Update, September 2007: Our daughter graduated in June of 2004. We ended up changing some of what is listed here, and we will show those adjustments accordingly. However, some people used this plan as a springboard for their own ideas, so we are putting it up on the site in the meantime as we originally posted it. Bethany graduated, did some college, managed a bookstore, leads a youth group, and got married to a fine Christian young man (also homeschooled) in June of 2006. God is good!
"A CM-Styled High School Education"
High School Pages Introduction - Please Read This First!
Linked to this page is the curriculum plan we have used and intend to
complete in our homeschool. (Our oldest will graduate in June of 2004.)
We expect we will make adjustments in it for our younger children and
their individual needs, but it shows our basic goals in homeschooling our
children, and what we hope they will have completed by the time they
graduate.
We share it as a means of encouragement and in the hopes that others will
be inspired by it. We believe it contains many helpful resources, and
that it can be used as a springboard to personally-tailored high school
plans for other families.
It should be noted that this follows an education that, while not perfect
in any way, sought to follow the principles of Charlotte Mason's
philosophy, and the discipline and academic challenge inherent in that
type of learning.
Some of the ideas here originated from the plans first discussed on the
planning list of House of Education, the upper years of AmblesideOnline,
Churchill as a backbone for history in particular came from there, as
well as some other ideas for books to use.
This curriculum plan is not the official curriculum of AmblesideOnline or
House of Education, even though I serve on their Advisory. It is simply
the plan we have used in our home and the one we intend to complete by
June of 2004.
A note about the order of subjects:
We have not done all of these subjects in the manner or the order listed.
It is sometimes difficult to put this kind of an education into an order
that can be translated into transcript form. However, once we laid out
all we had done in these years, and what we planned to do, a pattern
began to form. We were able to 'plug in' books into a 'skeleton' of an
outline, and to see that they could fit into transcript/credit form.
One special note about foreign languages: we did not do the foreign
languages in the single year forms that are shown (French I in year 9,
French II in year 10, Spanish I in year 11, New Testament Greek in year
12). That was the best way, though, to put it on 'paper.'
The way we actually did it was to spread out the French learning over the
entire four years. (The two French courses listed were a formal grammar
follow-up to many primary years' learning of conversational and
introductory French.) Then at about year 10, conversational Spanish was
added, and that material was spread out over the remaining years. The
same was done with introduction to New Testament Greek so that at one
point, all three languages were being studied. (Along the way, we began
Latin in high school, which would have reflected well a complete
CM-styled education, but it did not work for us to begin it at that late
point, so we stopped.)
It was easier to divide the foreign language courses up for the sake of
credits the way we did. But in terms of learning, they were indeed spread
out over the high school years. This worked well for us, and allowed for
more retention of the material.
Fine Arts, too, was done over the course of all four years, and placed
all together as though it were done in one year to make the credit
addition easier to follow. Some Health course components were not done in
the combination or year in which they are described, but they, too, fit
together the best for transcript purposes as we wrote them down here.
The total count of credits we have determined to be earned for a high
school diploma following this plan is 125, plus an additional 20 credits
of Bible. The plan breaks down as follows:
Bible 20 credits
Science 15 credits
Math 20 credits
History and Government 20 credits
English 20 credits
Foreign Language 20 credits
Health/Phys. Ed. 20 credits
Electives (Economics and Fine Arts) 10 credits
Not included here are the added "extra-curricular" activities that would
be described as evidence of a student's "well-rounded" academic life. For
our oldest, this would include church choir, homeschool band and choir,
drama school, homeschool drama group, yearbook staff, Sunday School
teaching, and other similar activities over the course of four years of
high school.
