How to Homeschool through High School by Christy Walje @cwalje
First, I would just like to say that you know your child better than anyone else, and no one else loves them like you do. Of course, you are going to want the very best education for your child. The idea of homeschooling through high school can be an overwhelming and somewhat scary idea. It was for me, at least. I have a degree in occupational therapy, not education, and felt incapable of educating high school levels. Math is not my thing and neither is physics nor any other science that involves math. So, how have I graduated 5 kids so far through high school? First of all, by God's grace. Truly! To Him be the glory! I could not have done it without the Lord. Second, with the help, support, and prayers of my husband, we have been able to do this together. Third, educating myself, researching, talking to others, and planning ahead were all vital to our success! It is my hope that I can offer some help to you so that you can be successful as well!
We began by researching and asking questions of others who had gone before us. Our oldest was in 4th grade when we started homeschooling, and when he got into junior high I began to get serious about how to go about planning and preparing for his high school years. The biggest questions I had included topics such as:
What about transcripts?
What classes does he need to graduate?
How do I prep my child for the ACT/SAT?
How do I go about helping my student apply for college?
You are your child's advocate, his primary educator, and his biggest cheerleader. Be encouraged because there is an abundance of resources and classes online, as well as many other options that you can turn to. The first thing that my husband and I did was attend a class regarding this very topic of homeschooling through high school. It included information regarding all the above topics that my husband and I had questions about. I highly recommend it if there is one available to you locally or even out of town. Of course, Google is always an option as well. Another resource that we have found very helpful has been our local parent educator organization. It provides 10 newsletters every year with information about events, classes, music lessons, drama, sports, co-ops, standardized testing opportunities, and other activities for homeschoolers. They also hold an annual conference with book/curriculum vendors and classes on every topic, including homeschooling through high school. Our particular parent educator organization also includes an annual graduation ceremony for seniors in the spring. Check and see if you have a homeschool parent organization in your area!
I also suggest that you go online and look at the requirements for high school graduation by your particular state. You can even look at your local high schools' requirements online. There should be lists of standard (minimum) requirements for graduation and your state's scholars requirements to get into college. Since we live in Kansas, I went to ksde.org. Remember that not all kids are going to go to college and that may not be God's plan for his/her life. However, there are standard requirements for graduation for each state and we need to follow that to be above reproach as we educate our children.
If indeed, your student's goal is to go to college, you will want to be preparing him beginning in 9th grade with the appropriate courses he will need. Although it varies from state to state, most state colleges will require:
- 4 English credits
- 3-4 Math credits (Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, and 1 advanced math)
- 3 Social Studies/History credits (selective colleges will want 3)
- 3 Science credits (Biology, Chemistry, and Physics usually)
- 2-3 Foreign Language credits (must be the same language)
- 1 PE Credit (including Health)
- 1 Fine Arts Credit (including art, music, dance, theater, forensics)
- 6 Elective credits
Remember that this is a guideline and you really need to check your state's requirements!
As your student progresses through high school, you will want to look at your student's prospective college websites for entrance requirements. They often have it listed online, but I have found that emailing the admissions offices at the colleges has been helpful in answering our questions.
There are four things you will want to look for when searching your student's prospective colleges when you are first starting out:
1. What is the minimum ACT score required for acceptance? Or does the school require the SAT?
2. How many units of each high school subject is required/recommended?
3. What is the minimum high school accumulative GPA required for acceptance?
4. Does the college offer the degree/major your child would like to pursue?
Since you do know your child better than anyone, you know what their interests and skills are, and what they might be interested in pursuing upon graduation. Therefore, you will want to gear their education in that direction. Talk to your student about his/her dreams and hopes for the future. For example, if he wants to be an engineer make sure he is strong in mathematics!
When planning curriculum and classes for your high school student, make sure you consider your schedule. Do you have multiple children? Toddlers and babies? Do you have time for planning or do you need a curriculum that is already planned our for you with weekly assignments? Do you need for your student to be an independent worker, or does he need help from you? Can he drive or are you going to need to transport him to all of his activities? All of these things will help determine your curriculum choices, outside classes, and his volunteer and extracurricular activities. When our oldest son was in 9th grade, I had an infant, a toddler, plus 3 other kids. Although our son was very involved in extracurricular activities, I often had to rely on others to carpool him to football practice, track meets, debates, etc. However, I did have 2 daughters who were young teens who could babysit the younger kids.
