I need to bounce around two ideas.

[MelissaM]

First, how much decision making do you allow your high schoolers? My dd is voicing frustration over her lack of choices for next year. I am willing to let her make curriculum choices within a certain range but not to decide her course-load. I want her to do the 4 year track following TWTM. She wants to go another direction and follow her own interests in psychology, comparative study of world religion, and sociology. This particular child is passionate about helping people and is looking into the public health field. That could change at and moment and while I'm sure what she wants to study right now is valuable I hate to see her box herself in.

 

The other side of the coin, and question number 2, is how much can I label her interests into more traditional looking subjects or do I even want to do that? For instance her portfolio will be more honest (and IMNSHO interesting) to say she did a geographical study of world religions and the impact it made in each culture rather than simply saying "World History". But I want her to receive a full "World History" credit not a partial credit for an elective.

 

hmmm. I'm probably not making myself clear, but maybe someone will be able to decipher it.

[mooooom]

to grow and learn about things that interest them. What if your dd doesn't thrive on a 4yr classical high school education? What if she hates it enough that she loses interest in learning? What if she ends up just doing a slap dash job to get through what you want her to do?

 

My suggestion (and I have 3 kids this age of my own) would be to pick a few core subjects that she HAS to have (math, science...) and let her run with the rest. I'd be thrilled to tears that my child had passionate interests and was excited about learning anything.

 

4 Years of history is highly overrated unless you have a passion for it. Is it a requirement at any university?

[gardenschooler]

First, how much decision making do you allow your high schoolers?

 

I want her to do the 4 year track following TWTM.

 

She wants to go another direction and follow her own interests in psychology, comparative study of world religion, and sociology.

 

A decent amount. I would try to incorporate anything mine are really interested in, definitely. I might not give up the basics for it, though.

 

Can you do history, and then do those subjects as electives? They really don't replace the required history subjects. I don't know what your requirements are, but for example, in TN we're required:

1 credit of either World History or World Geography

1 credit of US History

1 credit of US Gov't/Economics

 

I also have certain requirements mine must meet - and they don't necessarily have anything to do with the state/umbrella requirements. If it's that important to you, then I don't see why it would be a problem to do both.

She'll need electives, anyway.

 

The other side of the coin, and question number 2, is how much can I label her interests into more traditional looking subjects or do I even want to do that? For instance her portfolio will be more honest (and IMNSHO interesting) to say she did a geographical study of world religions and the impact it made in each culture rather than simply saying "World History". But I want her to receive a full "World History" credit not a partial credit for an elective.

 

I think she'll have to do a separate, full 'World History' course, but you could certainly incorporate the world religions aspect into it, and depending on how much time she spent, give her either .5 or another full credit.

[Nan in Mass]

since my son is doing the same thing except with world peace not health. There has been room for my son to do quite a lot of TWTM AND his own stuff. And TWTM is nice and tailorable. We're doing history and literature TWEM way. We are compromising a bit by only reading the history and writing the occasional paper, not writing out the historical background papers. This takes about 1 1/2 or 2 hours a day and will give him 3 or 4 credits of literature, 1/2 of Government and Economics, 1 of World History, and 1 of US History. He will get another 1/2 credit of geography for the travel he's done, the Geography Coloring Book, Material World, the Klutz geography book, and listening to the TC anthro tapes. His US, gov, and world history contain extra summer reading in his area of interest. He did speech and comp at CC, so if I think the amount of literature we've gotten through is a little think, I'll just give him 3 lit credits. He'll still have 4 credits of English. He did about half an hour of writing each day, but I'm not counting that towards anything. He'll have 4 each of math and science, and 2 of Latin. That actually leaves him quite a lot of time for something we are calling Peace Studies, which will probably appear each year (his area of interest), art, music, and a year of keyboarding/computers. What we haven't done from TWTM is logic (math takes too much time for this child and the next one will just do geometry to learn those thinking skills) (except for Fallacy Detective orally), grammar (I'm relying of Latin for that), vocab, and a third and fourth year of Latin. (My son has aquired a little French and Japanese, but we aren't counting those, I think.) We've done art and music in little bits that I'll stick together into a credit (or half a credit) in the end. Mine do Latin and math for homework consistently, and some reading. They also do reading in the summer, just reading (provided traveling hasn't kept my son from finishing his math book). This extra reading, lots of discussions, travelling, and TC tapes in the car are another way of fitting in my son's interests.

