Creating credits out of morning time/tea time activities

[EKT]

We don't do "morning time" per se, but for years now, we've opened our school day with poetry. Our process: I make photocopies of the day's poem. I read it aloud while the girls read along. Then, they annotate the poem, observing/commenting/responding to it in the margins. They highlight favorite lines, we discuss it using a literary vocabulary (identifying literary devices, commenting on the structure, tone, etc. etc.). Some days we might simply read and discuss, but most days the girls are definitely responding in writing for at least a few minutes. It's casual, but it's good, academic work with poetry. When I tally that up, it works out to about one hour, 15 minutes per week. Over the course of an average school year: 1.25 hours per week x 36 weeks = 45 hours. 45 hours a year x 4 years of high school = 180 hours. If we continue this practice through all four years of high school, can I legitimately call this a 1.0 credit language arts elective? Or would you just consider this practice a part of language arts? (We write original poetry, too, but for us, that's more intermittent and I feel it falls under the umbrella of our main language arts/writing work. And we definitely do more than enough language arts to earn the necessary credits without including our morning poetry sessions.) We would be able to cover many poetry collections and anthologies over the course of four years. (I would obviously keep track of the resources we cover and note them in the course description.) If you did call this its own course, would you title it "Poetry?" "Poetry Appreciation?" Something else?  

Likewise, we do formal nature journaling for 1-2 hours most Fridays. (It's our favorite part of the week!) Can I tally this up over four years' time also? We put in enough hours that we easily could get 1.0 credit out of it over four years. We use well-known guidebooks as our spine, and we do legitimate scientific observation during each outdoor session, noting the day, time, location, season, weather, etc. We observe natural objects in scientific detail and we list their common names and often look up their scientific Latin names afterward, etc. But it's also obviously an artistic exercise, as we use a variety of artistic media (watercolor, brush pen, colored pencil, etc.), and pay attention to things like color mixing and composition. Would you label this a natural science elective, or a fine arts elective? What would you title the class? Just "Nature Journaling"? Thanks!

I'd love feedback. I think I'm mostly looking for confirmation that this is the correct way to tally high school credit done over a span of time and not, like, "credit grubbing." (If I'm misunderstanding, I'd appreciate correction.) And if anyone else has given credit for morning time-type activities, I'd love to hear about what you did and how you tallied it. Thank you!

 

 

 

[BusyMom5]

Will you need this credit?  If not, make it part of your English class and put it your course description.   If you need an additional credit,  you could count it.  I didn't end up needing extra credits, so left off lots of random things like this.  

[EKT]

5 minutes ago, BusyMom5 said:

Will you need this credit?  If not, make it part of your English class and put it your course description.   If you need an additional credit,  you could count it.  I didn't end up needing extra credits, so left off lots of random things like this.  

No, I don't suspect she'll need the credits, numbers-wise. Poetry and nature journaling are just huge areas of interest for us and I guess I'd want to highlight that, if possible? (I'm a former high school English teacher, and my experience is that poetry is barely taught in American public schools. I guess my goal in separating this as its own class is to highlight poetry as a special area of interest, and show the breadth and depth with which we've studied it.) 

I guess a related question would be: Wouldn't my daughter want to show as many credits on a transcript as possible? (I'm genuinely asking! I'm so new to high school...) Thanks! 

[lewelma]

11 minutes ago, EKT said:

We don't do "morning time" per se, but for years now, we've opened our school day with poetry. Our process: I make photocopies of the day's poem. I read it aloud while the girls read along. Then, they annotate the poem, observing/commenting/responding to it in the margins. They highlight favorite lines, we discuss it using a literary vocabulary (identifying literary devices, commenting on the structure, tone, etc. etc.). Some days we might simply read and discuss, but most days the girls are definitely responding in writing for at least a few minutes. It's casual, but it's good, academic work with poetry. When I tally that up, it works out to about one hour, 15 minutes per week. Over the course of an average school year: 1.25 hours per week x 36 weeks = 45 hours. 45 hours a year x 4 years of high school = 180 hours. If we continue this practice through all four years of high school, can I legitimately call this a 1.0 credit language arts elective? Or would you just consider this practice a part of language arts? (We write original poetry, too, but for us, that's more intermittent and I feel it falls under the umbrella of our main language arts/writing work. And we definitely do more than enough language arts to earn the necessary credits without including our morning poetry sessions.) We would be able to cover many poetry collections and anthologies over the course of four years. (I would obviously keep track of the resources we cover and note them in the course description.) If you did call this its own course, would you title it "Poetry?" "Poetry Appreciation?" Something else?  

