Homeschool Resources

Quick Start Guide to High School Homeschool Curriculum

August 8, 2019 By Thaleia Leave a Comment

It’s August and it’s Back to School season which can put high school homeshcool parents in a tizzy! I know what it’s like to plan for teens since I have two with very different personalities and interests. So here’s some ideas that I am calling a Quick Start Guide sharing free and paid resources for high school homeschool curriculum.

I realize that many families have a limited budget when it comes to spending money on supplies and curriculum but there’s so many good free choices that you will only have to narrow done the courses that your child wants to take along with a few requirements. If you are brand new to homeschooling your children then I highly recommend you read my How to Start Homeschooling post FIRST then come on back over here!

Free resources for high school homeschool curriculum #homeschool #highschool #Backtoschool #homeschoolcollective

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High School homeschool offers a wide array of choices for students between courses, work studies, apprenticeships, college courses and jobs. I would suggest you take some time with your high school student to talk about career goals as well as current interests. Maybe even plan to get a tour of your local college or career center. (We just found out that our local career center allows for a very flexible academic plan since they allow open enrollment.)

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Teaching Textbooks 3.0 Review (Math 4, Algebra 1 and Geometry)

July 28, 2019 By Thaleia Leave a Comment

I received three Teaching Textbooks 3.0 subscriptions for my children. However, all opinions are 100% my own and were not changed because I received review copies.

Math can be a four letter word of dread in many homeschool family’s especially if you have more then one child to teach. I feel that math is an important subject that everyone needs a good handle on in order to succeed at life. Whether your child plans to attend college or complete a trade school being able to be sure their paycheck isn’t cheated or balancing a checkbook in order to pay bills is important.

Teaching Textbook Placement Tests

If you are new to homeschooling your child or your child is behind in math then you may not know which grade level aka Teaching Textbooks YEAR to begin with. Their website has you covered with placement tests that you can print off and allow your child to take. With Eldest and Princess I opted to just enroll them in the next level Math that they would need for high school credit. Eldest is taking Algebra 1 while Princess is taking Geometry.

$Teaching Textbooks Math 4 placement test$

I wasn’t quite sure what Big Red would need so I gave him a placement test. I looked over Math 3 and realized it would be too easy for him. I then printed off the Math 4 placement test and set him to task to complete it. Once he completed the Math 4 placement test and it was scored by Princess we determined that Math 4 was the correct year for him.

You can also just jump right in with the Teaching Textbooks 3.0 Free Trial which includes the first 15 lessons for as many levels as you want to try. This allows your family to get a feel for the curriculum BEFORE committing to it!

Advantages of Teaching Textbooks 3.0

I want to share a few advantages that we have found so far using Teaching Textbooks for this school year.

Your child can login and work on the lesson online.
You can print off lessons to work on at a table or on a clipboard while on the go.
A parent can log in and edit or delete an answer allowing an incorrectly typed answer to be corrected or to give the child a chance to rework a problem.

Since we have a varied schedule with participation in various homeschool groups and family activities it is important to be able to print lessons to take with us and work on them in the car. We also want our children to succeed and learn their math concepts well which means getting each lesson or test above 80%. Grades are NOT the emphasis in our homeschool but we do want our children to have good grades for insurance discounts as the teens drive and for college admissions.

Each lessons is structured in the same way with a lecture, practice problems and then the regular problems.

Disadvantages of Teaching Textbooks

No final grade for the year which many family’s could use to help create their child’s report card or transcript. YES, I know that I can add up all the grades and divide and get the percentage myself but having that column added would be a great bonus.

Not realizing that there’s definitions and proofs at the very end of the textbook in the Appendix! My daughter struggled with proofs for over 80% of the year writing out each proof in a notebook.

Things that Teaching Textbooks Have Improved

Since late Fall 2019 we have noticed some improvements worth mentioning. Less days “offline” or website unavailable then in the beginning and usually only slow on Monday mornings.

Gradebook Updated

TT 3.0 Gradebook updates When you go into your students gradebook you can now quickly see which lessons are complete and which are not. If a student scores low on a lesson and you delete problems for them to correct it’s much easier to see this. If a lesson does not have a C for Complete then it means the Lesson still has problems to complete.

Few Reminders about Teaching Textbooks

Teaching Textbooks offers a FREE Trial of the first 15 Lessons of any and all of their levels! This is how I started–I saw the quality for myself and was really impressed! If you’re at all curious about TT, I highly encourage you to give the free trial a try! (They will not take any payment information from you for the free trial!)
Teaching Textbooks offers a Large Family Discount (12 month subscription for 4-8 students is $199.08)
Teaching Textbooks begins at approximately 3rd Grade (Math 3) and goes through high school (Pre-Calculus).

Eclectic High School Homeschool: Preparing Your Teen for Life {Real Homeschooling for Real Families}

June 24, 2019 By Thaleia Leave a Comment

Today’s Real Homeschooling for Real Families post is written by Pat from Breakthrough Homeschooling. She is writing about using an Eclectic Style for High School.

When we first began homeschooling, I think it would be fair to say that that prevalent approach to homeschooling high school was actuality preparation for college. Most homeschool moms replicated their own high school education, whether or not it was intentional, and that certainly was the context when we were homeschooling our two older kiddos, now 31 and 29. But I’d like to suggest an alternate approach to homeschooling high school today, without (I hope) sounding too melodramatic: preparation for life.

As mentioned, many years ago, college attendance was the assumed next step after teenagers completed high school. Since then, however, our country and culture have been hit with recessions, skyrocketing college costs, unprecedented pile-ups of student loan debt, and a staggering rate of un- or under-employed college grads. Add to this environment the unparalleled growth of technology-based businesses, many of which do not require or even need a college degree, and a business landscape that invites and encourages entrepreneurship. Oh, and don’t forget the useful application of a gap year…

The end result is that today’s high school students have a plethora of opportunities and possibilities, which actually makes our job as home educators a bit more complex than “just” preparing for college.

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Vegetable Gardens and Seed Exploration #NatureBookClub #NatureStudy

June 20, 2019 By Thaleia Leave a Comment

This month’s Nature Book Club theme is gardening and gardens. I am not sure about you but here in the Midwest it’s been hard to get our garden started with all the rain. We have had to start seeds a few times.

Since we are diving into Botany this Summer I thought it would be good for the little boys to learn all about seeds and do some seed exploration. We own the book, How a Seed Grows, which delves into what seeds look like as well as how to grow vegetable gardens.

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A Typical Day in our Charlotte Mason Homeschool {Real Homeschooling for Real Families}

June 17, 2019 By Thaleia Leave a Comment

Today’s Real Homeschooling for Real Families post is written by an anonymous homeshool mom with permission to share her thoughts on the Charlotte Mason Homeschool Method.

Have you considered using the Charlotte Mason homeschool method or approach to your homeschool? The Charlotte Mason method is based on Charlotte’s firm belief that the child is a person and we must educate that whole person, not just his mind. So a Charlotte Mason education is three-pronged: in her words, “Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life.” (from Simply Charlotte Mason website). You can learn more about the CM Method by visiting Ambleside Online for free resources.

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