Transcripts are not as scary as they sound. One thing that you will want to do starting at the beginning of 9th grade is to keep track of all of their volunteer work, awards, and extracurricular activities that your student will accumulate over the 4 years of high school. It is too difficult to remember all of these later on so it is helpful to keep track of all of it in an organized way. I recommend using something like a recipe box. Inside, label 3 dividers for 9th grade as: Extracurricular, Volunteer Work, and Awards. Repeat for 10th-12th grade. Use note cards to label all volunteer work such as church nursery, worship team, VBS worker, political campaign work, serving in a nursing home, etc. Keep track of the hours volunteered for each grade behind the appropriate divider by grade. Behind the extracurricular divider, record on note cards things such as football, choir, youth group, and theater. Behind the awards divider, record all awards for each grade. Examples include district/state music awards, lettering in track and field, and debate awards. Eventually, all of these things will be transferred onto your child's transcript, and you will have it all written down on those note cards! This came in super handy with our first child because he was very busy and ended up applying to the Naval Academy which required a lot of volunteer, extracurricular, and awards to get accepted. He did not end up going there but it was so helpful for applying to other colleges as well!
Next, you will need to start to think about the transcript itself. You can purchase different transcript programs that are available online. Again, you can just Google it to find out what is available. You will be able to view examples of the transcripts from these programs. Some people make their own transcripts using Excel. Here are some websites with transcript programs that are available for purchase. Some of them allow you to also add additional children to the program.
Book called Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschoolers Guide to High School Paperwork by Janice Campbell (Amazon)
Transcript programs give options on how you can assign credits. Typically, a one semester class is .05 credit. A two semester class is 1.0 credit. Traditionally, 1 credit in high school is equal to 120 hours of class work. Be sure to count labs, projects, field trips, reading, studying, time spent practicing their instrument, researching, etc. toward those hours. The typical minimum number of credits required to graduate is 21.
The transcript may also give you the ability to assign a value of an A, B, C, etc. For example, A=4.0, B=3.0, etc. Most transcript programs automatically keep track of the GPA every time you enter a course grade. It will give you a final GPA at the end and you will be able to print off a professional looking transcript.
Naming your student's courses can be as simple as English 9 (9th grade English) or British Literature and Composition. Ideas for course names and descriptions can actually be found on public school websites.
One idea that I had for two of my daughters who took piano lessons included asking the piano teacher to write a course description and her expectations for them over the course of the year. The teacher actually had them write a couple of papers on composers and graded them. She also graded them on lesson preparedness, theory, and recital performances. This was listed on their transcripts under "Fine Arts" with the course title of "Piano Class".
Most colleges will want your child to take the high school level classes while in high school, rather than junior high, even though we all know that many kids are capable of taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade or earlier. My two oldest daughters took a pencil drawing class while in junior high with a woman who had taught high school drawing in public schools. She wrote a course description for me and specifically stated that it was a high school art class. She then assigned them a grade. When you are creating your transcript you have two options regarding how you can record coursework. You can record each class in the traditional way under the grade level, including all the classes taken in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. Or you can record each class by subject, such as English, Math, Science. Then just list all the classes taken under each subject. So for the drawing class my daughters took, I put it under the subject "Fine Arts," rather than listing it under 9th or 10th grade. Another example is that you can list all the English classes under the subject, "English", rather than under the grade they took it. That way if your child has a class that he actually took in junior high that is legitimately a high school course, he can still get high school credit for it. I actually did at least 2 of our transcripts by subject instead of grade level.
For PE credit, 120 hours of physical activity is equivalent to 1 credit. Keep a log. This can include hiking, running, jumping on the trampoline, golfing, etc. Three of my kids took a class at the community college called "Lifetime Fitness", which included a work-out circuit that they had to attend a certain number of times over the semester. It also included health. Therefore, they got dual credit for PE for high school and college. My two sons have both played football and done weight training, which definitely counted toward PE credit. Four of my kids have competed in track, and one has done cross country. All of our sports have been through a local university model school which offers sports for homeschoolers. There are lots of options for homeschoolers involving organized competitive sports.