Likewise, we do formal nature journaling for 1-2 hours most Fridays. (It's our favorite part of the week!) Can I tally this up over four years' time also? We put in enough hours that we easily could get 1.0 credit out of it over four years. We use well-known guidebooks as our spine, and we do legitimate scientific observation during each outdoor session, noting the day, time, location, season, weather, etc. We observe natural objects in scientific detail and we list their common names and often look up their scientific Latin names afterward, etc. But it's also obviously an artistic exercise, as we use a variety of artistic media (watercolor, brush pen, colored pencil, etc.), and pay attention to things like color mixing and composition. Would you label this a natural science elective, or a fine arts elective? What would you title the class? Just "Nature Journaling"? Thanks!

I'd love feedback. I think I'm mostly looking for confirmation that this is the correct way to tally high school credit done over a span of time and not, like, "credit grubbing." (If I'm misunderstanding, I'd appreciate correction.) And if anyone else has given credit for morning time-type activities, I'd love to hear about what you did and how you tallied it. Thank you!

I would count the poetry as a separate course. It sounds lovely and done consistently over 4 years would allow your kids to grow into more nuanced understanding. Plus, it includes a writing component. Personally, I would have them write 3 formal essays to round off the class. I would call it something like American and British Poetry. 

As for nature journaling, this is an fine arts elective in my eyes, not a science course. Once again, if you meet the Carnegie credit criterion and you feel it is a cohesive course with academic merit, then by all means count it. Learning does not have to happen in a 9 month period. And in fact, learning sticks the best if it is stretched out over many years and you keep reviewing what you have learned, and start to integrate your growing maturity into your learning. 

[EKT]

3 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I would count the poetry as a separate course. It sounds lovely and done consistently over 4 years would allow your kids to grow into more nuanced understanding. Plus, it includes a writing component. Personally, I would have them write 3 formal essays to round off the class. I would call it something like American and British Poetry. 

Oh, I love this idea! Yes, we could easily add in a few significant, formal papers to round it out. My daughters would love that anyway. Honestly, now that I'm writing and thinking about it, I could easily include the poetry we write in this class as well. (As I mentioned, I'm a former English teacher, so our homeschool is overwhelmingly language-arts based. We will have more than enough language arts credit to fulfill our basic courses. I could definitely siphon all our poetry work into this class without coming up short elsewhere....) Thanks for helping me think through this!

[lewelma]

Let me also assure you that this kind of learning is real.  My older boy unschooled all of his social studies and humanities courses, and I had to create credits based on my (luckily detailed) records in the months before he applied unexpectedly to American schools.  He has now been named both an Emerson scholar for music and a Burchard scholar for humanities/social sciences. The work he did in high school in a nontraditional way was real learning. I was not cheating the system to count it. Learning does not have to happen in a pre-planned systematic way, it can evolve during the learning itself.  The main thing you need to make sure you do is adapt to how the learning is developing. Find new more advanced resources when they need them, increase the depth of the discussion as they mature, add in unexpected elements like going to poetry readings or visiting art galleries with nature work, and include more academic requirements like essays or portfolios if you think this will develop their knowledge and skills. Be open to opportunities and new ideas. These studies sound lovely, and they will always remember them. You are an incredibly powerful teacher if you can influence the affective domain -- few of us can achieve that. 

[Junie]

Yes, I would count them. 

For the first, I would probably call it World Poetry.

For the second, I would consider it an art elective and call it Drawing.  Or you could add in some other art techniques -- photography, sculpture? -- and call it Mixed Media Art.

 

(Also, these classes sound lovely.)

[lewelma]

6 minutes ago, EKT said:

 our homeschool is overwhelmingly language-arts based. We will have more than enough language arts credit to fulfill our basic courses. 

My younger boy will have 8 social studies classes (I listed them in the previous thread). Don't short change your kids by lumping it all into English 9, 10, 11, 12.  My younger boy does 2.5 hours of geography each day 40 weeks per year.  This is way way more than 1 class. His studies evolve out of his interests, so they are incredibly varied.  We can get through a half credit in a 10 week term, ending with a 15 page research paper, which is why he has so many odd courses.  All these research papers are on different topics in geography, but why in the world would I want to lump them into Geography and Advanced Geography.  Open your mind to what you are actually doing and accomplishing if you are working way more than 180 hours per year.  Break the work up into separate courses to highlight the depth and breath of the topics/works  your kids will study in English. 

