High school “in a box”

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

I have never been a fan of “in a box” curriculum. We’ve always been fairly eclectic and somewhat somewhat relaxed in the way we homeschool. I like having a lot of flexibility. I have gradually transitioned to a somewhat more traditional approach for high school but DD14 dislikes school and I’m needing to spend quite a bit of time getting her through her work. Unfortunately, “life” has gotten in the way and I have simply been unable mentally and emotionally to help her keep up with things. She is now several months behind. This is quite distressing to both of us. She is overwhelmed by all of it and I’m upset that I haven’t been able to help her as I would like too.

My DH and I are working together to hopefully get her through the rest of what I’d planned for this year (although we will need to work through the summer most likely) but I’m looking into different options for next year. My DH did Abeka video school as a kid. While I’m really not thrilled with that idea, there is the appeal of someone else teaching, everything coming from one place, and a schedule for each day clearly laid out. I feel like something like that would take more of the burden off of me and allow her to be more independent. The biggest drawback I see is that we’ve been so much more laid back in our approach over the years that I think the adjustment of Abeka might be too overwhelming for her. I am considering it though.  

Are there other options? Something written to the student, the year fully planned with a schedule for her to follow, possibly video instruction, minimal parental involvement? We do not have a huge budget but it’s not non-existent either. This DD loves art, music, and crafting, and dislikes school so I’m not looking for rigorous, just adequate. Like I said, I really dislike the idea of not being more involved but I need something easy for a season while I figure other things out in my life. 

[Lori D.]

I'd first figure out *why* DD fell behind. And what about each program that you are using is *working* and also *not* working. Also, is it more about weak executive functioning (planning/scheduling herself, staying focused, breaking larger tasks into manageable bites, etc.)?  Examples: Needs a weekly schedule and a morning meeting 2x/week to keep on track? Doesn't do well with workbooks? Too much on the page and it's overwhelming so she shuts down? A weak writer? Struggles with math and needs more one-on-one tutoring?

The answers to those questions may better help us help you find what will best help DD. Warmest regards, Lori D.

[RootAnn]

I habe a couple of acquaintances who use the video Abeka courses & there is patent grading needed for the ones they do (not directly enrolled through the academy). It is burning out both the high school kid & the mom that are new homeschoolers. The veteran hser who uses it is on autopilot but I can tell she doesn't like it much either. (It is easier for her to just dedicate an hour or so to grading every night than prep lessons & teach them.)

Sonlight, Heart of Dakota, My Father's Woeld, Memoria Press, BJU, Veritas Press,... Easy Peasy High School, Timberdoodle?. All have in-a-box type options to an extent. I don't know that they are what you are looking for, but hopefully Lori D's questions will help you figure that out.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

We’ve been doing Notgrass History, Apologia, and WWS. All have schedules but she has a hard time juggling between them. She’s been behind in math (SM Dimensions) for a while. She is a weak writer also. I’m mostly convinced that her struggles in school are are due to lack of interest. She skims when she reads so she can get done faster (she reads extremely quickly), she refuses to study, thinking she should remember everything after skimming through once, and rushes writing. She consistently finishes nearly every subject in much less time then the authors say to plan for - by as much as half. She told me yesterday that she can get a lesson of WWS done in 10-15 minutes. Explains why it’s not done well, I think. 

Executive functioning is an issue. She gets overwhelmed with the amount of work. She also has unrealistic expectations for how long her work should take. She expects to be done by lunch but not start til 9 or 10. She initially fell behind because she wanted to schedule her own time without my help. I showed her what I had planned, gave her some tips and then let her try it. I checked in several times a week and went over things with her. She got a little behind but not terribly. Then, just after Thanksgiving, I experienced a personal crisis that has had a huge effect on me mentally. I haven’t been able to check in with her and she let a lot of things slide. She was only doing one or two subjects a day and spreading lessons over two or more days. She said she didn’t want to do it so she just didn’t. She doesn’t know details of what I’m going through but it has caused stress for the whole family and I know that’s effecting her as well.

