ANYONE HS beyond elementary now???

[zonapellucida]

I am needing help with highschool curricullum (yes this is a repost)

[Dar]

So you only want to hear from people who use a curriculum as well as homeschooling beyond elementary? I know there are lots of older hsers, but I don't think many use a lot of curriculum... at least, not the ones I can think of!

Dar

[VictorianMom]

We have used distance learning as well as interest to get through high school...

[Jen123]

we are in the same boat. By the time ds is fourteen (in August) I'd like for him to be using a more formal curriculum..whether he makes it himself , I make it , we use a boxed set ,.... as long as he is working toward a goal we are pleased. Right now his goal is to learn all about movie producing/directing/making.

Currently with my 13 yo ds we are following his lead with most subjects. I do not use any boxed materials with him. No worksheets , no tests.

Right now he is reading about becoming a movie producer. He's also taking free lessons from the Missouri Flim Alliance that are offered at the library. I was surprised to see it encompasses math , marketing , script writing , pop culture icons , physics (stunts on set) , etc...

And then we have asked him to read one great classic book a month. This month he's chosen The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He just finished HGWells The Invisible Man. He does not have to write a report or give an oral report. I do engage him in conversation though to make sure he's grasping concepts. I ask him "if you were to stop the book now and write the ending yourself , what would it look like ?". or "if you were to make a movie of this book what would you change and why ?". Making it relevant for him.

For "social studies" or history , I am reading to the kids (all three of them) The Story Of The World . (it's fun to watch them act out what we've just read.)

Dh feels very strongly that math should be taught with books/workbooks and rote memory skills. He does this with all three kids about twice/three times a week. They are doing algebra right now. (correction...this is the only boxed material we use with the kids...Dh does it though. I have no paitence for math).

He's also dipping into Edgar Allen Poe. And the original Grimm's Fairy Tales.
He wanders thru the house with either the digital camera or the video camera making short movies. We shouldn't leave out Calvin and Hobbes , or Garfield or Transformer comics.

He also helps with his younger sisters (reading to them , playing) , he has a set list of chores to do daily , and works for his dad to make spending money. ( assembling wires and cables ...we make a joke...label the cables if you are able at the table...sorry I know it's lame)

OH and he just started community basketball at our church. and he goes to small group ( home bible study) once a week.


I know it doesn't sound like a lot of school-y book-y work , and truthfully it's not. But he's reading and learning and growing every day working toward a goal. That is really all we ask of him. That he work towards a goal.

[TigerTail]

my curriculum: hand young person copy of 'teenage liberation handbook', keep pertinent saxon math textbooks and tutor available upon request, purchase nearby big-city library card & make frequent trips to same.

her ACT scores were very good.

[3momkmb]

I am homeschooling a 7th grader. We use Sonlight Core 6 for History, Saxon for math, various resources (right now Spelling Plus w/dictation and creative writing) for LA and 4-H for science. We do have Switched on Schoolhouse for science as well, but she's not using it now (although she did enjoy it). I also read aloud some classics to her; Little Women, Jo's Boys, Sherlock Holmes, A Christmas Carol.

[UnschoolnMa]

I have older kids that would be in middle and high school if they attended. We use no curriculum at all though.

[ekblad9]

[QUOTE=TigerTail]my curriculum: hand young person copy of 'teenage liberation handbook', keep pertinent saxon math textbooks and tutor available upon request, purchase nearby big-city library card & make frequent trips to same.

QUOTE]



Yep - I finally did that and couldn't be happier! What a relief for me and for him!

[moominmamma]

Count us as another unschooling family with a child working beyond elementary level. My dd is using (in her typical fits-and-starts way) some curricular materials to give herself some structure and direction. She definitely doesn't want structure directed or imposed by me though! And this interest in more structured materials is very new for her ... just in the past 4 months or so.

She's doing the Cambridge Latin 2nd-year program, Singapore's New Math Counts program (took a 2-year break, so is still just doing the 1st level), and a pre-university music theory workbook program (Sarnecki). That's it for structured resources.

She has piles of hobbies, talents and interests. She is passionate about her music and works hard at that. She does some recreational art and sports stuff. She's also just begun (hurrah! a huge shift for her) to work diligently at her creative writing with a writer-editor friend of mine serving as her mentor.

Miranda

[Alana]

I guess it depends on what method works for you. We arent at high school yet, but we are using Great Books Academy. It is a classical education. I really like that they have weekly Socratic discussions via the computer...children from all over the world participate in this too. At the end of high school...they will have accumulated up to 48 college credits with the Great books courses.

[oldcrunchymom]

We are past an elementary level now for one of my kids. We don't use a boxed curriculum, though. We mainly use Cambridge Latin, workbooks I have found on the cheap, internet resources, and textbooks I got from mamas here on MDC.