High school classes can be obviously difficult to teach, especially upper level math and science courses, and even foreign languages. For some homeschool moms, it's the English and writing that is difficult. Take heart because there are many options out there for home schoolers. We have used a couple of different homeschool co-ops that have offered core classes and electives. Sometimes these classes just meet once a week, others two or three times a week. Classical Conversations, a rigorous academic program which we did for 8 years, offers all subjects, and meets once a week for 30 weeks at the junior and senior high school level. The only thing you have to add is your own math program, although they do discuss math concepts in class. You can find a local community near you on their website. The parent is still considered the teacher and has to determine the grade for each class. We have also used a university model school that offers these types of classes, which meet MWF or TTH like a college. There are so many online options for classes, as well as DVD programs. One other website that is very helpful in choosing high school curriculum is cathyduffyreviews.com. You can type in any subject or curriculum and she reviews them in a short summary.
One thing that we have done with all five of our older kids is classes at our community college their senior year. They were able to obtain dual credit for both high school and college. In order to take composition or math classes, a high school student at our community college has to take what is called a "Compass Test" to see if he scores high enough to take a Comp class and/or place them in the appropriate math level. If they have already taken the ACT and scored high enough in English and Math, they do not need to take the Compass Test. I'm sure it is similar at other community colleges. The Compass Test is obviously taken before enrollment. We are looking into our youngest taking dual credit classes at a local Christian college next year, her senior year.
Before selecting college classes at our local community college, we have found it helpful to go to ratemyprofessors.com . You can type in your community college, the professors' names for the courses that you are interested in, and see how other students have rated the professors before you enroll them. This past year has been very different because all of my son's classes at our community college have literally just consisted of an online syllabus with assignments. He's had no recorded lectures or zoom classes, with the exception of one 5 week zoom class. That is one of the reasons why we are trying a different college for our youngest. Plus, they have a choir and worship band that she can hopefully participate in.
Thankfully, a one semester 3 credit class in college counts as one whole credit for high school on a transcript. So Comp. 1 is a whole English credit for high school, even though it is a one semester college class.
Before enrolling in any classes at the community college, be sure to check with the colleges that your student is interested in to make sure that those courses will indeed transfer to the prospective four year college. Otherwise, it could be a waste of time and money. Just contact the college's admissions office to make sure that they approve classes for transfer. You may be required to show them course materials, class descriptions, or a letter from the professor. One of the colleges that my youngest son was interested in gave me a list of 19 classes at our community college that they had previously approved for other transfer students.
One very encouraging thing for our kids has been that all of them have known other students at our community college who had been homeschooled because of all of their extracurricular activities, such as church, sports, music lessons, and the Kansas City Youth Symphony. Also, they have done quite well in their classes, even though they tended to be the younger students in the classes.
As you know, colleges require standardized entrance exams. These include the ACT (act.org), SAT (SAT.org), and CLT, which is the newest one. It stands for Classic Learning Test (cltexam.com). Go to their websites to find out more information about dates and test prep. There are also books you can buy to help study for the tests, as well as tutors and classes to help your student. These test scores, along with all the courses, extracurricular activities, volunteer experiences, and awards will all be included on your student's transcript.
Each of my graduates has gone on to do completely different things after high school. Even though they are all from the same family, with the same parents and siblings, they each are uniquely and wonderfully made in the image of their Creator. The oldest had academic and athletic scholarships and went to college for his undergrad. He joined the Marine Corps reserves, was deployed for a year, and got his masters degree afterward. He's now married with four children and works as an analytics manager. Our second got her LPN while living at home. She worked for a family practice group, got married, and now has two kids and was able to quit her job to stay at home. Our third took a few college classes, got trained on the job at age 18 as a dental assistant, got married, and now is expecting her third child. She is a doula, lactation educator, and stay at home mama. Our fourth went out of state to college and met her husband. She got a degree in music and worship studies at a Christian college. They now have a baby and she teaches music lessons out of their home. Our fifth has been taking classes at our community college and may transfer to a local Christian college next fall.
My biggest advice would be to pray for your children; share the gospel with them; teach them about the Lord and encourage them to read their Bibles; take them to church on a regular basis, and ask the Lord to use their gifts, talents, education, and skills for His glory above all else. If you have any questions, you can DM me on Instagram at @cwalje. The Lord bless you all!
