High school electives?

[Mom28kds]

I have 3 high schooler. I'm needing some ideas what to do for electives. I'd like to find some courses they'd enjoy while doing the things they need. I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas. So please let me know what you are doing or have done in this area. Only 1 of the 3 might be college bound so I'm hoping for ideas that could help them with life in the future 🙂

Edited July 8, 2022 by Mom28kds

[regentrude]

Mine did:

Art History 
Music History and Appreciation
Introduction to Fine Arts (DS; combined art and music into one credit; lighter than two stand-alone credits)
Culinary Chemistry
PE: Rock Climbing and Mountaineering
History of Martial Arts
Computer skills
Health

[Mom28kds]

10 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Mine did:

Art History 
Music History and Appreciation
Introduction to Fine Arts (DS; combined art and music into one credit; lighter than two stand-alone credits)
Culinary Chemistry
PE: Rock Climbing and Mountaineering
History of Martial Arts
Computer skills
Health

How did they get the computer skills class? I'd like them to learn more computer but I don't know enough myself.

[regentrude]

3 minutes ago, Mom28kds said:

How did they get the computer skills class? I'd like them to learn more computer but I don't know enough myself.

We did it ourselves, over the course of four years.  But there are tons of free resources available online.
Dad was in charge of the hardware side. Both kids built a computer from parts.
The software side is pretty much self-taught - you learn it by using it in a project. We integrated the skills into their other classes - spreadsheets and plotting in science, Word and Powerpoint in English and History.
DS learned about the business software as part of his job; DD taught herself HTML/CSS by designing a website for a local business.

Here is the course description:

Quote

This is a continuous course spanning all four years of high school. Areas of study include:

1. Computing Fundamentals: Hardware, Operating System, installing and updating software.
Student learned to repair computers and assemble computers from parts.

2. Key Applications. Student learns to use the following software:
Word processing: Microsoft Word, LaTeX;
Presentations: Power Point
Spreadsheets, data, plotting and fitting: Microsoft Excel, Diagram Plus
only DD: Data Collection lab software: Data Studio 

3. Internet: email, web browser, search engines
DD: Introduction to web design: HTML/CSS. Student designed a web site for a local business.

Only DS: 4. Small business applications. Student uses different computer applications for shipping and customer service in his part time job at a small business.

 

[Lucy the Valiant]

(This list represents several kids over several years.)

 

Chorus

Karate 

Historical Costume Construction

Music Composition

Personal Finance

Intro to Project Management / Business 

Java

(extra) foreign language

Auto Upkeep

Agricultural Entrepreneurship

CAD / Computer Assisted Drafting + Revit

Architectural Sketching & Modeling

Intro to Legal Studies

 

 

[Clemsondana]

Classes that my older has done so far that are electives (or fulfill a requirement in our state but could be electives):

Ballroom dance (can be PE or fine arts)

Weightlifting/conditioning (PE)

1/2 credit of Science Fiction (but any favorite genre, done in addition to regular English, would work)

Horticulture (had some reading and a large hands-on component)

Coding (Scratch, Python)

Public Speaking (doing at co-op next year)

Music Theory/Appreciation

Drawing (kid used a couple of instruction books and got pretty good at it despite being self-directed)

From when I was in school, students took band/choir/music lessons, art, basic accounting, art, etc.  If you have kids who aren't college-bound, can you look for ways for them to do career exploration or vocational training?  My kid found the horticulture credit to be interesting - we looked at what foods grow here, kid read about small-scale farming/large scale gardening, etc, but it showed kid that they want a hobby farm, not to be a farmer.  A friend's kid, on the other hand, is involved in a Future Farmers of America group and is seriously considering a career in agriculture.  The coding classes are letting my kid explore a career in computer science or engineering.  Another friend's kid took some welding classes and is planning to do that as a job.  You could get creative and put together a home ec-style culinary credit with cooking, baking, cake decorating, etc, for instance, if you had a kid interested in that sort of thing.  

[regentrude]

One additional comment: not everything a kid does in the high school years needs to end up on the transcript! Make sure you don't bury a strong, sustained activity as an elective on the transcript; save it as an extracurricular where it can stand out and be highlighted.
Neither my kids' sports nor DD's choir ended up as electives; they were much better placed as extracurriculars.

[Farrar]

Electives can serve a lot of purposes.

Colleges like to see electives that are academic or build in skill level. So colleges like doubling up on sciences or taking in depth extra literature courses. Or they like seeing that your kid took music theory 1 and music theory 2 and music theory 3, etc. For kids who are interested in a particular area, they like to see that the electives were used for that.