My Dh thinks something more traditional like Abeka or BJU would be better for her. She is a lot like him and he said the structure made it easy for him to know exactly what was expected and what to do each day. He was doing Notgrass with her today and kept commenting on how different it was from the textbooks he used growing up. It was a lot harder to find the important facts for the tests. They weren’t in bold print or highlighted in anyway. He said what he did was “just the facts”. (I was homeschooled in a non-traditional way so am not at all familiar with things like Abeka or BJU.) One benefit to going with something more traditional school-at-home would be that it would be familiar to DH and he would be able mostly oversee DD. I don’t really care for either of those programs from an ideological or world view perspective but hopefully the need to go that route will be temporary and I’ll be able to take a more active role again. Just hoping for other options that might work.  

[Peaceseeker]

Sounds like she really needs accountability.  If you do Abeka or BJU dvds, who will make sure she is actually doing those lessons either?  Is someone going to grade the work nightly to see what she accomplishes?  Because it seems like you would just end up with the same problem if not more of a problem, because I think both programs are output heavy.

Do you have internet access?  Possibly something like Switched on Schoolhouse might work for a season?   I think the grading is done for you and you can log in to see what she has actually done each day. Not too expensive ($40 a month for high school I think?)  Not nearly as rigorous as Abeka or BJU but it doesn't sound like more rigor is what you need right now.  Or perhaps online public school or even consider sending her to a brick and mortar school for a trial run? She might work harder for someone else.

 

[MamaSprout]

On 2/21/2019 at 10:54 PM, 2ndGenHomeschooler said:

We’ve been doing Notgrass History, Apologia, and WWS. All have schedules but she has a hard time juggling between them. She’s been behind in math (SM Dimensions) for a while. She is a weak writer also. I’m mostly convinced that her struggles in school are are due to lack of interest. She skims when she reads so she can get done faster (she reads extremely quickly), she refuses to study, thinking she should remember everything after skimming through once, and rushes writing. She consistently finishes nearly every subject in much less time then the authors say to plan for - by as much as half. She told me yesterday that she can get a lesson of WWS done in 10-15 minutes. Explains why it’s not done well, I think. 

 

We have had this problem at my house. For us I added in grading software (homeschool manager in our case- I tried out 4-5 different ones).

Having the online planner reminded me to actually enter a grade. It did two things. First I had to actually go over things she had completed well enough to enter a grade (even if it was just 5 points for reading something), and I realized pretty quickly I needed to streamline her schedule and review some things. Second, she quickly learned that I was going over things and the quality of her work went up. We're doing less, but doing it better.

It was a rough couple weeks in the transition. I think we're past the "skim and check off" stuff now, but when the dust settled, I think our school year will be three-four weeks longer than I planned just to make sure everything I want her to learn is mastered.

ETA- if your DH will be working with her, maybe something like Time4Learning or the Switched On School house might work. Or have them pick an online planner that works for them.

Edited February 24, 2019 by MamaSprout

[almondbutterandjelly]

If dh is willing to work with her (and that sounds like what she needs), then you should go with what dh wants to do, Abeka or BJU.  They are solid.  They can be modified to not be soul-crushing.  I agree about the tests.  We are using BJU US History this year, and while it has some opinions I don't care for, it is good prep for college to be able to use a textbook and learn to study from a textbook.

[Another Lynn]

If you do end up choosing a provider / box that's more intense than what she's used to, maybe you could cut back on the number of subjects for a year.  Only do 5, or even 4.  Jmho.  

[Mom0012]

What about taking some local coop classes?  Both of my kids thrive with an outside teacher and for my son, especially, he would get the work done for a class with a *real* teacher in a way he never would have been motivated for me.  I just had to tackle him once a day for math. 🙂

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

56 minutes ago, Mom0012 said:

What about taking some local coop classes?  Both of my kids thrive with an outside teacher and for my son, especially, he would get the work done for a class with a *real* teacher in a way he never would have been motivated for me.  I just had to tackle him once a day for math.