I'm listing these courses here again in case others haven't read the previous thread.  All of these courses were actually Geography, but I have decided to only name one "geography". 

Geography - with trade books (Guns, Germs, and Steel + Collapse, NZ Geographic, National Geographic) 

The Social, Economic, and Political Impact of Colonialism on Africa

Physical and Cultural Geography of the Mackinzie Basin, NZ

0.5 NZ Demographics (comparing the causes and consequences of European vs Māori demographics over 150 years)

0.5 The Causes and Consequences of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami - (the physics of waves, the immediate response, and the long term social and economic impact. This course also studied how International aid agencies work.)

0.5 The history of Early NZ 1800-1840 (Pre Treaty of Waitangi -- the founding document of NZ)

0.5 Māori worldview, values, and protocols. (This is what we are currently studying - also includes some history and language)

[EKT]

2 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Let me also assure you that this kind of learning is real.  My older boy unschooled all of his social studies and humanities courses, and I had to create credits based on my (luckily detailed) records in the months before he applied unexpectedly to American schools.  He has now been named both an Emerson scholar for music and a Burchard scholar for humanities/social sciences. The work he did in high school in a nontraditional way was real learning. I was not cheating the system to count it. Learning does not have to happen in a pre-planned systematic way, it can evolve during the learning itself.  The main thing you need to make sure you do is adapt to how the learning is developing. Find new more advanced resources when they need them, increase the depth of the discussion as they mature, add in unexpected elements like going to poetry readings or visiting art galleries with nature work, and include more academic requirements like essays or portfolios if you think this will develop their knowledge and skills. Be open to opportunities and new ideas. These studies sound lovely, and they will always remember them. You are an incredibly powerful teacher if you can influence the affective domain -- few of us can achieve that. 

Thank you for this. So much.

And yes, we would absolutely increase the rigor over time. They've submitted work to poetry competitions, and readings and galleries--we are very much into that sort of thing! (When it's not Covid times.) To clarify, in these daily sessions we're not reading like, Shel Silverstein--although we love him! (Well, okay, every now and then I throw in some Jack Prelutsky for fun and nostalgia from when they were tiny, lol.) But overall, we're reading American poets, British poets, diverse authors, all different forms, Shakespeare. Like you say..it feels "real" to me, for sure, so I want to count it, if I can. Thanks again for your feedback! 

[lewelma]

I wanted to discuss the current geography class my ds and I are doing together -- 0.5 credit Māori worldview, values, and protocols. This is a course where I am trying to impact the affective domain --I need my ds, who wants to go into geography in NZ, to understand and value the indigenous people of NZ. As an American, I have done a stink job so far in my homeschool focusing on this like they do in school.  So my son and I have decided to spend time on this every day, various amounts of time depending on how busy we are, but also 365 days, not necessarily during 'school time'.

So I have gotten a wonderful book out of the library on worldview and values that we read and discuss. We are working every single day and correctly pronouncing all the Māori words we see. We are also doing greetings and basic speech. We have gone to multiple museums throughout the North Island while we have been travelling, and have been reading up on history. We are reading about current Māori issues in the newspaper (inequality in health outcomes, etc), and talking to my dh about how Māori values are highlighted in the workplace. We have read up about how Māori representation in the national and local governments work. We are going to focus on the Treaty of Waitangi and the ramifications of the Waitangi Tribunal for reparations next. 

This is really just life in a family that likes to learn.  It is a little bit of this and a little bit of that, done when we have the time and interest. But it is a focused effort, and this course is rapidly growing past its 0.5 credit status. This is how some homeschool families learn. Not everything has to be in little cookie cutter, pre-planned boxes with a test at the end.  

Edited April 11, 2021 by lewelma

[EKT]

4 minutes ago, lewelma said:

My younger boy will have 8 social studies classes (I listed them in the previous thread). Don't short change your kids by lumping it all into English 9, 10, 11, 12.  My younger boy does 2.5 hours of geography each day 40 weeks per year.  This is way way more than 1 class. His studies evolve out of his interests, so they are incredibly varied.  We can get through a half credit in a 10 week term, ending with a 15 page research paper, which is why he has so many odd courses.  All these research papers are on different topics in geography, but why in the world would I want to lump them into Geography and Advanced Geography.  Open your mind to what you are actually doing and accomplishing if you are working way more than 180 hours per year.  Break the work up into separate courses to highlight the depth and breath of the topics/works  your kids will study in English. 

