This is very helpful information, thank you! Yes, we probably wouldn't take advantage this coming year (her freshman year), as I want my daughter to acclimate to homeschooling high school first. (I think the earliest we'd even consider applying is to take a class during her sophomore year.) But right now, I'm mapping out high school in a big-picture way and I wanted to get a handle on understanding how the program works. Our main interest is not in racking up college credits--I mean, it'd be great to do so, and we'd happily take them!--but I think our main goal in participating in CCP would be for my daughter to get some practice with college-level courses and thus demonstrate to prospective 4-year colleges that she can hack college-level work. If I may ask: Do you find Columbus State to be generally easy to work with and welcoming toward homeschoolers, or are they kind of hostile toward homeschoolers? In other words, was the administration happy to guide you, and are your kids' advisors genuinely helpful? (I ask because the main community college in the area we moved from was pretty mixed in its treatment of homeschoolers, according to my many friends with older homeschooled kids. Some had great experiences, but some found dealing with the administrators a total headache. I'd love to get a sense of the culture toward homeschoolers at Columbus State, so I'm prepared.) Because of Covid, are your kids taking their classes in person, or is everything online? Can you describe some of the first classes your kids took and what the workload was like? Thank you for any follow-up information you are able to provide. I am grateful!

This is all very good to know, thank you. (If it's relevant, we live in Columbus, so would likely be doing classes through Columbus State Community College.)

Thanks so much for responding. I appreciate it.

Hi there! We're relatively new to Ohio (moved here about a year ago). My oldest is in her second semester of 8th grade. As we look ahead to high school, I feel a bit in the dark about navigating the College Credit Plus program, and would love some guidance from anyone who has participated. I guess I'm just wondering about pros and cons. On the plus side, it seems like a great opportunity for my daughter to take an outside class that I can later put on her college transcript to "prove" she can handle college-level work, but at the same time, I'm hesitant to wade into college classes yet, because I know the grade will become part of a permanent transcript. (What if she bombs it?!) But since they're offered to students as young as 7th grade, it seems like maybe the classes are not that hard? I think at this point, my daughter would mostly be interested in taking a class on something elective-like (such as learning Photoshop). I guess I feel like I don't really understand the program itself or the repercussions of participating. Would love guidance. Thank you!

Mother-Daughter Book Club series by Heather Vogel Frederick? (Note: I have not read them all, but my 13-year-old daughter read most of them last year and really enjoyed them. Seems like something your daughter might like if she was a fan of Baby-Sitter's Club! And there are several books in the series--I think 8 or 9--so it could keep her busy for a long while!)

Hi! I'm working on my homeschool calendar for the upcoming year, trying to think of everything I want to get down. Both of my children (ages 13 and 10) have recently expressed interest in submitting their work to writing and/or art competitions this year. (Just something they want to take a stab at.) I am aware of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, so I've got that on my list, but if anyone knows of other competitions that homeschoolers are eligible to participate in, I would love to hear! (My hope is to identify the opportunities now, so I can track down the websites and put various due dates on my calendar so we don't miss them.) Thanks in advance for any leads!

These links are super helpful! Thank you for sharing them!! (And I always find the conversation interesting; don't mind tangents!) Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts. ❤️

Hi all! (I just posted this in Julie Bogart's Homeschool Alliance forums, but I figured I'd post here, too. Would love to get a range of perspectives.) Like most everyone, I'm wrapping up this homeschool year and am in the midst of planning for next year. We've been homeschooling from the very beginning, so I typically love the planning stage! But now that my oldest is about to enter 8th grade, I'm feeling a bit thrown. I have a clear picture of what we will do for several subjects, but I'm getting stuck on things like science. Part of me feels like 8th grade is the last year we are truly "free" as homeschoolers. (While my husband and I are open to many paths for our children after high school, our default assumption is that we are preparing our girls--currently ages 10 and 13--for a college education.) So, I know that once my oldest hits 9th grade in another year, a huge portion of our homeschool academics will be shaped/bound by college prep requirements (that is, doing x years of specific sciences, x years of foreign language, etc.). So part of me just wants to enjoy this last year and do more free-flowing interest-led work while we still can. That is, things that can "count" as science for legal purposes, but that aren't super school-y, if that makes sense. (For instance, off the top of my head, I'm fantasizing about something like a year-long nature study with lots of art involved, or something similarly "feel-good.") But the other part of me suspects that in order to properly prepare my daughter for high-school level science, I should do the "smart" thing and do a typical, formal science curriculum with lab sheets and such (like Elemental Science, which I do like) for her upcoming 8th grade year. (We've definitely done some of this type of formal science thus far--my girls are familiar, for example, with the very basics of the scientific method. But I've not yet felt obligated to complete an entire science curriculum cover-to-cover. It's more something we've dabbled in up to now. We've mostly used living books and outside classes and co-op experiences, etc. to cover science thus far.) In a nutshell, I'm torn. I want my daughter to be well-prepared for high-school level work. I don't want to fail her. But I also know that this is the last of her early years before homeschooling gets Capital-S Serious, so I'm inclined to indulge in that freedom while we still have it. (Of course I still intend to be creative with our high school homeschooling! But...I think we can all agree high school is a different animal.) I guess I would love to hear advice from those of you who have been here before. If you have/had kids in high school, and you can look back on middle school, how do you feel about your choices? Do you wish you had been more rigorous in middle school? Do you wish you had enjoyed your freedom more and done more delight-directed work? Other things I haven't considered? Thank you in advance for sharing your wisdom!

