Well, here it is – my final post dedicated to presenting next year’s homeschool curriculum.
As with our chosen curriculum for the littles and middles, my teenagers’ (who will be in grades 9 and 11) learning remains as relaxed as possible, which I know really goes against the grain when it comes to most homeschooled high schoolers.
The thing is, last year I graduated my first homeschooler, and that experience really helped me to realize that I’m far more interested in preparing my kids to become adults than I am in stuffing them with trivial facts and dates. So if you’re looking for a vast array of textbook selections, you won’t find that here. 😉
Rather than delving too deeply into how I reached this point, I encourage you to read a post I wrote a few days ago before reading through our curriculum choices, especially if you don’t understand how a child can be homeschooled throughout the high school years without the use of dozens of textbooks.
I’ll wait…
Did you read it??
Okay, then we’re set. Let’s go! (This will be a rather brief list of our chosen materials. If you’d like a more comprehensive look at our plan for next year, you’ll find that in the video below.)
Relaxed Homeschool Curriculum for High School
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Language Arts
Writers in Residence: Volume 2
Math
CTC Math – (My 9th grader)
No-Nonsense Algebra – (My 16 year old switched from Life of Fred Beginning Algebra to this book mid-year, so she’ll be finishing it up next year.)
Life of Fred Advanced Algebra – (This is what my 11th grader will tentatively be using after she completes No-Nonsense Algebra.)
Foreign Language
DuoLingo – (I actually forgot to mention this in my video.)
Everything Else
Yup. Everything.
Delight-Directed Learning – Both of my daughters will be researching topics of their choice and notebooking about them.
I know that a lot of parents are leery about this learning approach, but all I can say is trust your kids. Too often we adults get this notion that our children – especially teenagers – can’t or won’t make good choices about how they spend their time.
My experience with my kids has shown me that this is not the case, especially if they’ve been brought up with the mentality that their ideas matter.
One of the reasons I don’t worry about separating their subjects – even at this stage of the game – is because I have seen my kids come up with areas of interest that not only covered all subjects, but literally blew me away.
For example, this year my 16 year old chose to learn about:
- WW2 (History)
- Salem Witch Trials (History)
- Botany (Science)
- Homeopathy (Science/Health)
- Ancient Egypt/Egyptian Mythology (History/Folklore)
- Fairy Legends (Folklore)
I didn’t suggest any of these topics to her. There were all her idea. I’m going to say it again: Trust your kids.
KONOS – (Since my younger daughter enjoys hands-on learning, I’ll be tweaking these activities for high school and alternating unit studies with her delight-directed learning.)
Believe it or not, that’s it! As I always say, homeschooling doesn’t have to be stressful, and it most certainly shouldn’t be boring. Take advantage of your homeschool freedom and give your kids the education that will work best for them without worrying about whether or not your approach will meet society’s expectations.
The village isn’t raising your children. You are.
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There's No Place Like Home 
That’s the second time in two days I’ve heard of Duolingo for foreign language learning. We’re definitely going to have to check that out. Your list makes me feel so much better about our homeschooling plan for freshman year. Thanks!! Heading into high school has felt a bit stressful mainly because I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. I too only planned out English and math. (Well, we have a textbook for science but it’s for the whole family to use since we’re getting together with two other homeschooling families to cover science and do labs each week but if that isn’t a good fit for us I’m sure we’ll go back to delight directed learning there too).
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I love the idea of getting together with another family. Let me know how that works out for you. 🙂
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I’m another red-headed mom and another relaxed homeschooler all the way through! 🙂
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Great minds think alike. 😉
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I just got back from a homeschool conference and purchased TalkBox.Mom for foreign language for my whole family 3-35, including one high school student. I highly suggest checking it out.
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It would go along very nicely with your relaxed approach.
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I will definitely look into it. Thank you!
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This is fab – we’re planning to homeschool but our daughter is only 3 at the mo! And congrats, someone loved this post so much, they added it to the #BlogCrush linky – feel free to collect your “I’ve been featured” blog badge!
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How do you count credit for delight-directed learning? Typically for Science and History it is listed as 1 credit per year in a specific focus, so if a teen learns about botany and astronomy, for example, what would that science be listed at on a transcript? Along the same lines, how do you complete the lab credits? These are my biggest worries with a high schooler for the first time next year. Thank you!
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This is my go-to post for transcripts. She says it so much better than I ever could – https://unschoolrules.com/unschooling-high-school-transcript/
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This is beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
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This is great is the kid is motivated. My daughter doesn’t seem to be motivated for anything, and when I ask her to research a subject she chose, she seems to just type the subject in google and copy a few things from the search page in her notebook, or just copy from the book if google is not allowed. If I am not giving her direction, she would do even less…She is very hands on orientated, reads a lot, just loves ‘doing’, far from lazy on that side, but comes time to put her readings and searches on paper….that’s a different story.
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It sounds to me like she is very motivated. It just sounds like she prefers to learn in ways other than what we typically envision education to look like. That’s okay. Continue supporting her in the learning style that works for her. 🙂 Small steps.
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Shelly, thank you! Your tendency is to look at the positive with kids, mine is the opposite :(. May be I need more of what you have :). I know she is hard working, very artistic, looooooves hands on, she’s always been my bubbly child with interest in everything except for anything that requires too much reflection (math for example), she always kept busy on her own, and it was great bc as the oldest, she had to go thru 3 pregnancies that made me tired and more tired. However,….as a teenager now, she has lost that bubblyness (is that a word) and if I leave her on her own, she doesn’t learn a whole lot about what I think she should know (and I am very relax). I have tried notebooking, but she just copies passages of things she read, but I’m not sure she is retaining anything; I did explain to her she can have drawing, collage, maps…anything, but that didn’t help. I even told her to tell me what and how she would like to learn, gave her the freedom to do her work whenever she wanted, but she did not take advantage of it….sad.
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