Caraway Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 I’m brainstorming some elective ideas and wondered... What class has been your most successful or most creative self designed course? What have you loved? What was the most fun? The most off the beaten path? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 That is a hard one. We have done a lot of interesting courses over the yrs. Hmmmmm.....I think my favorite is probably an English credit designed around the movie Inception. I did it with 2 of my kids at the same time and we had a lot of fun with it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garga Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 (edited) I loved the Astronomy elective and Egyptology elective best. I created those from scratch and so they were the most fun for me to create, and my son had a good time with those classes, too. If I had kids who enjoyed reading, I could have gone far with English classes, as that’s my particular strength, but oh well! And my oldest did so-so in the photography class I created for him, but I think my younger would have taken off with it. (I won’t be homeschooling the younger for high school, so he won’t be doing that class, unless we just have fun with photography on the side together as a hobby, which may very well happen.) ETA: and I’m glad that I had him do a ton of labs in Biology (a class I was in charge of) and that I found a class with a lot of labs for Chemistry (a class I outsourced). Labs feel a bit like arts and crafts to me and I don’t like them for myself, but I felt they were really valuable to my student and he loved getting a lot of hands on in science, so I’m glad we didn’t skimp on labs. Edited April 9, 2019 by Garga 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 (edited) With my own DSs in our homeschool: Worldviews in Classic Sci-Fi Favorite high school class of DSs -- it was the lit. portion of an English credit we created ourselves, plus discussing the philosophies and worldviews behind the works we read. Fine Arts: Film Production Quite honestly, DS#1 came up with the idea and ran with it. I just provided some overall structure and a few resources. I had him read through a software guide on the editing program he used, plus a short book on how to make films for teens. And for output, he did 6 complete short films with titles and credits, each adding new techniques and trying out new ideas, and put them all on a DVD with clickable links. I also had him write 3 short papers on his experiences: one about pre-production, one about production, and one about post-production.With my homeschool co-op classes: Film in Focus An intro to film analysis class. We showed and discussed a movie every week, and I also worked in a little early film history, plus taught the students how cinematic elements (lighting, framing, editing, camera angle, motion, color, sound, etc.) help a film maker express themes and "big ideas". Journey Through Middle Earth A 1.0 credit English course I created -- a year-long in-depth study of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus 4 Medieval works and a Tolkien short story and a bit of poetry. (I also taught the composition aspect of the English credit as well.) [I also put together a super-fun hands-on science one year for the homeschool co-op, but it was for grades 1-3 and another section for grades 4-6, so no help for your high school brainstorming, lol. (:D ] Edited April 9, 2019 by Lori D. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caraway Posted April 9, 2019 Author Share Posted April 9, 2019 2 hours ago, Lori D. said: Journey Through Middle Earth A 1.0 credit English course I created -- a year-long in-depth study of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus 4 Medieval works and a Tolkien short story and a bit of poetry. (I also taught the composition aspect of the English credit as well.) Oh my goodness, my son would love this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Caraway said: Oh my goodness, my son would love this. Well, there is the year-long Literary Lessons from The Lord of the Rings. (See sample lessons and program scope.) We did that in our homeschooling years and enjoyed it immensely. It's a very gentle introduction to studying literature more deeply, with the meat of the program being the chapter notes and discussion questions at the end of each of the chapter notes, but especially the 12 units on related topics. LLftLotR is esp. good for grades 7-9, and for students who have not done much formal analysis or lit. study previously. [Side note: check out this past thread for some fabulous extension resources, links, books, etc.: "Any serious Tolkien fans..." to any study of Tolkien or Lord of the Rings.] Years later, when I went to teach this class, I thought I would use LLftLotR and adapt it slightly, but it ended up not being as meaty as I wanted for my class, so I ended up creating my own program from scratch. (:D Edited April 9, 2019 by Lori D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.... Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 Paleobiology w/ Lab History of Warfare Computer Design P.E. - NOT unique and it sounds silly, but my kids have a blast when we do PE. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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