I'm listing these courses here again in case others haven't read the previous thread.  All of these courses were actually Geography, but I have decided to only name one "geography". 

Geography - with trade books (Guns, Germs, and Steel + Collapse, NZ Geographic, National Geographic) 

The Social, Economic, and Political Impact of Colonialism on Africa

Physical and Cultural Geography of the Mackinzie Basin, NZ

0.5 NZ Demographics (comparing the causes and consequences of European vs Māori demographics over 150 years)

0.5 The Causes and Consequences of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami - (the physics of waves, the immediate response, and the long term social and economic impact. This course also studied how International aid agencies work.)

0.5 The history of Early NZ 1800-1840 (Pre Treaty of Waitangi -- the founding document of NZ)

0.5 Māori worldview, values, and protocols. (This is what we are currently studying - also includes some history and language)

Thank you for sharing this as well! This is exactly how it is for us with language arts, and for art with my oldest. This child paints or draws in every spare waking moment. (She painted for like six hours yesterday alone.) So I feel like she will legitimately earn a TON of fine arts credits by the time she's a senior. (She is currently planning to be a painting/illustration major.) As I map out her courses, it's been a challenge to figure out what to put where, and how to group things together. There are so many different ways I could put the puzzle pieces together. I appreciate your sharing these examples!

[lewelma]

7 minutes ago, EKT said:

in these daily sessions we're not reading like, Shel Silverstein--

My younger boy has spent quite a lot of time focusing on how amazing children's writers are. How they use their craft with power and skill. It is all about purpose and audience, as you know. Targeting children's literature could be another valuable course. Children's literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

[EKT]

8 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I wanted to discuss the current geography class my ds and I are doing together -- 0.5 credit Māori worldview, values, and protocols. This is a course where I am trying to impact the affective domain --I need my ds, who wants to go into geography in NZ, to understand and value the indigenous people of NZ. As an American, I have done a stink job so far in my homeschool focusing on this like they do in school.  So my son and I have decided to spend time on this every day, various amounts of time depending on how busy we are, but also 365 days, not necessarily during 'school time'.

So I have gotten a wonderful book out of the library on worldview and values that we read and discuss. We are working every single day and correctly pronouncing all the Māori words we see. We are also doing greetings and basic speech. We have gone to multiple museums throughout the North Island while we have been travelling, and have been reading up on history. We are reading about current Māori issues in the newspaper (inequality in health outcomes, etc), and talking to my dh about how Māori values are highlighted in the workplace. We have read up about how Māori representation in the national and local governments work. We are going to focus on the Treaty of Waitangi and the ramifications of the Waitangi Tribunal for reparations next. 

This is really just life in a family that likes to learn.  It is a little bit of this and a little bit of that, done when we have the time and interest. But it is a focused effort, and this course is rapidly growing past its 0.5 credit status. This is how some homeschool families learn. Not everything has to be in little cookie cutter, pre-planned boxes with a test at the end.  

This sounds wonderful! And yes, I feel like this is how my family learns, too! We do some formal, traditional curricula in our homeschool, for sure (for math and such, especially), but so much of our life is just following interests--reading, discussing, and doing Cool Stuff and making art. I've never issued grades for anything in the past, so making this jump to high school and getting started on course descriptions and a transcript is the first time I've really had to formally "package" our learning, and it feels weird! 

[lewelma]

17 minutes ago, EKT said:

This sounds wonderful! And yes, I feel like this is how my family learns, too! We do some formal, traditional curricula in our homeschool, for sure (for math and such, especially), but so much of our life is just following interests--reading, discussing, and doing Cool Stuff and making art. I've never issued grades for anything in the past, so making this jump to high school and getting started on course descriptions and a transcript is the first time I've really had to formally "package" our learning, and it feels weird! 