 

Do you remember how Rough Collie worked out the hours her children would be working on each subject each day, as sort of a sanity check for the amount of work her high school plan would involve? You can do something like that. I think you will find that you have time to do at least one extra thing each year, devoting an hour a day to it, on top of the normal math, sci, hist/lit, and foreign language. That, together with slanting the history/government/geography and the science towards her interests, should help her feel that she is accomplishing her goals. Meanwhile, you won't be giving up anything crutial to college admittance in something other than a health field. A good trick is to label your courses with colons, like World History: Conflict Resolution from 1800 to 2000 (or whatever emphasis you put on it).

 

My son works pretty hard, but he is combining a competative gymnastics schedule and peace activism and college prep homeschooling. He works very sslloowwllyy. Without the gymnastics, and working at a more normal pace, you should be able to do both TWTM and the things your daughter wants. I think, anyway. It looked rather impossible when I first began planning high school, but it has worked out rather well. My son is finishing his junior year.

 

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

I let my son choose his travelling. The rest of the time, since he vanishes for months to do that, he is expected to work hard at his requirements and whatever else I think is necessary to tie together the things he learns travelling. As he put it, "I learn by travelling and when I come home, my mother takes all that stuff and fills in the missing pieces and puts it together into a whole picture of how the world works." In practice, this means that I say something like, "I think you should read this book," and he reads it over the summer, or I say, "I think you should investigate this on the web," or "I think you should write a quick paper about that." It isn't something I plan out a great while ahead. I can't. It is more spontaneous. I'll plan a summer's reading, or I'll decide his literature based on what I think would be useful, or he will choose to take speech at CC thinking it would be useful, or I'll find a middle school level overview book on a country before my son travels there, or have him investigate something further, something he's told me about when he returned. I'm completely unqualified to do this GRIN, and I'm sure someone knowledgable in his field would do a MUCH better job, but what I'm doing seems to be working. His education amazes me. He's growing into the person he chose to become, and since he is doing what he wants, he is willing to work hard. I'm hoping to do something similar with my youngest. Count yourself lucky that your daughter has interests and IS somebody, even if this is something that changes. She'll still learn lots of good things, even if she decides she wants to do something different later on. It is the ones who have no idea what they want to do that are difficult to deal with, I think.

-Nan

[Jean in Wisc]

Some of our children are college bound, and they will have to take a certain set of classes no matter what their majors, but our high school classes may be the engineer's last literature study, and the carpenter's last math class, and the drama major's last real science class.

 

If we are going to send our children out into the world, it seems to me we need to give them a basic body of knowledge. 35 years ago, I would never in all my dreams have guessed that I was going to wish I had had more PHYSICS--but I do. I've fallen in love with astronomy, and when the guys talk about things in our club I wish so much that I could follow the conversation better!!!!

 

We need basic knowledge about our world--its history. We need to make wise decision for our nation while voting and when discussing politics--we need to study American history and government. Geography gaffs are so numerous--lets give the kids a basic knowledge of that, too....and economics?

 

I've not even touched on writing skills, vocabulary, learning how to THINK and reason...and passing on our faith.

 

So, in my home there is a core of subjects that are required (and some of this depends on the child's abilities since the one who can't get the math may never take a math-based physics). If the child wants to take classes outside of that, wonderful! But it gets added to the schedule.

 

I don't have problems with cutting the basic classes down to basics in order to make time for other classes--but I think there is a core of knowledge that we should expect any high school graduate to have. That doesn't get skipped.

 

FWIW and all...

J

[FloridaLisa]

First, how much decision making do you allow your high schoolers?

 

Some. :001_smile: Actually, I probably make 4/5 (or more?) of the curriculum and school decisions, but mostly because they aren't researching curriculum choices, they trust my guidance counseling and their core classes are pretty standard. Now, I absolutely like input on whether we should join a co-op or take a class on-line or through a local tutor or whatnot. And they have lots of say over electives, though we work together for the most part.

 

If your dd is expressing interest in public health, I would help her research and find classes, internships, volunteer work that could help her 1) determine whether she actually *does* enjoy the field and 2) prepare for the work. Why not pursue sociology, pyschology and comparative religion as science and elective courses? That's the beauty of homeschooling. In fact, even TWTM encourages specialization in the rhetoric years if the student knows the area s/he wants to pursue.

