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High School! Yikes, right?
Well, to be honest, our 8th grader has been doing high school classes for a year already. We thought that he was ready to start high school classes early and, since he's doing well in all of his classes, I guess we were right.
I was really worried about him going into high school. I had so many questions.
What classes does he need to take?
How many credits does he need?
What materials will he need?
How much money will high school cost?
Where do I find the materials that he will need?
Dual credit / College?
First of all, I have to say that every state is different. I live in a state that doesn't have strict requirements for homeschoolers. We only need to register with the state and that's it. Well, I want my boys to be fully prepared for college, and life of course, so I want to do this "high school" thing right.
I am a researcher and a planner. My husband is always telling me "Honey, do your research" whenever I have a question that he can't answer. So that's where I started.
What classes does he need to take?
How many credits does he need?
I started to find out by finding out the high school graduation requirements are for my state. I found this on the Department of Education site for my state. Check out this website to find your state's Department of Education website. This should lead you to find your state's high school graduation requirements. This will then tell you how many credits that your child will need at the end of their high school years.
From this information, I ended up making a spreadsheet of all of the requirements for him to complete in order to graduate from high school. This spreadsheet had been
invaluable to me. This will be his transcript as well.
I wanted to take it a step further than high school credits. I wanted to make sure that he would need in order to get accepted into college. He will be "attending" online college classes and then probably transfer to an in-state college. I knew of the two main universities that would be possibilities for him. I looked up their admission requirements from their website. I added these to my list.
Here's what my list looks like.
What materials will he need?
How much money will high school cost?
Textbooks, notebooks, workbooks, CDs, computer, printer, paper, calculators, markers, pencils, study guides, microscopes, etc. I started stressing about how much all of this "stuff" is going to cost us. Okay...breathe. I had to tell myself that we do not have to have all of this at the same time. I looked at what classes that he was going to work through first. What materials will he need for those classes.
He needs 4 years of math, so that's where I started. He is using No-Nonsense Algebra. This is a full year Algebra 1 program that is very low-cost. Check out my post about it here. Less than $30 for math, great!
Next, he needs 3 years of Social Studies. I like to combine classes where I can, so I decided to go with Notgrass. They have a World History program that gives him 1 credit for World History, 1 credit for English, and 1 credit for Bible (which he can use as an elective). 3 classes in one price? Great! I can also keep this for our younger son to use down the road. We will continue to use them for American History, Government, and Economics in future years.
Foreign Language was the other class that he is taking this year. He has wanted to continue to learn Greek, so that's what we did. I did check with the local university and Greek is recognized as a foreign language for their admissions. So great! We went with Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! It costs us about $50 for a credit. He has completed Level 3 and is just about done with Level 4. That will give him 1/2 credit each. This next year he will go through Level 5. This is complete his 2 credits of Foreign Language requirements. Look at this review to see what it's like.
Next year, he will begin Biology among other classes. Schoolhouseteachers.com has a good Biology class that we are going to have him use. If you have a subscription to Schoolhouseteachers.com, then this class is free. All we will have to buy is a microscope among other few supplies. Overall, a pretty inexpensive way to take a required course. If you don't have a subscription to Schoolhouseteachers.com, what are you waiting for? Check this out!
Where do I find the materials that he will need?
I wanted to list a few places that I used in order to find all of the materials that he will need, so far at least.
Individual Websites
Checking out everyone's websites might give you a great deal. They will run specials during parts of the year.
homeschoolclassifieds.com
This is where homeschool families feel their used homeschool materials to others.
Amazon.com
This is a great place to find textbooks, microscopes, etc. for a better price.
Itunes / App Store
We are a Mac family. We have MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads. All this means that we have a huge assortment of apps available to us. I have even found free and cheap graphing calculators. He will need this for future math courses.
Dual Credit / College?
I have spent a little time researching having our kids take classes that will give them both high school credit as well as college credit. I have a friend on the Homeschool Review Crew that has written a post on this. Please go and look at what she's doing with her children in this post.
So that's about it for now. I will keep you all updated if more comes up. Please let me know if you have any questions that I might be able to answer.
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