Well, I give a lot of As in my homeschool and they are backed up by standardized testing across many disciplines. My older boy got into 3 good universities - MIT, U of M, and Carnegie Mellon (with top scholarship). Nobody questioned my mommy grades, at least not to my face. 🙂 If a kid is engaged and clearly learning, who am I to judge what they produce/learn and give a grade? I am very anti-grades. So my kids get As. I stated in my school profile that we grade on the 'mastery' system. So I judged them as having mastered the content. I never gave any grades in my homeschool until I had to write up my ds's transcript in the summer before 12th grade. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by lewelma

[EKT]

11 minutes ago, lewelma said:

My younger boy has spent quite a lot of time focusing on how amazing children's writers are. How they use their craft with power and skill. It is all about purpose and audience, as you know. Targeting children's literature could be another valuable course. Children's literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Yes! We love it all. I could totally do a whole course on fairy tales or children's authors for sure.

I actually have been a little sad this past year because my oldest is "aging out" of middle grade fiction and it is kind of breaking my heart, lol. She loves the middle grade novels we've read--and I was sure to cram in as many read-alouds this year this year as possible, to make sure she "got" all the books I'd hoped her childhood to contain--but intellectually, she's completely ready to move on to typical high school and adult literature. It's bittersweet. (I love all the high school novels as well; but the middle grade stuff is so special. Luckily my 11-year-old is still loving it, so I have another year or two, I think!) 😉

[EKT]

31 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Well, I give a lot of As in my homeschool and they are backed up by standardized testing across many disciplines. My older boy got into 3 good universities - MIT, U of M, and Carnegie Mellon (with top scholarship). Nobody questioned my mommy grades, at least not to my face. 🙂 If a kid is engaged and clearly learning, who am I to judge what they produce/learn and give a grade? I am very anti-grades. So my kids get As. I stated in my school profile that we grade on the 'mastery' system. So I judged them as having mastered the content. I never gave any grades in my homeschool until I had to write up my ds's transcript in the summer before 12th grade. 

Wow, congratulations! That is wonderful! I am always so encouraged by other homeschoolers' successes.

I confess I worry about people questioning my mommy grades. (Like, are the College Admissions Police going to show up on my doorstep and demand I substantiate my grades? lol) But yes, I have a feeling I'll be doing "mastery" as well. Still trying to figure that piece out. (With our math curriculum, I can obviously just give clear-cut grades based on the end-of-lesson tests, but for every other subject area, I really feel like we operate on mastery.) 

[lewelma]

30 minutes ago, EKT said:

Wow, congratulations! That is wonderful! I am always so encouraged by other homeschoolers' successes.

I confess I worry about people questioning my mommy grades. (Like, are the College Admissions Police going to show up on my doorstep and demand I substantiate my grades? lol) But yes, I have a feeling I'll be doing "mastery" as well. Still trying to figure that piece out. (With our math curriculum, I can obviously just give clear-cut grades based on the end-of-lesson tests, but for every other subject area, I really feel like we operate on mastery.) 

Ha! Not trying to brag. Just saying that even top colleges/scholarships are not checking mommy grades if they align with standardized test scores. Personally, I love mastery.  It is such a beautiful word for learning, actually.  And it can allow your students to get involved with their own assessment.  Do *they* think they have mastered the content?  If not, then what should they be working on to make sure that they have?  To create a life long learner, the evaluation needs to be internal.  So I teach my kids how to evaluate themselves. 

I do know that standardized test scores are getting harder in the USA with the loss of the SAT subject tests. But I only tried to document my child's level with 1 standardized test per subject area. So my younger will have 1 standardized test/assessment in each of math, science, English, music, and statistics. So 5 out of the 24 courses he will have taken. He has gotten top marks on all of those, so all the related homeschool courses get top marks. For Geography, I give him A's because the NZ statistics research papers (standardized assessment) are very very similar to geography, and because my expectations of one 15-20 page research paper for each 0.5 credit, is beyond what would be expected in school. 

My point of all this is that you don't have to totally change your homeschool in high school (except in CA!). You don't have to make your learning into pre-designed test-driven classes, and you don't have to get caught up in grades.  Grades would have sucked the life out of my homeschool, and destroyed our collaborative relationship. Clearly not true for all homeschools, but just know that there is not just ONE way to get this thing right. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by lewelma

[Dmmetler]

FWIW, My kid is majoring in biology, and is graduating with 11 social science credits (17 classes), 9 English credits (12 classes), 6 foreign language credits, which include two languages to the fourth year level and higher, etc. All told, I probably could have graduated two kids with the coursework on one transcript, except for a handful of pesky things that were get it done credits to meet the requirements for a diploma! Honestly, most years I didn't really even pay attention as to how much we were doing until I had to fill out the form at the end of the semester for the cover school (a peculiarity of my particular state), and then I looked at the list and was more like "Wow, we did a lot this year!". 