This is so good to know; I did not consider this angle (credits/financial aid). Very helpful!!

The DK First Dinosaur Encyclopedia is great! (Might be a little light for your 5th grader, but it would be perfect for 2nd grade and K!) My kids really loved all the DK "First" Encyclopedias.

This is wonderful advice. Thank you. The info about DE grades following you around is a great point to keep in mind. (And I totally get what you mean about playing to your family's teaching strengths. So, so helpful!)

So interesting! And yes! That was actually my experience at my own state flagship (years and years ago). Even though I scored great on my own AP English exam, all incoming freshman (and I think even some transfers) at the flagship HAD to take Intro to Academic Writing (the basic freshman English class). It was just the university's rule, across the board. (Not sure if it's still a rule in place today.) But I will say, it ended up being a great class (in that it taught me a lot), so I can see why huge universities make all their students take it. (It's impossible to get out of that class without learning how to write a proper academic research paper, so if you take that first thing at college, you're really set up to know how to do well in all of your other courses.) But of course I resented it at the time, lol. It's amazing to me how much AP stuff has changed. In my high school (back in the late 90s), it was common to take maybe one AP class your senior year, in whatever subject area you were good at (I only ever took the one AP English class). I think the valedictorian of my high school took maybe three or four APs total, in her senior year. And now, it feels really common for kids to have a ton of APs on their transcripts--it seems crazy! (That's partly why I'm so curious to see what the AP fuss is about nowadays--they really weren't a big deal back then.)

How wonderful! That is awesome and so, so encouraging to hear. (And so good to hear that you didn't feel she was hindered in any way.)

Oh gosh, grade weighting! Haven't even begun to think about that sort of thing. Ugh. lol. Thank you for sharing your own situation; it's so helpful to hear others' strategies to start to make sense of everything.

This makes perfect sense--thank you for sharing your experience!

It is so refreshing to hear that your current 12th grader has done everything at home with you except for German. (Sometimes it feels like in order to homeschool high school well nowadays, you have to outsource everything and take a million online courses or college courses or AP courses or whatever. I'm not opposed to any of that--I will happily seek out whatever we decide is necessary when the time comes--but as of right now, I do envision doing a lot of our high school stuff just at home, so it's encouraging to hear it can actually be done!) And your point about the likelihood of changes is well taken!!

Thank you for this; this seems like a good way to think about it. (That is: worrying about high school credit while in high school, and worrying about college credit later, while in college.) I'm in no particular rush to have my students enter college with a ton of credit banked away, but at the same time, with the cost of college being what it is...it's hard not to try to get the most bang for your buck through DE credit or whatever. But your approach seems sane...taking this under advisement!

Oh, this is so good to know! I didn't know you could NOT report an AP score. (I figured it was like a college transcript and that you had to report it.)

Oh my gosh, I know...so true!

This all makes a lot of sense - thank you for elaborating!

Oh, I will be bookmarking that for sure! 😄

Wow - thank you! So good to consider!!

Oh my gosh, what a treasure trove! I almost never visit the high school boards because my kids aren't there yet, but I will definitely be reading all of this! (I know I will be better off if I start learning this stuff now, so it's not totally overwhelming when we reach high school.) The generosity of these boards kind of blows my mind sometimes--thanks again!

Again, giant thank you! So helpful!! (Looks like I just need to settle in for many upcoming years of meticulously reading the fine print.) 🙂

Thank you! This is so helpful. That was my confusion in my OP (it had always been my understanding that once you take a college course, you are a transfer student!), but now after reading these responses, my understanding is that DE credits are typically treated differently from any college classes taken post high school graduation.