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Well, we have very nearly survived our first year of homeschooling high school with my oldest. And it really wasn’t anywhere near as stressful as I thought it would be. For the last decade, I was convinced it would be a tremendous task once we hit this milestone, but it really wasn’t that bad. I mean, maybe I over exaggerated with my expectations a bit. It WAS a task. But mostly just in the planning stages.

Early Stages

The first thing I did was track down a transcript that made sense to me. She took her first foreign language credit as an 8th grader at our co-op, so I ended up getting a subject transcript rather than a yearly one. It just made more sense for our needs. Of course, since I can never use anything “out of the box,” I tweaked it a bit to my liking.

Then I started listing out classes I had already decided on for her high school career. (Of course, we all know I’ll change my mind a dozen times, but I have to start somewhere!) I use Trello to do this, since it’s easy to move things around when plans change. I also like that I can keep track of websites and pricing info all in one place. That way, I don’t ever have to look it up again. I made a post about this last spring when I was in my beginning planning stages.

When it was time to choose classes for the year at our co-op, K and I decided she wasn’t going to attend co-op any longer. A classroom setting is not conducive to her learning style, and she wasn’t interested in any of the “fun” classes that were offered, so we decided she would stay home for her freshman year. This proved to work out very well for her. I don’t feel like she was really missing anything, and I didn’t have to pay for her to take classes she wasn’t getting anything out of.

Final Decisions

Originally, I had planned on using Trisms for history, Elemental Science (Biology for the Rhetoric Stage), Analytical Grammar, Writing Strands, and Math-U-See. However, I had been looking into Alpha Omega’s online curriculum, Monarch, for some of her elective classes, so we decided to do a 30-day free trial to see if she liked the format. She really enjoyed it and decided she wanted to do the online for all of her classes. So I ended up signing up for the family plan for both girls, which gave us access to all the core classes. I had to purchase the electives separately. (I originally was doing this with H because I thought it was a good option for math. She loved it at first, then ended up in tears about 1/3 of the way through the year.)

How it Played Out

The beginning of the year went really smooth. The math and the world geography worked really well throughout the entire year. Whenever the math would get difficult, she was able to ask her dad for help. However, the math format was a really good fit for her. World geography was her favorite of all the subjects. She didn’t really care for learning about all the different politics, but she loved learning about the different regions and countries.

The first alteration we made to the plan was to English I. I had been on the fence about doing her English credits this way, since we learned early on in her school career that all-in-one curricula, even just for language arts, are not a good fit for her. I ended up having her skip the grammar chapters, with the plan of going back to Analytical Grammar for this.

New Testament Survey ended up being the first class we completely dropped. It was very dry, and after discussing it with K, the decision was made that it wasn’t a necessary credit. So I allowed her to not continue with the class.

In the beginning, I think she really enjoyed Integrated Physics & Chemistry, although we skipped most of the experiments. (This is my child who doesn’t have to actually perform an experiment to get the gist of the lesson.)

Electives

The two electives that we chose for this year were High School Health and Civics. She really didn’t care for the health class because they kept referencing Bible scripture, and she could not wrap her head around why scripture was necessary in a health class. I told her to just go with it and get it done, since it was just a one-semester class. So she did. When she finally completed it, I think she was extremely relieved!

The civics class was better, but I think it was a little more difficult for her to grasp some of the concepts than I thought it would be. I could have probably saved this one for her junior year.

Finishing up the Year

All in all, I think it was a good first year of homeschooling high school. For her sophomore year, we will only be using Monarch for a few classes. I feel like she still needs to have some classes not be online. Especially language arts. I’m still finalizing what we’re going to use next year, but we are currently doing Analytical Grammar during the summer to get it out of the way. Then we can concentrate more on writing and literature once August arrives.

Have you homeschooled any high school yet? Do you plan to? What curricula have you found to be a good fit for your teens?