 

HTH,

Lisa

[JennifersLost]

This subject is near and dear to my heart because I'm figuring it out with my own child. I am trying to let him be in control of a lot of it. Then I occasionally freak out and go all "WTM" on his butt for a few days. Then I get over it and back off again, LOL.

 

So for next year (10th grade) we compromised on a math course. He's going to do a traditional lab science. We're going to continue on our 4-year history cycle, but we're going to go back to doing it together; he didn't like it at all when it became his to do on his own.

 

I am not assigning any papers, quizzes, etc. Instead I am going to assign a certain number of projects - like maybe 5 for history. He likes to write both fiction and keeps a blog and after seeing some of his recent writing I decided it's good enough for adult life.

 

I tried pushing him to prep for the SAT, but he was resisting it. He knows he's going to take it someday and I'm going to wait for him to decide to prep for it. I didn't "prep" until 11th grade and I nearly aced the thing.

 

Latin we do together; mostly translating. We also do the thing where you write out each declension, conjugation, etc., about 200 times. When we translate we go over why words are in certain cases, etc. We study vocab together. That's it.

 

I think what will happen next year is that we'll spend 1 - 2 hours a day doing things together and then he'll control the rest of the day. The worst case scenario for my son is that if we entirely "blow" the transcript he can go to community college for a semester or a year (the only requirement is that he be 18) and then he can transfer somewhere. When he's been in public school he's gotten straight A's so I know he'll be fine.

 

Here's what I've come to understand this year. I've always been attracted to the idea of unschooling but couldn't relax enough to do it. Every time we started I ended up going back to the WTM. What I finally figured out is that if I'd been allowed to unschool myself in high school - I would have come up with a program EXACTLY LIKE WTM!!!!!!

 

But that's my dream. That doesn't have to be my kids' dream. So I'm letting go. And it's okay. My one ds who is currently homeschooling loves reading with me - anything, including history and the classics. All of them love that. So I'm going to keep doing it because we like it, not because we have to.

 

If you have a child with a passion, let him at it. It's okay. His transcript won't be like everyone else's - it will be BETTER! The schools will love him. If I were you I'd start looking for sites/books where people tell how they used their unconventional homeschooling experiences to get into schools.

[Gwen in VA]

We allow our kids a fair amount of choice.

 

In 9th and 10th grade, the choices mostly entail HOW a subject is studied. Do they take an online class? If so, which one? (I'll give two or three options.) Do they do it at home with me? If so, which curriculum? (I show them various options.) If I feel that for that subject there is only one option, I explain why that is the only option. I limit the choices, but I do give them choices.

 

By 11th grade, the kids are growing up and have their own sense of where they are going. The courses they take reflect that --

 

1) Dd took APUSH her junior year because she was planning on going into history. Ds took AP Economics and AP US Govt instead of history his junior year because he was planning on going into economics and public policy. Would I have preferred that ds take history? Yes -- but he was VERY persuasive!

 

2) Dd took AP US Govt her senior year in addition to history -- but she took NO science. (Dh and I are engineers and we did not like that!) But again, she was pretty persuasive! And not having taken a science her senior year didn't hurt her -- she received a scholarship for being the top freshman chemistry student this year! :001_smile:

 

I have always stressed that one of the big benefits of homeschooling is FLEXIBILITY. Flexibility not only in terms of time, but also in terms of academics.

 

I would never ever advocate substituting basketweaving 101 for history, or home economics for chemistry, but if the subjects your dd is interested in taking are serious subjects that can enrich her education, I would say to let her go for it.

 

Would you consider requiring her to do history for her freshman and sophomore years so she has a good foundation, and then letting her explore her own interests, which still sound pretty academic? Or you could require her to do history but try to minimize it so she can do the subjects she is passionate about -- keep history to one hour a day. (History a la WTM can end up taking hours and hours -- I know!)

[Robin in DFW]

nt

[Cedarmom]

You could also use some of her interests and fold them into what you have in your history/literature program. For world religions she could study the religions that are in the particular time period, how religions influence history. When reading great books she could study how religion influenced the books,what world view it is, why people may have made different choice than they do now. Her writing could be on subjects that interest her and how they relate to history and the literature she is reading. Maybe her interests could influence some of your great book choices, using books that could lead to discussions she would be passionate about.

 

Cedarmom