Electives?

[Michelle T]

I would love to see what you all teach as electives. How do you decide? Do you just pick what you think your kids will learn? Or ask them what they want to study? Or give them a couple to choose between? Other?

Michelle T

[LoriM]

I guess it depends on what you consider an elective. My dds freshman year looked like:

 

English I

Spanish I (older dd has Latin III here)

World History I (Ancients)

Art History/ Art Studio

Music Appreciation

Biology

Algebra II

PE

 

So if you consider music and art electives (we don't :) ) then that is what we did. By sophomore year, the schedule was equally full with standard courses, so there wasn't room for many "electives" on the transcript.

 

But by junior year, my girls are enrolled as concurrent CC students. My older dd took a very traditional route with her courses (English, Spanish, Math, Science) the first year. My younger dd is adding in some "electives"...last semester she took Digital Photography and Health (as well as English, Spanish, and Art Appreciation).

 

Anyway, my older dd ended up with 10 math credits. So, at least half of those were electives. :) She also took Health and a few other "elective" courses in pursuit of her AA (like Psych and Sociology).

 

Oh, I guess one elective course we do here 10th-12th grades is "Ethics." I use the Trinity Forum Study Series (that I learned about here) as the text for that work.

 

HTH,

 

Lori

[newbie]

Mine goes thru K12, but I can give you an idea what she has had and will have.

 

Journalism, Anthropology, lots of computer courses, career planning, personal finance and art.

 

I know I missed a couple, sorry.

[TravelingChris]

For my oldest, he did art- which included water painting class and drawing. He also did a Science Fiction literature, and Russian.

 

My next one is doing music electives- Choir, Introduction to Music, etc.

[Denise in Florida]

We are fairly relaxed schoolers so I definitely let the girls follow their own interests for electives. Some things like math, English, science etc are givens but the girls choose how they want to study them.

 

Here is an example of one of the electives this year.

 

This year dd2 (freshman) did an elective in Costume/Fashion Design. She studied historic fashions including appropriate colors and fabrics. She sewed costumes for herself and friends for Halloween (Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd) She also experimented with alternative fabrics and made an entirely recycled outfit from magazine covers (bodice), fused target bags (purse, shoes, accessories) and scrap material from sheets and old jeans (skirt). The recylced outfit took 2nd place in the 4H competition at the state fair. She also sewed a professional outfit (dress and trench coat) to wear during volunteer work. We created the credit by tracking and listing the various books, articles, patterns etc that she consulted. We also documented the completed projects and she wrote a short summary of the skills she developed over the year.

[AnitaMcC]

I would love to see what you all teach as electives. How do you decide? Do you just pick what you think your kids will learn? Or ask them what they want to study? Or give them a couple to choose between? Other?

Michelle T

 

Well for us... our definition is based on what we define as core classes:

4 yrs langauge arts (9th grade I pick, rest they pick with/limits).

4 yrs of math (algebra 1, algebra 2, geometry, precalculus)

4 yrs of science (they pick but must be lab sciences for 2 of them).

4 yrs of humanities/social sciences (required 1 yr World History, 1 yr U.S. History, 1/2 yr U.S. Government, 1/2 yr Human Geography... they pick the last yr worth).

4yrs of P.E.

 

In these core classes they have some options/choices of what courses they want to take for these requirements.

 

Anything else, beyond what counts in their core requirements, are electives. All foreign language, music, art, computers, consumer education, health, drivers education, etc. automatically are electives.

 

Some electives are required.... foreign language, consumer education, health, drivers ed. They pick which foreign language they want to learn but they have to do at least one for 3 years as required for many colleges.

[mooooom]

My dd is going to spend a year on veterinary science and animal careers (I am making it up - a lot of reading, science spine will be 4H materials, and she will spend a lot of volunteer hours at different places.

 

The boys will be taking an online computer programming course. They drew complete blank faces when I asked them what THEY wanted to learn, so it took a little prompting and a lot of suggestions - also someone posted some lists of elective offerings I had them look through.

 

When I was in school we always got to choose our own electives. Know the core courses they need to graduate and then let them do some selecting. SInce colleges want kids with passion, think of it as encouraging passion.

[Storm Bay]

Mean mom that I am, dd does not get to totally choose her elective next year. She has to do art (she's very talented at it, but no drive.) Painting. I want watercolour, she wants to do acrylic. I was going to let her do acrylic, but the problem is we already own books on water colour and I can get an inexpensive course from Masterpiece Art Instruction on water colour; Karine hasn't yet done an acrylic course. I love the course of hers we already have used. Finances are important.

 

I do plan to let her choose electives down the road, of course, just not her freshman year. She wants to be a biochemist, and I think art will help her with the biology part since even I used to draw things in biology and I didn't take art after grade 7 (our choice was band or art for grade 8, our first year of high school where I grew up.) She did get to help decide on her foreign language and on what she wants to focus on (science).

[Susan C.]

We went by interest, son did guitar lessons (music), drawing (art), cultivated and grew palm trees (horticulture). My daughter so far has taken a cake decorating class (culinary arts) and does PE every year, so the PE will eat up a lot of her electives. It doesn't seem there is that much room anymore.... with colleges wanting 3 yrs. of foreign language, higher math, AP classes..... I think she will end up with her four core classes (history/math/science/English), Spanish, PE, and one year of an art.

[Susan C.]

Well for us... our definition is based on what we define as core classes:

4 yrs langauge arts (9th grade I pick, rest they pick with/limits).

4 yrs of math (algebra 1, algebra 2, geometry, precalculus)

4 yrs of science (they pick but must be lab sciences for 2 of them).