The closest high school co-op to us is over an hour away. All the local ones are more enrichment for little kids. Except CC which I can’t see us ever doing.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

I had forgotten about Time4Learning and SOS. I’ll check those out too. I think Sonlight and Veritas would be too much. A couple of friends use MFW (at my suggestion actually LOL). Maybe I can look at theirs. It’s true that if DH is going to be helping her, then we should pick something he’s comfortable with. I just need to make sure he realizes how much time it will involve and that he’s fully committed. I’ve always handled 99% of the homeschooling around here and I don’t think he knows how much work it is. 

One of my favorite parts of homeschooling has always been the researching and piecing together what I think will work best for each DC each year. I like sitting down with them and reading and discussing together. It takes a lot of time but I’ve enjoyed it. I’m having a hard time realizing that I just can’t do that right now. Hopefully this will just be a short season. 

[Lanny]

These are Secular but might possibly be of interest: American School and Penn Foster. There is a recent thread on WTM about Penn Foster.  As with any "Online" or "Distance Learning" program, they require (demand) "Time Management" skills from the students. Especially Asynchronous courses.  

[Farrar]

These days, I feel like the best way to have a clear schedule, deadlines, and hand off the teaching a bit for high school would be to set up yearlong online classes for all her core work. I don't know what the best individual class options would be for her, but doing one English, math, science, history, and foreign language class online would be five classes for the year. And then maybe you can pick up a lighter elective at home based on whatever comes up, focus on those executive functioning skills, and figure out what works for this kid.

[SoCal_Bear]

Just popping in to ask whether or not she is using a planner. I think this planner is designed so well to organize your subjects and time. For homeschoolers, the best one to use is the smaller version because the time section starts from 8 am versus the larger version starts with afternoon hours for traditional school students. There's a video at the bottom that explains how it works. It is available on amazon. 

https://products.orderoochaos.com/

Edited February 22, 2019 by calbear

[EKS]

How about Oak Meadow?

[City Mouse]

I have an 11th grader who has never been willing do do his school work without close supervision. It makes no difference what curriculum is used. If he knows that I am distracted for whatever reason. He will not do his work. If he was left to school independently, he wouldn't do an thing or he would do just enough to make me think he was working. I will spare you the details, but we just spent 6 hours last saturday going back over 1/2 a semester worth of science assignments because he figured out how to "trick" the auto grading on his science course.

the point of this is to say that there many not be any curriculum that will motivate your DD. She may need the external motivation of an adult watching her work and consequences for not doing the work properly.

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by City Mouse

[klmama]

OP, just sharing my opinion for if you do decide to choose between Abeka and BJU so that your dh can oversee things. Whether or not you appreciate the viewpoints offered, BJU's history is much more interesting and well-written than Abeka's. BJU's math and science are good, but much more complicated/challenging and require a lot more from both the instructor and the student.  That may not be as much of a concern if you are using the video school approach.

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by klmama

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

Thank you for all the tips. I found out that DH really doesn’t plan to help much at all with school so I’m back to trying to figure out how to juggle it all myself. I really don’t want to do B&M School but am going to keep that as an option in the back of mind in case nothing else looks promising. 

I’m wondering now if the better option might be to streamline my younger three so that I have more time to spend with DD14. My younger three don’t dislike school and are much more cooperative about getting their work done. DD13 especially gets her work done with very little help or prompting from me. If I can cut back on teacher intensive stuff for them maybe I’ll be able to manage helping DD14 get a good schedule going and help her stay on track. We’ve tried a planner before and it didn’t help but I should try again. 

[fourisenough]

I think B&M school might be a good fit for this child; some kids really need the accountability and daily deadlines of a classroom setting. If you have a good public or private school, I would definitely consider it. Sending her to school might make it easier to just be her mom and focus your homeschool energy on your other kids. Spoken as one who has had kids do public school very successfully for high school and is currently homeschooling one in 9th. Different kids, different circumstances, different choices.