 

Extra credits really didn't seem to hurt anything in college applications, and it helped paint the picture of just where L's interests and foci were, and that they went beyond STEM. FWIW, we did NO AP exams, no SAT-2 tests, and ended up applying to colleges with an ACT score from 8th grade because we weren't able to get a test site for a new score until late October, which was past the deadlines for most of the schools if you wanted to be eligible for scholarships. There were a decent number of college credits, but a lot of those were classes taken for the fun of it, not for ticking boxes-I'm not sure if credits in Graphic Design, Journalism, Exceptional education, or Race, Class, and Gender Studies really do much to validate high school, YKWIM? 

[EKT]

9 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

FWIW, My kid is majoring in biology, and is graduating with 11 social science credits (17 classes), 9 English credits (12 classes), 6 foreign language credits, which include two languages to the fourth year level and higher, etc. All told, I probably could have graduated two kids with the coursework on one transcript, except for a handful of pesky things that were get it done credits to meet the requirements for a diploma! Honestly, most years I didn't really even pay attention as to how much we were doing until I had to fill out the form at the end of the semester for the cover school (a peculiarity of my particular state), and then I looked at the list and was more like "Wow, we did a lot this year!". 

 

Extra credits really didn't seem to hurt anything in college applications, and it helped paint the picture of just where L's interests and foci were, and that they went beyond STEM. FWIW, we did NO AP exams, no SAT-2 tests, and ended up applying to colleges with an ACT score from 8th grade because we weren't able to get a test site for a new score until late October, which was past the deadlines for most of the schools if you wanted to be eligible for scholarships. There were a decent number of college credits, but a lot of those were classes taken for the fun of it, not for ticking boxes-I'm not sure if credits in Graphic Design, Journalism, Exceptional education, or Race, Class, and Gender Studies really do much to validate high school, YKWIM? 

Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this perspective!! I was beginning to think APs were mandatory to be a competitive college applicant, but I so don't want to do the teaching-to-a-test thing. (Not that an AP course HAS to be miserable and all about the test, but it's just a train I don't really want to get on, if I can avoid it. Obviously, we will take it year by year and I will serve my daughter and her goals, but philosophically, I'm with SWB on the APs.)  

I think it's very likely my daughter will do some DE in the upper grades, because I think she will enjoy dipping her toes into the college experience (and because we have College Credit Plus here in Ohio), and she will obviously take the SAT or the ACT, but I am sort of hoping to avoid the AP insanity. 

But seriously, thank you for sharing. I love hearing all the different ways homeschooling high school can be done successfully!

[regentrude]

I would NOT count that separately on the transcript. If you want to highlight it, that is much better done in your school profile where it can stand out, or as an extracurricular  ( especially the writing, if they do competitions or publish) - a transcripted course is just one buried among many.

Not everything a kid does in their day has to end up on a transcript. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by regentrude

[lewelma]

1 minute ago, regentrude said:

I would NOT count that separately on the transcript. If you want to highlight it, that is much better done in your school profile where it can stand out - a transcripted course is just one buried among many.

Not everything a kid does in their day has to end up on a transcript. 

If I remember correctly, you created an art appreciation course that spanned 4 years but earned 1 credit.  What content was in it? And how did you ensure that it was rigorous enough to include on your transcript? 

[Farrar]

2 hours ago, EKT said:

No, I don't suspect she'll need the credits, numbers-wise. Poetry and nature journaling are just huge areas of interest for us and I guess I'd want to highlight that, if possible? (I'm a former high school English teacher, and my experience is that poetry is barely taught in American public schools. I guess my goal in separating this as its own class is to highlight poetry as a special area of interest, and show the breadth and depth with which we've studied it.) 

I guess a related question would be: Wouldn't my daughter want to show as many credits on a transcript as possible? (I'm genuinely asking! I'm so new to high school...) Thanks! 

I think you've gotten the encouragement that you need. You can do it however makes the most sense at the end. You don't have to decide until the end of junior year really. You can highlight the poetry as a key component of your overall English credits in your course descriptions. Or you could give a separate credit. I like the idea of rounding it out with an analysis paper - I might do one a year - if you take that route. As the nature journaling will likely not go with overall science studies each year, I would set it apart. I think I'd call it Nature Studies or something more along those lines. But mark it as an elective. But again, there's not a right or wrong answer here.

