure that everyone has a different system based on beliefs, child's interests, learning/teaching styles, and state requirements.  This is what I've done.  My big teen is now in his senior year and our system has worked well for us.  Many factors went into determining what courses to teach my son.  The following was all taken into account.

• State requirements ~ Here in North Carolina there are very few rules about high school.  There is, however, suggestions of how many times to take English, History, Math, and Science.


• My son's interests and career goals ~ I am lucky that my son knew early on that he was interested in making a career at the local nature center, which is the only one available in a large region of our state and substitutes for a zoo which we don't have in our area.  This gave us a better idea about science and internship requirements.


• My son's severe learning differences ~ Because of my son's learning differences, I knew that he would need a lot of hands-on lessons and basic math for life skills more than anything else.  Plus, we would need to lean heavily on life experiences for him to learn the most.


• My son was not college bound ~ When we started high school, my son was very sure he did not want to go to college.  Thus, we decided to follow our local high school's transcript requirements.  This is not to say we did "school in a box" at home, but we decided to do 28 credits, name our courses with similar/same names as the local high school, and give each course 100 hours.  In this way, his transcript will look very similar to our local high school and will be accepted more easily by the city government.  The city government runs the nature center, so he must be hired as a government employee to work there.

Taking all of these factors into account, I bought four lesson plan books that had room for seven subjects each.  I then labeled them by grade and put seven subjects in each one.  I did leave two subjects blank in 12th grade so there would be room as we went through the years, in case the big teen developed new interests.  By doing this, we were afforded a lot more flexibility to fill out subjects as they came along.  For example, for the past two years, the big teen has been taking a class in world history with a college professor who teaches homeschoolers.  The credit will all count under 11th grade, even though he is using 14 weeks of 12th grade to complete this course.  Another example would be physical education.  As he had the opportunity to do interesting physical education such as archery, we filled the hours in.  Math courses, which are agony for the big teen who has dyscalculia, could be spread out so that he did not have to be so pressured by them.  I was very stressed out part of last year (11th grade), concerned that my system was not going to work out.  We seemed so far behind, and I was still working out of four lesson plan books.  However, I worried in vain, as we are now on target and are currently only working out of 11th and 12th grade lesson plan books.  Furthermore, two subjects are already completed in 12th grade, and most of the subjects are complete in 11th grade.  Another 11th grade course will be completed this week.  Yippee!


So here are his subjects ~


9th grade:

• English I ~ Grammar, spelling, basic writing skills
• Applied Math ~ Basic math skills
• Physical Education
• Home Economics
• U.S. History I
• Earth Science
• Geography

10th grade:

• English II ~ Literature and Film
• Consumer Math
• Internship year I at the nature center
• U.S. History II
• Art I
• Life Management
• Biology

11th grade:

• English III ~ British and U.S. Literature
• Creative Writing
• World History
• Art II
• Current Affairs
• Theater/Music
• Internship year II

12th grade:

• English IV ~ World Literature
• Work Skills
• World Religion
• Community Service
• U.S. Government
• Chemistry/Physics ~ 1 semester each
• Algebra I

All of these courses are found at our local high school.  The high school also has several different types of diplomas.  Our course work is basically following their "work studies" diploma for those who want to enter the workforce right after high school.  There is only one kind of high school diploma for homeschoolers in North Carolina, but I wanted the transcript to be easily accepted by the city government.


I hope this answered some of your questions.


Blessings, Dawn

U.S. History II

The big teen completed his U.S. History II course for 10th grade.  He used the 10 volume set, A History of US, for his core books.  We both really enjoyed this set.  He completed volumes 8, 9, and most of 10 for this course.  The big teen studied post Civil War to the 1950's.  In addition to these books, he did in-depth studies of the following famous people:  Mark Twain, Jesse James, Norman Rockwell, Theodore Roosevelt, Fredrick Douglas, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  He watched videos about the 1918 flu, Fatal Flood of 1927, Johnstown Flood, Yellow Fever, the Massi Affair, the Great Escape and many WWII documentaries.  He also studied and read The Man in the Arena by Teddy Roosevelt, Night by Elie Wiesel, and In Their Own Words.


He received an A for this course.


Blessings, Dawn

Friday Show and tell ~ Story of the World Timeline

To see more great entries go to Canadagirl.


I wanted to have a timeline when I started Story of the World with my children, but the company did not have one.  I looked around at the pre-made ones and thought they were all very expensive and did not always have the exact characters talked about in our history book.  So, I decided to make my own.  I found this great site over the summer.  It (www.makingfriends.com) was created to encourage children to have pen pals.  However, the paper dolls were so cute that I thought they would make great timeline figures.  I printed them out and found that the nativty clothes could be made into great costumes for Ancient Civilizations.  Hurray!  For the price of printer ink, glue, and crayons, I have a cute timeline that goes great with our book.  The timeline runs along the stairwell between our first and second floors, and the kids stop and talk to the characters sometimes when they are on the stairs.  I love making history come alive!








Sorry this figure is blurry.  You get the idea!


Please go see my son's show and tell at TKB.  He has an important message this week.