[zonapellucida]

My issue (of which I have many ) is that Gi is in all 9th grade honors courses and way beyond algebra ect. I cannot find any Chem Curricullum and she is ready for Trig. She has been formally schooled her whole life, starting with Montesorri preschool. She wants to continue wiht French and my French only goes up to intermediate so I really need outside resources. I cannot believe how hard it is to find what I am looking for on line (what AM i looking for??, )

We were discussing the 4th dimension and tesseracts yesterday (shudder)

Maybe virtual is the way to go but she loves to read. And one needs to write out redox reactions and balancing chemical equations though and she wants to "blow things up" (GREAT). I told her she can have all the vinegar and baking soda she could possibly want, LOL.

She will be applying to college as a given. She WANTS to go. Smith in Northampton MA (my alma mater) is her first choice so I think I will call them about HS "transcripts" to make sure there won't be a problem.

I addition to all this I don't want to pay a fortune for curricullum.

And If I deschool her, she will never finish highschool, LOL!!

[oldcrunchymom]

For chemistry, I found some great free stuff online. One site has a WHOLE BUNCH of worksheets and entire chemistry lab books, all for free. It is maintained by a chem teacher. http://misterguch.brinkster.net/freestuff.html We are using the materials from that site, plus a college chem textbook, for our "course" materials.

For French, what about something like Rosetta Stone? It's not cheap, but it goes past an intermediate level. Your daughter could also practice her French by reading French newspapers online and watching French DVDs and turning off the subtitles. If you poke around enough, you can find audio chatrooms online for practicing languages with other people (I believe Yahoo has some of these).

I imagine that if she is that motivated about math, getting her some used Trig and Calculus textbooks and some workbooks should be sufficient for now. That's how my son is learning algebra and geometry. If we can't find an answer to something in his books, we can almost always google it.

The resources are out there. You just have to look!

[Dar]

www.enasco.com has all sorts of great science stuff, especially for older kids. Order tyheir science catalog.

Harold Jacobs recommends Foerster's Algebra 2 Trig book, and I tend to like his high school math stuff a lot. What has she done for math so far?

For French, at that level I think a class with actual people would be a lot more beneficial - languages are ways of communicating, and it's difficult to learn a language without that piece. Have you looked into local community college offerings? That might be a good way to handle chemistry, too. I don't know where you live, but in some states high school students are elgible for free tuition, so the only cost would be the books and any fees..

Dar

[zonapellucida]

I will be signing her up at the com college for Chem. As fdor French, Rosetta stone is expensive but it would get much use. I will hve to see where I can budget it.

For math she has doen Algebra 1 and 2 plus geometry honors so it just leaves trig or precalc. It hink 1/2 a year of sgns and cosines should be enough and then move on to my precalc book that I just happen to save WITH the answer book, LOL. If she can make it through tat then we will start calculus. I still have my college computer program that runs the change over time for different scenarios and both calc one and two books so I need to review.

She may end up in more college courses than I orginally expected although she wants to ONLy do Chem at the college..... 81 days and counting , LOL

[nolonger]

I started transitioning to used college texts at about age 12-13, starting with my old copy of Conceptual Physics from my own college days, where I took the class from Mr. Hewitt himself.

It was a financial crisis and the repeated suggestions of a homeschooling friend who had been married to a college professor and seeing a new edition of Conceptual Physics advertised in the high school section of some catalogue or another that led me to try it.

My rule of thumb is that a textbook for a one semester college course should last a teenybopper all year. I get my texts used on amazon.com for next to nothing because the publishers update them so frequently, but sometimes a bit of googling is required to see if information is too outdated or if predictions came true; I learned the hard way to let the TEEN do the research.

It requires more flexibility than using a third grade curriculum for a third grader did, but since I want to be transitioning them to unschooling by the time they're legally adults and/or when they need to work full time and/or when I check out of Hotel Life, it's been the right choice for us.

Some textbooks also have lists of recomendations for further reading at the end of each chapter, most of which are trade books your teenie can find at the public library. Don't forget how tight money was for you as a young adult, whether you were a starving student or a teen mom or a hamburger flipper, and please teach your older kids how to teach themselves. Education doesn't end when childhood does.

[blbcHelvsme]

My oldest is agewise 4th grade, but does lots of middle and high school stuff. I just get most of what I need on the net or from the library.

[jessicaSAR]

Just a thought...

If you are looking for intro college texts I would check with any colleges or universities near you. I used to be a college professor and I was inundated with brand new texts free from publishers every year. I literally had shelves of books that I would gladly have given away to homeschoolers had I known any.