Mostly I just wanted to pull this and emphasize that yes, you do want to go beyond the minimum. Too often on homeschool boards, I see parents whine that you don't have to do things beyond the minimum any time someone is like, oh, could this be a credit. It's almost like they're getting their hand slapped. "Could this project where my kid taught herself this skill and built this thing be a credit?" "You only need one elective a year! Your kid already has one!" Whack!!! But please document and go above and beyond if it's within your student's capacity to do so. Colleges that are selective don't admit kids who did the minimum very often. And even if a kid is not college bound or is bound for a school that admits all or most applicants, kids deserve to have the awesome things they do documented in a way that lets them see it. I absolutely believe that we educate for the sake of education. But also, recognizing and reflecting on that is part of it. For high school, credits and transcripts are the quantification of that work. Let it show.

Agreeing with others that this sounds excellent.

[lewelma]

17 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Not everything a kid does in their day has to end up on a transcript. 

Agreeing with this.  Both my boys went to either the opera or a play 4 times a year for 4 years (cheap homeschool tickets to the dress rehearsal!).  We would prep by studying both before we saw it and after. We had wonderful discussions, and compared and contrasted the interpretations to movie versions we also watched. It was super fun.  But I did not put it on my older boy's transcript nor did I highlight it in ECs or anywhere in the package we sent to admissions.  I could have, but for me this was just being a family and loving living and learning. I felt that my boy had enough fine arts with his intensive violin that I didn't need *more*, but if he hadn't been a musician, I would have added in a paper or two, and created a fine arts credit to show that yes, he had done some fine arts.  Like Farrar said, it really depends on the big picture of the transcript at the end. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by lewelma

[lewelma]

What I think is good about evaluating your poetry tea time for a high school credit, is it lets you expand in this area if that is what you want to do. If you guys really love it, then beef it up a bit, and decide you are really doing this thing. Sometimes acknowledging that it is 'real' allows you the mental space to make it real. 

[regentrude]

23 minutes ago, lewelma said:

If I remember correctly, you created an art appreciation course that spanned 4 years but earned 1 credit.  What content was in it? And how did you ensure that it was rigorous enough to include on your transcript? 

I did that for DS; DD did more and had separate Art and Music History credits on her transcript. Course descriptions below. We basically unschooled these, and I did not care about "rigorous", since I did not assign a letter grade. These were courses to check the box "Fine Arts" and were not intended to highlight a unique approach or particularly deep study. 
 

DS's course description:

Quote

Introduction to Fine Arts 1.0 cumulative credit/ 0.25 credit per year. No grade.

This is a continuous course spanning all four years of high school. The course surveys the development of Western Art and architecture and offers an introduction to performing arts. The student will become familiar with the works of a representative sample of artists and learn to place unfamiliar works in their proper historical style period. The student will visit several Art museums in the US and Europe as well as a variety of historic architectural landmarks in Europe. The student will attend live performances of varying genres, including plays, band and choral concerts, and musical theatre.

Textbooks:      The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland and John Boswell, Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting by Wendy Becket

DD: 

Quote

Music History and Appreciation. 1.0 cumulative credit/ 0.25 credit per year. No grade.

This is a continuous course spanning all four years of high school. The goal of the course is to develop an understanding of the stylistic features of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Twentieth-Century Western Art Music. The student will become familiar with the works of a representative sample of composers and learn to place unfamiliar listening examples in their proper historical style period. The student will attend over thirty live performances of varying genres, including several operas, symphony concerts, choral music, musical theatre, folk music, and jazz.

The student listened to the following audio lectures by the Teaching Company:

 How to listen to and understand Great Music

48 college level lecture, each 45 minutes in length, taught by Prof. Robert Greenberg

Quote

Art History. 1.0 cumulative credit/ 0.25 credit per year. No grade.

This is a continuous course spanning all four years of high school. The goal of the course is to develop an understanding of the development of Western art and architecture from Ancient Greece to the 20^th century. The student will become familiar with the works of a representative sample of artists and learn to place unfamiliar works in their proper historical style period. The student will visit over ten Art museums in the US and Europe as well as a variety of historic architectural landmarks in Europe.

Textbooks:      The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland and John Boswell

                        Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting by Wendy Becket

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by regentrude

[lewelma]

5 minutes ago, regentrude said:

I did that for DS; DD did more and had separate Art and Music History credits on her transcript. Course descriptions below. We basically unschooled these, and I did not care about "rigorous", since I did not assign a letter grade. These were courses to check the box "Fine Arts" and were not intended to highlight a unique approach or particularly deep study. 