Blessings, Dawn

High School Biology

I decided about a year ago to put a summary of my big teen's course work on this blog.  I want all of his hard work to be in more than one place.  This way, if some tragedy happens to our lesson plan book, I will still be able to write his transcript.  I hope to have all of 10th grade recorded in the next few days, so the lesson plan book can go into the fireproof box.  Then I can start getting 11th grade online.  I have a friend who lost everything in a fire a few years ago, including all of her children's homeschool records.  It took forever to rebuild her records.  If you want to see all that I have recorded so far, click on high school transcripts above.


Biology~


The big teen's main textbook was Real Science 4 Kids~Biology, and we used my college textbook as a reference guide when we wanted to go deeper.  We also did 10 lessons on insects from the Handbook of Nature Study.  He also watched numerous shows on PBS about animals, the human body, and water.


The big teen did many nature studies at local lakes, streams, and creeks about the water and little critters in the water.  He also made a ladybug house and grew ladybugs from larvae.  This was fun and excellent for our garden as well.  The big teen really enjoyed our "field trip" to the ocean where he got to identify many shells and study sand crabs.  On that trip, we also got to go to an alligator farm.  He always has been a reptile nut.  Speaking of reptiles, the big teen learned how to care for a large variety of reptiles at his volunteer job at the nature center.  Did you know that snakes in captivity need baths now and again?  Yuck!  Well, the big teen is a professional snake bather.  LOL!


The big teen also studied the human body.  He made a DNA model, worked on a brain kit, completed a human body kit, and learned how to determine the likelihood of passing genetic traits.  He covered all the major systems of the body and learned how they work together.


The big teen studied 72 slides with his microscope.  He also dissected a cow's eye, frog, starfish, and cow's heart.  He scored an A for this course.


Blessings, Dawn

Homeschool Memoirs #6

 

THEME

This week I want to invite you to take a moment and post a Summer Photo Essay memoir. Starting from around the official date of summer to this past week -- just give a basic summary of your summer as I know some of you are photoholics!  Haha!  Make sure you jot down your memoirs about each photo so everyone can read about your summer.  You can do the essay anyway you want. You can journal a lot or just caption the photo!

What a great summer we had!  We spent lots of time outside and really enjoyed our home.  The drought was rough on our garden and we had to conserve water, but it was a great learning experience for the children.  We are looking forward to Fall!  To see more such posts go here.

Blessings, Dawn

Ballet, Fencing, and Swimming ~ Oh, My

It is that time again.  To see more Show and Tell's, go to Canadagirl.  We are a few weeks into our out-of-the-home classes and all is going well.  We decided that all of the kids would do some kind of sport for their out-of-home class this year. 

Our smallest dd (4) is taking a combo ballet/tap class this year.  This is her second year of dance at this studio and she loves it.  We were very blessed to find a dance ministry that teaches the children to glorify God through dance.  I love that she is learning to use dancing to bless others.  They go to nursing homes several times a year.  Here she is in dance class.




My dd (7) and ds (6) are taking swimming lessons this year.  I am truly excited about this because it was very hard taking three non-swimmers to the pool last summer by myself.  Drowning Mommy is just not a good idea!  Both children are signed up for classes at the YWCA.  Tom Sawyer is taking private swimming lessons, which are expensive.  We are so blessed that there is a little pocket of money with his adoption agreement that will pay for some special things that he needs because of the abuse he received before coming into foster care.  Tom Sawyer has cerebral palsy because of the abuse from his birth mother in the moments after his birth (born at home).  Having private swimming lessons is critical, because his muscles just give out all of a sudden.  Having his teacher right next to him is a life saver!  Here he is with his lovely teacher.



Goldilocks is enjoying her swimming lessons, too.  She has already made it to level two.  We are very proud of her.  In the past, she would not have been able to make it in a class because of behavior and distractions.  Here she is in her class getting ready to climb up to jump off the diving board!



Aww...digital cameras are great, but they are hard to get the timing right!  The splash in the fourth pool photo is Goldilocks!

The big teen is taking a fencing class.  He has wanted to try fencing for a long time, and he is very excited that we found a class just a few miles from our home.  Here they are learning how to hold their weapon (a foil) for the first time.  He is the one in the grey.


Blessings, Dawn

Homeschool Memoirs~ #5

THEME

Since I’ve been making you work really hard on the previous Memoir themes I decided to take a little break and do something fun! This week I want to invite you to share a few of your favorite things.

Wow!  This could be a really long list!  However, I will try to keep it to my favorite homeschool sites.  Here are a few great sites in no particular order.

• www.homeschoolblogger.com ~ I have made so many great friends here.


• http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html Enchanted Learning ~ What a great site for printouts on everything.


• http://www.raisinggodlytomatoes.com/  Raisng Godly Tomatoes ~ A wonderful parenting site


• http://janbrett.com  Jan Brett 


• http://www.homeschoolboutique.com/  Homeschool clothes 


• http://www.fiarhq.com/  Five in a Row ~ I love anything FIAR and online is great, too.


• http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/schoolroom/fiar/  Even more Five in a Row ~ This is a great site for extras. 


• http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Jimmie  Jimmie's lens page ~ Jimmie is a wonderful blogger in China, who has come up with some great lapbooks and unit studies.  


• http://www.homeschoolshare.com  I love this site for unit studies.


• http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do  This day in history


• http://www.math-drills.com/  Free math sheets


• http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/ Student Daily News ~ A neat site if you have a student studying current events.

Blessings, Dawn