[fourisenough]

Duplicate post

Edited February 24, 2019 by fourisenough
Duplicate post

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I think most kids either need A. an enjoyable and involved homeschooling parent /student relationship or B. Accountability, access to outside classes (some online and some in person) or C. start taking DE at community college.

The fact is, nobody wants to be alone with their quiet textbooks in the bedroom, teaching themselves 6 subjects per day.  There are very very few students who would thrive in that situation (and I'd argue it may seem they are thriving but problems will show up later as a result of either lack of oversight and poor academics and/or social/emotional issues from the loneliness of that path.)

So, my idea for you is to look at your local co-op and sign her up for as many classes there as you can afford, and then use something like Monarch/SOS for a few subjects (one or two tops, it's very boring!) This method would work as long as your dd understands that many students in co-ops are low achievers and parents do not enforce earning good grades,etc.  She has to stand on her own two feet and have good work ethic, and enjoy positive interaction with the teacher and the few students who show up with their work done.  (and without judging and making enemies of the kids that don't do their work)....if she can handle that maturity-wise, then I really think a co-op might be the best option for this situation.  

I have nothing against brick and mortar schools but in this situation with a child who has never been to school, my first choice would be a small private school, not a large public one.  Also, does she have any  interests or hobbies that would help her make friends?  Girls can be pretty brutal on newcomers but if she joins band, or does gymnastics or cheerleading, etc. it can help her make the transition socially.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

49 minutes ago, Calming Tea said:

I think most kids either need A. an enjoyable and involved homeschooling parent /student relationship or B. Accountability, access to outside classes (some online and some in person) or C. start taking DE at community college.

The fact is, nobody wants to be alone with their quiet textbooks in the bedroom, teaching themselves 6 subjects per day.  There are very very few students who would thrive in that situation (and I'd argue it may seem they are thriving but problems will show up later as a result of either lack of oversight and poor academics and/or social/emotional issues from the loneliness of that path.)

So, my idea for you is to look at your local co-op and sign her up for as many classes there as you can afford, and then use something like Monarch/SOS for a few subjects (one or two tops, it's very boring!) This method would work as long as your dd understands that many students in co-ops are low achievers and parents do not enforce earning good grades,etc.  She has to stand on her own two feet and have good work ethic, and enjoy positive interaction with the teacher and the few students who show up with their work done.  (and without judging and making enemies of the kids that don't do their work)....if she can handle that maturity-wise, then I really think a co-op might be the best option for this situation.  

I have nothing against brick and mortar schools but in this situation with a child who has never been to school, my first choice would be a small private school, not a large public one.  Also, does she have any  interests or hobbies that would help her make friends?  Girls can be pretty brutal on newcomers but if she joins band, or does gymnastics or cheerleading, etc. it can help her make the transition socially.

I definitely agree with this. My plan was never to send her to do her work alone. It’s just what ended up happening over the past couple of months. I can barely keep up with the younger ones at this point. I think I need to cut back, simplify, and rotate between the kids better. I’m planning for next year to be mostly the same but I’m hoping that things will be better by then. I really need to convince DH to take over a couple of subjects. Maybe look into an online class or two. 

We live rurally so our options are limited. No co-ops for high schoolers within an hour drive, no acceptable private schools (they’re all either $30,000/yr prep schools or VERY religious with multiple objectionable viewpoints). Our town doesn’t even have a public high school so if we went with that option she’d need to go to a neighboring town. I think even DE would be a 45 minute drive.  

[...................]

Wow that is a tricky situation!

What's the public high school in the neighboring town like?  What is your dd like? Is she socially well adjusted and tends to make acquaintences and friends fairly easily?

Thinking outside the box here- how about your 12 year old?  is that another girl?  Is he or she smart/above average?  Perhaps it would make more sense to pair them up together, and plan to graduate them only one year apart, instead of two?  ...

