Homeschooling High School

OK, y'all. Homeschooling high school for the very first time is flippin' scary! You're so afraid that you'll mess up your child at this stage because it's your last chance to teach them everything that they need to know before college! Totally freaked me out!

So, our first year (this past year, 2017-2018 school year) I enrolled ECJ into a public online high school because I didn't want to do him a disservice. Well, that only lasted about two months before we were officially over it. It just didn't work for us and he was often frustrated with the amount of waiting time between classes and having to be online at certain times of the day because he got credit towards his grades for being there for the live class. Yeah. Not a good fit for our family. 

So, I ended up piecing together a curriculum for him on the fly for his ninth grade year. We did a lot of items from Easy Peasy All-in-one High School such as :

• World History (which we also had a high school level text book for to reinforce) 1 credit
• Art Appreciation .5 credit
• Music Appreciation .5 credit
• Spanish 1 ... 1 credit (also added duolingo)
• Algebra 1 (which we also had a high school level text book to work through) 1 credit
• Earth Science 1 credit
• PE/Health 1 ... 1 credit

On top of that we did Literature and Composition for 9th grade, using a textbook that I had on hand) for 1 credit. Bible 1 ... also 1 credit. This gave us 8 credits for 9th grade which is within the normal parameters. 

It took about two weeks for me to get us set up and we did use a college level Algebra book for ECJ during those two weeks, and for a bit longer, before I found a high school level text for him to work through. He's hated Algebra all year long and so this summer we'll be working through Life of Fred Fractions AND Beginning Algebra and possibly reviewing Painless Algebra again. 

All of this got me realizing that it really isn't all that different from all the previous years that I've homeschooled him. I assign the books and daily lessons and he works through them asking me for help as needed or looking up answers online. Whew! What a relief! I won't mess my kid up while homeschooling him for high school! 

So, if you've been scared of those high school years just take a deep breath and relax a bit. You can do this! You are capable! You are awesome!