I cannot believe that Summer is more than half way over and that Back to School sales have begun. While we are still trying to bask in the lazy days of Summer I am planning our high school homeschool curriculum choices for the upcoming school year. Eldest and Princess are both working on credits to add to their high school transcripts.
Since we have four children that will ALL be homeschooling this year I try to keep things simple with having everyone study a few of the same core subjects. This year we will have two high school homeschool students and two elementary homeschool students. Check out all of our elementary homeschool posts for younger aged resources.
Eldest’s Homeschool Curriculum List
I am hoping for Eldest to earn between 10-11 credits this year! He works on the graphic design and video editing all year round so that should make things easier. Many cooking activities and videos will be incorporated in our daily life. Field trips will be added in for as many subjects as possible like a Festival of Nations to kick off Geography.
Geometry (1 credit) – Teaching Textbooks 3.0
Medieval History (1 credit) – Mystery of History Volume 2
Geography (1 credit) – Expedition Earth plus additional supplements
Botany (1 credit) – Guest Hollow’s Botany
Chemistry (1 credit) – Guest Hollow’s Chemistry in the Kitchen
Language Arts (1 credit) – Write Shop II and extra reading for History, Geography and Science
Spanish or Mandarin (1 credit)- Rosetta Stone free through a public library
PE (1/2 credit)- YMCA fitness center, bike riding, etc.
Culinary Art (1 credit)- recipes and extra videos from Botany, Chemistry and Geography courses
Health (1/2 credit) – various documentaries from Amazon Prime and Netflix
Graphic Design
Video Editing
Princess’s Homeschool Curriculum List
I am proposing for Princess to earn 10-11 credits by the end of this school year. While this seems like a lot it will be spread out beginning with Botany this Spring and Summer. She loves dance and will put in over 7 hours a week on her light weeks.
Algebra 2 (1 credit) – Teaching Textbooks 3.0
Medieval History (1 credit) – Mystery of History Volume 2
Geography (1 credit) – Expedition Earth plus additional supplements
Botany (1 credit )- Guest Hollow’s Botany
Chemistry (1 credit) – Guest Hollow’s Chemistry in the Kitchen
Language Arts (1 credit) – Write Shop II and extra reading for History, Geography and Science
French 2 (1 credit) – Rosetta Stone free through a public library
PE (1/2 credit) – YMCA fitness center, bike riding, etc.
Dance 2 (1 credit) – Ballet, Jazz, Pointe, Tap and Modern through Sidney Dance Company
Culinary Art (1 credit)- recipes and extra videos from Botany, Chemistry and Geography courses
Health (1/2 credit) – various documentaries from Amazon Prime and Netflix
Music Appreciation (1/2 credit) – started on Easy Peasy but doing our own thing
More about our Homeschool Curriculum Choices
Expedition Earth: A Journey Through God’s World is described as an elementary course but easily turned into a high school course with a few additional books, hands-on experiences and videos. We will also be adding many more recipes which counts towards a culinary arts credit.
Guest Hollow offers a flexible curriculum schedule that each family can tailor to their students needs by adding in the extra books or removing extra books and activities. Since we are all interested in cooking and watching videos we can assign our students more credits as additional work is completed. I have created a huge list of Botany Field Trips if your family likes hands-on experiences!
Health is going to be made up primarily of videos from a Google Sheet that I have created for my teens to track the videos watched and the time spent. Once they have racked up 60 hours I will assign 1/2 credit for health. Many of the documentaries were recommended from other homeschool families on a chat in the Guest Hollow High School group.
Music Appreciation was started started on Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool but many of the links were broken. It was also very repetitive and became tedious so Princess will complete her credit by playing the Ukulele as well as listening to various types of music either live or YouTube. Eldest will begin his course this year by listening to various types of music and attending some live performances.
Mystery of History is created for all ages with suggested activities for younger, middle and older students which makes my life easier. We own the audiobooks for the younger students and the textbook for the older students but we often listen t it during lunch as all together. I might supplement with Ambleside Online Year 7 if my children want to listen to history which I found many available on Librivox.
Teaching Textbooks was new to us last school year but Princess would like to continue with that program for sure. Eldest has been dragging his feet on completing Algebra 1 so I am not sure when he will begin Geometry. We will be sharing our full review of Teaching Textbooks 3.0 soon.
WriteShop offers three distinct levels of writing curriculum. Write Shop II offers older students in junior high and high school the opportunity to tackle descriptive, expository, narrative, and persuasive compositions and essays. They’ll learn to use sentence variations, make strong word choices, and improve their self-editing and proofreading skills. For a comparison chart please check out the Chart of Skills for WriteShop I and WriteShop II.
I love Expedition Earth and Mystery of History. To use them together is genius!! I am also using Teaching Textbooks for math… a new favorite of mine. Looks like a busy but fun year of learning in your house. I think I’m going to try to add a few things you listed, like the free Rosetta Stone and the cooking that goes with science. Very cool!
Great choices and resources I wouldn’t mind checking out for my son. Especially classes for Music.
I love being able to see this breakdown of curriculum for both your high schoolers. I have a 3 years before having a high schooler. How do you know how many credits your teen needs for their transcript and what determines the amount of credits applied to each subject?
I’ve read on Harvard, Stanford and Yale’s websites to see what THEY are looking for from homeschoolers. I do not believe either of my children plan to attend any of them BUT if their transcripts would be good enough for one of those three then the local colleges should be pleased as well. As far as credits per class I loosely keep track of the hours spent per subject.