EDITED: I see that she's now 13 and she's your good worker...so if she is also bright, what about combining her and your 14 year old in every subject except math?  This may motivate your older dd to at least not be lonely and bored.   And, you could surely save a lot of time while hopefully making it enjoyable.  Are they good friends and would be mostly kidn to one another?

How about friends that you have from church or homeschool groups?  Is there one who has a dd similar in age?  Could you do a mini co-op?  

Where are you plugged in for support for your homeschooling?

Edited February 25, 2019 by Calming Tea

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

5 minutes ago, Calming Tea said:

Wow that is a tricky situation!

What's the public high school in the neighboring town like?  What is your dd like? Is she socially well adjusted and tends to make quintessences and friends fairly easily?

Thinking outside the box here- how about your 12 year old?  is that another girl?  Is he or she smart/above average?  Perhaps it would make more sense to pair them up together, and plan to graduate them only one year apart, instead of two?  ...

How about friends that you have from church or homeschool groups?  Is there one who has a dd similar in age?  Could you do a mini co-op?  

Where are you plugged in for support for your homeschooling?

I think we have our choice of several neighboring towns for high school. I don’t really know how they are. B&M school has never been on my radar so I haven’t paid attention. Honestly, the whole idea is overwhelming to me. I didn’t go to public school. I went to a small private school for K and 1st and then was homeschooled so I’m not at all familiar with the traditional school “system”. DD14 has decided that her defining characteristic should be “anti social”. It’s not actually true but she is more on the quiet side. She went to camp this summer and was completely fine but I do wonder how she’d do in school. 

I do have DD12 and DD14 together for writing and grammar. DD12 is ahead of DD14 though because she likes those subjects. I could probably get by with combining them for history too. DD12 is behind in math though so I couldn’t combine math or science. 

Our homeschool friends are mostly church families. We all live far apart though (45 minutes again) so mostly see each other at church. I do teach some of the kids piano lessons so they’re at my house a couple hours a week. That mom mentioned that maybe she could do some group things with all our kids while I teach piano. Maybe I should try to coordinate with her and take her up in the offer. We also do homeschool karate but, again, we live a ways from those families. She does have an ASL class with some other homeschooled girls so our world language is covered. That one is super easy. She’s picked up and dropped off every week so that class is completely off my plate. 

[...................]

21 hours ago, 2ndGenHomeschooler said:

I think we have our choice of several neighboring towns for high school. I don’t really know how they are. B&M school has never been on my radar so I haven’t paid attention. Honestly, the whole idea is overwhelming to me. I didn’t go to public school. I went to a small private school for K and 1st and then was homeschooled so I’m not at all familiar with the traditional school “system”. DD14 has decided that her defining characteristic should be “anti social”. It’s not actually true but she is more on the quiet side. She went to camp this summer and was completely fine but I do wonder how she’d do in school. 

I do have DD12 and DD14 together for writing and grammar. DD12 is ahead of DD14 though because she likes those subjects. I could probably get by with combining them for history too. DD12 is behind in math though so I couldn’t combine math or science. 

Our homeschool friends are mostly church families. We all live far apart though (45 minutes again) so mostly see each other at church. I do teach some of the kids piano lessons so they’re at my house a couple hours a week. That mom mentioned that maybe she could do some group things with all our kids while I teach piano. Maybe I should try to coordinate with her and take her up in the offer. We also do homeschool karate but, again, we live a ways from those families. She does have an ASL class with some other homeschooled girls so our world language is covered. That one is super easy. She’s picked up and dropped off every week so that class is completely off my plate. 

 

Could you request a shadow day for her at your zoned school?  That might go a long way in this decision process.  

I don't know anything about living that rurally, and homeschooling.  I lived in a quite rural area for a while and the school was really the center of our social lives, not only for elementary students but for high schoolers.   

It does sound like you need to branch out more generally speaking with more social and emotional and even physical support for your family.

Edited February 26, 2019 by Calming Tea