4 yrs of humanities/social sciences (required 1 yr World History, 1 yr U.S. History, 1/2 yr U.S. Government, 1/2 yr Human Geography... they pick the last yr worth).

4yrs of P.E.

 

In these core classes they have some options/choices of what courses they want to take for these requirements.

 

Anything else, beyond what counts in their core requirements, are electives. All foreign language, music, art, computers, consumer education, health, drivers education, etc. automatically are electives.

 

Some electives are required.... foreign language, consumer education, health, drivers ed. They pick which foreign language they want to learn but they have to do at least one for 3 years as required for many colleges.

:iagree:

[Susan C.]

I guess it depends on what you consider an elective. My dds freshman year looked like:

 

English I

Spanish I (older dd has Latin III here)

World History I (Ancients)

Art History/ Art Studio

Music Appreciation

Biology

Algebra II

PE

 

So if you consider music and art electives (we don't :) ) then that is what we did. By sophomore year, the schedule was equally full with standard courses, so there wasn't room for many "electives" on the transcript.

 

But by junior year, my girls are enrolled as concurrent CC students. My older dd took a very traditional route with her courses (English, Spanish, Math, Science) the first year. My younger dd is adding in some "electives"...last semester she took Digital Photography and Health (as well as English, Spanish, and Art Appreciation).

 

Anyway, my older dd ended up with 10 math credits. So, at least half of those were electives. :) She also took Health and a few other "elective" courses in pursuit of her AA (like Psych and Sociology).

 

Oh, I guess one elective course we do here 10th-12th grades is "Ethics." I use the Trinity Forum Study Series (that I learned about here) as the text for that work.

 

HTH,

 

Lori

 

Hi Lori,

I see 8 classes here, do you do all of them all year, or how do you split them up to fit them all in?? DD is a good student, but so far through 9th grade, 5 classes seems to be the point where she runs out of day! Just looking for input on how to get more accomplished!

 

Thanks,

Susan

[rwalizer]

Our electives through hs will include 4 years of Spanish, 4 years of PE (ds is a competitive cyclist), health, and home ec. I plan to make up my own plan of cooking and meal planning as well as domestic duties, a little sewing for the home ec. credit. This will actually give him more credits that our local school system requires so I'm not too worried. BTW, he is currently taking violin but I'm not sure how long it will hold his interest.

[Cheryl B in VA]

I have a rising senior and a rising freshman. I present a list of choices according to interests, abilities, and potential career path. My oldest has said since he was 15 that he wants to go into ministry and he wants to be a writer. His electives have included: 3 years of Spanish (beginning in 8th); Word processing; speech; creative writing; intro to debate; Bible; apologetics; logic. Second ds is boy through and through and obsesses over cars and sports. His electives next year are car care by CLE, half credit of Bible, and I am requiring art or music appreciation. He will likely go through all of the car related electives that CLE offers, probably do a statistics class (he reads the stats page of the sports section daily) and will only do two years of foreign language if he decides that he is college bound.

[ChrisN in NY]

I would love to see what you all teach as electives. How do you decide? Do you just pick what you think your kids will learn? Or ask them what they want to study? Or give them a couple to choose between? Other?

Michelle T

 

In a school setting, an elective is anything other than a required course. The NY homeschool regs require 1/2 credit in government and in economics. Ds took his senior year at community college, so earned a whole credit in each. The additional half-credits counted toward his electives (of which a hs'ed studnet has to have three).

 

Just throwing this out there...

[Storm Bay]

In a school setting, an elective is anything other than a required course. The NY homeschool regs require 1/2 credit in government and in economics. Ds took his senior year at community college, so earned a whole credit in each. The additional half-credits counted toward his electives (of which a hs'ed studnet has to have three).

 

Just throwing this out there...

 

I'm defining electives as anything my dc won't need in order to graduate legally and/or to get into university/college for their intended majors. Therefore, foreign language isn't being counted as an elective, even though they have some say in it (but due to finances, it's Latin or German for now unless they can take one at the local ps, which doesn't offer German but has a few.)

[bclerkin]

Our electives included Fine Arts (Piano) Music Theory, Driver's Education, Spanish, and Finance & Budget.

[Guest Barb B]

Our electives include guitar lessons (but not a full credit), also we include some form of religion each year a catechism or this year a scripture study text - these are from a high school text book series that we like and are good as a full 1 credit course.

 

Barb

[LoriM]

Hi Lori,

I see 8 classes here, do you do all of them all year, or how do you split them up to fit them all in?? DD is a good student, but so far through 9th grade, 5 classes seems to be the point where she runs out of day! Just looking for input on how to get more accomplished!

 

Thanks,

Susan

 

 

We do typically do science/history on a block schedule (MW/TR), and PE is often an evening activity (Volleyball or Soccer). But we have done as many as TWELVE courses concurrently (yikes!), just by scheduling them in, and making weekly progress in each. When we are able, we carefully design assignments to cross curriculum.

 

The beautiful thing about hsing is how unique it is to each student.

[elizabeth]

Dd is allowed to choose one social studies elective, one fine arts elective and one philosophy elective each year. I preselect the books and let her peruse them and choose accordingly. This fall she will be taking Sociology, Art History and Informal Logic. My guess at this time is that she will love art history, hate sociology (only tolerating as it is a prerequisite for Anthropology at chez attorney mama's school) and excel in logic but will use those talents to drive me insane with accusations wielded at her devoted instructor that I am gailing to respond in a dialogue by responding with a non sequitur. A technique which has served me quite well when I need to redirect our conversations. This will have to be replaced with another technique. The perils of educating your children well are becoming all too apparent...