Nice. Thanks for the course descriptions. 

[Farrar]

19 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Agreeing with this.  Both my boys went to either the opera or a play 4 times a year for 4 years (cheap homeschool tickets to the dress rehearsal!).  We would prep by studying both before we saw it and after. We had wonderful discussions, and compared and contrasted the interpretations to movie versions we also watched. It was super fun.  But I did not put it on my older boy's transcript nor did I highlight it in ECs or anywhere in the package we sent to admissions.  I could have, but for me this was just being a family and loving living and learning. I felt that my boy had enough fine arts with his intensive violin that I didn't need *more*, but if he hadn't been a musician, I would have added in a paper or two, and created a fine arts credit to show that yes, he had done some fine arts.  Like Farrar said, it really depends on the big picture of the transcript at the end. 

Yes, exactly. I am not putting every little coding thing or game thing on Mushroom's transcript. He took an untraditional approach to learning coding, but it's evident from his credits and activities. But for BalletBoy, I will put the little computer science course he did at the co-op in 9th grade because otherwise he has absolutely no tech credits and that will be more well rounded. And it's plenty honest. Overall picture.

[EKS]

3 hours ago, EKT said:

If we continue this practice through all four years of high school, can I legitimately call this a 1.0 credit language arts elective?

Yes.

[EKT]

37 minutes ago, Farrar said:

I think you've gotten the encouragement that you need. You can do it however makes the most sense at the end. You don't have to decide until the end of junior year really. You can highlight the poetry as a key component of your overall English credits in your course descriptions. Or you could give a separate credit. I like the idea of rounding it out with an analysis paper - I might do one a year - if you take that route. As the nature journaling will likely not go with overall science studies each year, I would set it apart. I think I'd call it Nature Studies or something more along those lines. But mark it as an elective. But again, there's not a right or wrong answer here.

Mostly I just wanted to pull this and emphasize that yes, you do want to go beyond the minimum. Too often on homeschool boards, I see parents whine that you don't have to do things beyond the minimum any time someone is like, oh, could this be a credit. It's almost like they're getting their hand slapped. "Could this project where my kid taught herself this skill and built this thing be a credit?" "You only need one elective a year! Your kid already has one!" Whack!!! But please document and go above and beyond if it's within your student's capacity to do so. Colleges that are selective don't admit kids who did the minimum very often. And even if a kid is not college bound or is bound for a school that admits all or most applicants, kids deserve to have the awesome things they do documented in a way that lets them see it. I absolutely believe that we educate for the sake of education. But also, recognizing and reflecting on that is part of it. For high school, credits and transcripts are the quantification of that work. Let it show.

Agreeing with others that this sounds excellent.

Thank you for the feedback! (You always provide thoughtful feedback. Thanks for that!) 

And yes, for both of these courses, I would count them as electives for sure, NOT core requirements. 

I appreciate the reminder that I don't have to decide right now how to categorize everything! (I can see that I'm trying to figure out every little thing right now, when much of this will have to shake out over time. I just don't want to mess anything up, so I'm trying to be thorough in my thinking and planning...) I think I'm going to move ahead with the goal of keeping excellent records of what we do (I'm a meticulous, color-coding sort of gal, so record-keeping is genuinely fun and soothing fun for me, lol) and then I'll decide what to DO with all of it closer to college application time. It's so easy to feel like high school has to fit in a certain type of box and mostly, I want to be able to continue to look at our homeschooling creatively and see what it all adds up to. 

[EKT]

37 minutes ago, lewelma said:

What I think is good about evaluating your poetry tea time for a high school credit, is it lets you expand in this area if that is what you want to do. If you guys really love it, then beef it up a bit, and decide you are really doing this thing. Sometimes acknowledging that it is 'real' allows you the mental space to make it real. 

Yes, exactly! Thank you to everyone for helping me think out loud here on the boards. It helps a lot!

[EKT]

29 minutes ago, regentrude said:

I did that for DS; DD did more and had separate Art and Music History credits on her transcript. Course descriptions below. We basically unschooled these, and I did not care about "rigorous", since I did not assign a letter grade. These were courses to check the box "Fine Arts" and were not intended to highlight a unique approach or particularly deep study. 
 

DS's course description:

DD: 

 

Thank you for sharing!! I LOVE reading others' course descriptions!