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Do you do your own thing or follow someone else's plan?


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The older my kids get the less they fit in tidy average boxes.  In my whopping two years of high school experience (rounded) from nearly finishing 10th grade with DS and 9th grade with DD, we highly prefer piecing our own stuff together.

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Our first year of homeschooling (grades 1 and 2), I managed a whopping 3 weeks of following Sonlight. At that point the manuals went out the window, and from then on for the next 12 years, it was all "do it yourself". ;)

 

My "excuse" ;): I am a chronic tweaker, and DS#2 has mild LDs, and the combo just made it impossible to follow (or want to follow  :tongue_smilie:  ) someone else's plan...

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I have never, ever in  my 20 years of homeschooling been able to follow someone else's plan.  I have often wished I could!  Life would be so much simpler, but no we design a mix of outside classes and our own thing to come up with the proper amount of credits.

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There is literally nothing in my life that follows anyone's plan.  I've never been a follower.  Homeschooling is no different.  Even when we bought curricula to use, we adjusted it to fit our needs - usually using the curricula as a spine or basic reading, then going deeper as my guys (or I) wanted.

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Just wondering if in highschool most of you use a pre planned pre packaged material such as Sonlight, MFW, HOD, and/ or TOG or if you piece together your own plan? We've done mostly our own thing, but looking longingly at HOD. ☺ï¸

 

I think we all follow our own plans, which may include Sonlight or TOG or MFW, or it may include a variety of resources such as a Beautiful Feet Books study guide plus something else for science plus something else for English skills, and so on. We all have something in our minds (and maybe also our hearts), and we research and ponder and compare, and then choose that which most closely fits our plans.

 

If you are looking longingly at HOD, why are you waiting?

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We use lots of things that are pre-packaged, but not one "box". We use whatever fits best in each subject. Some of that has been cobbled together by me, sometimes it is an outside class and sometimes it is a prepackaged curriculum. Each subject and each child has been different here.

 

Ds rarely fits in a box. He didn't learn well in ps (his grades were good, but it was a bad fit). He was the exception that drove teachers crazy and is the reason we started homeschooling in the first place. Dd thrives on boxes. She excelled in ps too. She is the child that most curriculum is written for. I had to force myself to accept that doing something different wasn't best for her and give into boxes.  :ack2:

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If you are looking longingly at HOD, why are you waiting?

For a few reasons actually, first it's a big hunk of money. Second, I already have quite a bit of curricula I love, I just have to put it together into a daily plan.

I love the looks of HOD- the notebooking pages, daily assignments already written out for me, etc..but not sure I am ready to give up the freedom that comes with that. I have always planned and did our own thing- just having a grass is greener on the other side moment as the catalogs pour in. So I thought I would ask if when in high school you still planned yourself or if you let someone else do that for you.

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I've never used curriculum for an entire grade level all from one publisher. The main thing I used to plan out dd's high school credits were our state requirements and requirements to enter colleges she could have wanted to attend. I did use a lot of regular curriculum because I wanted tests, grades, and good descriptions and lists of books used if I needed them for college admissions. 

 

I didn't want most of her grades to be my opinion. I wanted hard-fast, objective grades which would back up what I put on the transcript. 

 

I also let her give quite a bit of input on the curricula choices. I would do the research and present options for her to consider. 

 

 

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For a few reasons actually, first it's a big hunk of money. Second, I already have quite a bit of curricula I love, I just have to put it together into a daily plan.

I love the looks of HOD- the notebooking pages, daily assignments already written out for me, etc..but not sure I am ready to give up the freedom that comes with that. I have always planned and did our own thing- just having a grass is greener on the other side moment as the catalogs pour in. So I thought I would ask if when in high school you still planned yourself or if you let someone else do that for you.

 

If I were using something like HOD (which I wouldn't), I wouldn't think of it as a choice between my planning and someone else planning.

 

The reason I wouldn't do HOD is that there is no flexibility, besides which it feels like classroom-based-school-at-home. I wouldn't like it for any age, for that matter. I also wouldn't buy a box of books from a single publisher or single source that looked Just Like School (all ABeka, all BJUP, CLASS, et al). I could do KONOS; I could do Beautiful Feet Books.

 

If you already have a bunch of stuff you love, then that's what you should do. :-)

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… So I thought I would ask if when in high school you still planned yourself or if you let someone else do that for you.

 

Like mom31257, the main planning we did for high school was planning of credits by looking at required credits for state high school graduation and college admission, and doing a loose blend to make sure we covered the *kinds* of credits needed for any post-high school options. *How* we accomplished those credits varied, depending on each student.

 

For us, that looked like:

- some home-grown courses

- some textbooks

- some DVD programs

- a live-streaming online course

- some outside-the-home activities that counted towards credit

- some dual enrollment

 

And if they had been a bit more widely available at the time DSs were going through high school, we also probably would have done a few online courses, too.

 

JMO, but even more at the high school level than at the elementary or middle school level, there is NO all-in-one box curriculum such that ALL of the subjects are going to be the best match for the student. If anything, now with so very MANY options to choose from, high school really IS the time to "mix 'n' match" so that, each year, each subject will absolutely be the best fit for the individual student's needs and interests. :)

 

 

You may find it works best for your family to outsource a few courses each year to reduce the planning / grading / teaching load on you. Lots of options there:

- a single class at the local public/private/charter high school

- homeschool co-op

- tutor (live or via Skype)

- online class or tutorials

- MOOC (mass open online course), live streaming course, podcast, etc.

- dual enrollment at the local community college or university

 

Some people either can't or don't want to do the administrative aspects of high school planning, and if you find that is your situation, you might want to look into an umbrella or cover school or accredited organization such as Kolbe, America Correspondence School, Clonara, Keystone, etc.

 

Happy high school planning! :) Warmest regards, Lori D.

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An exception for this thread, but I've outsourced history, lit, and foreign languages for high school.

 

Those areas aren't areas of strength for me, and I have arrangements in place that have made it affordable for us.  Mine like those subjects done in a class too.

 

I'm fine handing the rest by either using someone else's lesson plans or coming up with my own.

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I actually found myself moving the opposite direction the older they got.  We started with boxed curriculum, and their needs as they progressed no longer fit any boxed curriculum.  Plus, we have outsourced many things as they progressed beyond my ability (or desire) to teach.  

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Also, in my head, TOG, HOD, Sonlight, and the others are not in the category of following someone else's plan. That category consists exclusively of enrolling the dc in something like ABeka Academy, or BJUP's Academy of Home Education, or Laurel Springs, or CLASS--any place where I sign up the children and we get a box of books of the school's choice, which must be completed on the school's timeline, in the manner that the school wants.

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