When kids aren't collegebound, I think they can basically do what they want. It's a good way to explore if they might change their minds or a practical skill or a potential job or lifelong interest. Some of the things that don't show as well for collegebound kids - like jumping around and doing a ton of different things or doing "light" and unusual electives like for particular crafts or doing extra PE - I think that's fine.

I think electives are a good way to keep all kinds really invested in their learning, help them become lifelong learners, and help them navigate making choices about their education.

[Lori D.]

Electives can be all kinds of things:
- PE, Health, Career Exploration, Driver's Ed -- sometimes required by some public schools; useful for real life
- Nutrition, Personal Finance, Consumer Science, Bookkeeping -- studies of specific real life skills
- Computer, Logic, Bible, Religious Studies -- often "parent required" credits for homeschool graduation
- Vocational-Tech -- often as dual enrollment at community college, and often started in high school and finished at the community college as part of a certificate program or 2-year Associate's degree to move into a career field (cosmetology, culinary arts, auto mechanics, welding, CAD, EMT, radiology or other medical tech... etc.)
- personal interests as one or more electives -- great for exploring / developing interests / hobbies
- additional credits of Fine Arts -- music, art, drama, dance, film appreciation, jewelry making, woodworking, etc.
- "Academic Electives" -- additional credits in English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Foreign Language (beyond required #)

Edited July 9, 2022 by Lori D.

[Loowit]

DD took: Logic, Dance (ballet, tap, lyrical, jazz), Art (drawing, pen & ink, charcoal, figure drawing), Drama, Health, Musical Theatre, Bible, Speech, Economics

Older DS took: Logic, Bible, Fine Arts (figure painting, music appreciation, drawing), Statistics, Personal Finance, Economics, Health, Marine Biology

Youngest is taking: Logic, Bible, Health, Career Exploration, Financial Literacy, Journalism, Drawing, Economics, Speech, Marine Biology, Astronomy

I am sure I am forgetting some classes.  Some of the electives, like personal finance/financial literacy, were things I wanted them to learn regardless of their career path in the future, other things were based on their interests at the time.  I never really worried too much about college application worthiness, although maybe I should have.  I tried to make sure that they had enough courses to make them able to get into any of our state colleges/universities, which any of them could.  DD had no problems when she applied to colleges.

[The Governess]

Computer programming

Intro to ethics 

Photography

Psychology

SAT prep / study skills

Astronomy

Economics

 

 

[lewelma]

18 hours ago, Farrar said:

I think electives are a good way to keep all kinds really invested in their learning, help them become lifelong learners, and help them navigate making choices about their education.

Keeping my younger invested in his learning was key. This is the list of his highschool electives which are quirky and all his ideas: 

1cr Geography - with trade books (Guns, Germs, and Steel. Collapse. NZ Geographic. National Geographic) 

1cr The Social, Economic, and Political Impact of Colonialism on Africa

1cr Physical and Cultural Geography of the Mackinzie Basin, NZ

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

0.5cr 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.)

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

1cr Māori worldview, values, protocols, history and a bit of the language

Edited July 9, 2022 by lewelma

[Alice]

My oldest mainly did extra Mathy things as electives...Computer Science (two years), Economics, Statistics, Number Theory 

My second son is an artist...he is doing a lot of art...Animation (two years), Painting, Drawing. I’ll probably end up also giving him a credit for art across four years as he spends most of his free time teaching himself digital art skills or working on drawing techniques. But he’s only a rising junior so I haven’t formalized that. He’s also done Psychology and Philosophy as electives and wants to do Computer Science and possible Graphic Design this year. 

[teachermom2834]

My kids had mostly more academic things as electives as they were college bound and they had plenty of academic courses and it just didn’t add anything and looked strange to me to have a bunch of solid classes and then cooking or drivers Ed or something like that. So they ended up with extras in the core areas. They also did a lot of de so credits added up fast so they had plenty of academic classes.
 

Social studies probably ended up being the category with the most extras because there were so many accessible de courses that fell into that category (psychology, sociology, extra history, Econ, etc). They also ended up with extra math credits, foreign language, sciences, extra literature or writing courses. They weren’t all necessarily hard- you can have an extra science that is lighter. An extra science can be geology or botany or something interesting. Extra science doesn’t need to mean AP chem. So you can have electives that fall into the core academic areas without going into much more difficult or advanced subject matter. 

[Momto6inIN]

My 3 oldest kids have done computer Science/computer engineering, small business entrepreneurship, statistics, psychology, logic, personal finance, extra math courses, filmmaking, marketing, government and politics, business, journalism, creative writing, architecture/drafting, child development, and sociology.