High School Homeschool Curriculum Recap- History

This is part 3 of my curriculum recap series.  Please scroll to the bottom for other subjects.  This installment specifically covers history in the high school years.  Before the high school years, I feel that history should be taught chronologically.  Personally, I prefer that it also be taught chronologically in the high school years as well, but for the college bound student, that is not always possible.

To keep things interesting, and for continuity's sake, I always pair my literature choices with the history/social studies unit.  You can find my k-12 language arts plan here.

American History:
Each of my kids actually did two year of American History.  There is just so much information to cover.  We used Hippocampus.org, and studied Discovery to Civil War the first year and

High School Homeschool Curriculum Recap- Science

This is part two of my curriculum recap series.  In it I am attempting to look back at my kids high school years and give lessons learned and what we loved and hated.  Here is a review of my children's science subjects.

Neither of my children were very excited about science as they are more artsy people, so we did not go out of our way to do AP courses or take SATII's which science minded kids will want to look into.

Environmental Science:

My daughter Used Hippocampus for Environmental science.  She used it in conjunction to one of the recommended textbooks on the site, and mostly followed the hippocampus format.  I just mapped

Keep those programs!

If you have a talented child, who is planning on a future in the theater or visual arts, you need to be keeping all of the programs from all of the shows, performances, and contests they were in.

I am using these programs right now to help us compile a resume, but when put together in a book, they are also a portfolio.  Make sure you put a couple of still shots from each show in the portfolio as well.

Here is my simple method:

1.  Purchase sheet protectors
2.  Open program to your child's bio (or where they are mentioned if they did tech or other work) and highlight their name.


3.  Put open program in sheet protector so

High School Homeschool Curriculum Recap- Math

 I have done my best to list curriculums my kids have used, as they have used them.  Sometimes, though, I have changed curriculum within the first 3 months due to dissatisfaction, and may have left off that information.  For that reason, I am listing everything we used, and liked for the high school years:

Algebra:  
My son did Algebra in Middle School using Teaching Textbooks.  He got a very good understanding of Algebra and after taking this course was able to go through all following math courses pretty much without any help, so I recommend Teaching Textbooks.  It is very expensive though.

My daughter used HippoCampus.org for Algebra, and took over a year to finish the course.  Still, it was free, and she also got a very good understanding of Algebra 1, allowing her to finish Algebra 2 very quickly.   (on hippocampus, she used the course labeled Algebra 1 - 2004)  They have a new course, Algebra 1, An open Course 2011 that looks promising.


Algebra 2:
My daughter did Algebra 2, and my son did not.  We sued the following textbook:  Algebra 2 by

Oh, the smoothly run homeschool

If I compared myself to other homeschoolers, this blog post on 10 ways to make your homeschool run smoothly would make me cry.  In the bloggers defense, she has 5 kids aged 5-15.  If she were not this organized, she's probably be in the fetal position in a corner somewhere.  I recommend you read it as there are some nuggets here that are very useful.   But since I have 2 kids 2 years apart, we've had a more ... organic existence.

As we are in our last year of homeschooling, our existence has few rules as they are pretty self managing.  This list is much more for me than for them.


1.  Wake up at a reasonable hour because none of us like to do schoolwork in the evening hours.

Your Average Middle Class Homeschooler

In a post recognizing the efforts of homeschoolers that came before us, I saw the phrase "average middle class" homeschooler and said... FINALLY!  A description that fits our family.

My kids are not isolated.  They are not disabled in any discernible way.  We are not uber religious.  They are not particularly brainy.  They are average... or for our area, amongst their peers, and even

Homeschool presuppositions and confessions

Here's a pretty neat vlog done by homeschool brothers who are now in college.  They surveyed a lot of college students about their original thoughts on homeschooling, and also asked homeschoolers questions about confessions that revealed a bit of homeschool weirdness.


Every now and then you see a little bit of homeschool oddities coming from my kids in the unique