Homeschool Teens _ From Teen to Graduation

I luv your questions and always try to make time to put them in my blogging calendar because you are one of the reasons I blog.  Look at the one I want to help you with today.  I can never answer questions like this with just a short answer because I want you to always be in the know.  I’m giving you a heads up now that I got long winded have many details today.

“Hi there Tina!!

Good Morning to you. Can you give any advice on how to log or track hours for high school/ high school credits? What was your system?  Laura”

Homeschool High School–How to Log Hours for High School?

This is a very important question because you don’t want to be cheating your teen or over complimenting him so to speak either when you log hours or assign him credit.

Before you can log hours though there are two things to determine.

1.) How to determine time? You think this is easy enough, but not so fast because even the professionals in college didn’t give me the same answer.

2.) And based on what criteria will you assign credit?

I will break both of these down because there is no need to feel overwhelmed and not get a simple answer.  The answer though will depend on what courses you want your teen to do in high school.  You have a lot of flexible so be sure to remember that too.

High School Hour Basics

For most courses, you count either 1.0 credit or 0.5 credit.  Some special occasions you can count 2.00 credits, but that is another post.  All of my courses were the standard 1.0 or 0.5 credit.

Think about that and it makes sense because if you take either Algebra I or II for example, it takes normally about one school year to finish either one of those subjects.  A high school publisher knows it will take that long to finish math if your child studied it every weekday for 1 hour in a 5 day week for a normal school year which can run anywhere from a 120 to 180 days. {Side point here, but remember I use 180 days in my lesson planner to give you a boost in helping you to remember a school year.}

Fast forward to the end of the freshman year and say your child took about 6 courses to use as an example, then that would equal about 6 credits for their freshman year or 6 1/2 if you added a fun course that only took 1/2 as many hours like ballroom dance, or speech or maybe art.

Then 6 times 4 which is the number of years for high school if you do a 4 year plan would equal about 24.05 credits for high school.  That is a pretty good number of credits for high school.  It can be higher for a college bound student, but again anything between about 21 to 24 credits is good for high school completion.

Eazy peazy and you don’t have to track actual minutes and hours.  This was by far the easiest method for me to determine credit for Mr. Senior 2013.

Determine to Avoid Time Keeping Confusion

Where I went wrong in the beginning when I was reading about high school and giving myself one big giganto headache was when I was tracking every waking minute or thing he did.  For example, he did ballroom dancing for a fine art elective and if we missed a week for some reason I freaked out got a headache recalculating.

If only I realized sooner that we did this year round and so he had so many more hours than the 0.5 credit I assigned for that type of elective.  I gave up tracking the actual hours because we were way above it and just assigned the 0.5 hr for the year and did not worry about counting the actual hours.

A history program I love to revive the love of learning for a teen because it covers history in broad strokes.
Read Why I Love and Use BrimWood Press History Here

You can see how quickly I realized that it was more easier to track the core subjects by completing the book or course than it was at times the electives or other projects I assigned.

Credits for Completion or Passing?

While not wanting to split hairs or overwhelm you either, I do want you to be aware of a very fine point and it is the difference in how you assign credit.

Using only the “completing a course or book equals 1.0 credit” mentality can have a slight hiccup if your student does not pass the course.  So you can see this topic dovetails on setting a standard about how you grade and expecting a passing grade before you assign that credit too.  I have some examples of a grading system you will want to adopt too on my page Step 5a. Choose Unique Forms JUST for You

Balancing this thinking for you, I want to throw in one more counter weight and that is about how I counted Bible study.  It is not a subject he will ever complete and never come back to like say Algebra I.  So I had to come up with some way of tracking it though and I did that by covering certain topics each year that I assigned.  So I did keep up with hours, but more than that my standard for him was one of my very own that had nothing to do with a grade.  My standard was more about how his heart was moved as we had Bible discussions.  I simply marked it passed on that study.  So even though Bible study is an going life time habit, you will still want to put some measurable system in place for the sake of counting it in high school.

As you  can see, you have a variety of ways to assign credit which are the core subjects, electives and things that you specifically assign which are important to your family.

Outside of the Textbook Credit Counts too!

High school is about the time in your teen’s life that he needs to explore, investigate and well grow up.  So there will be some things that you will want to assign as projects for the year.  This is perfectly normal. Both public and private schools have these options too.

For example, I assigned a 10 page essay for Mr. Senior 2013 as his final exam on the topic “What is Love?” where I expected him to break down verse by verse First Corinthians 13: 1-13.  Out of all the subjects I assigned him to write about, I couldn’t think of a topic more worthy to his heart and his eternal benefit to remember than the true meaning of love.  I won’t try to go teary eyed on you, but it was my last official writing assignment to him in high school.

{Geography Quest where Mr. Senior 2013 prepared a majority of notes and visual presentation on Turkey and directed his younger siblings on what to say too.  He was graded on all 3 aspects.}

So look at some of these other ways to assign 1.0 or 0.5 credit.

• It could be some kind of apprenticeship.
• It could be  some kind of community project.
• It could be any area that he demonstrated what I call a went “far and beyond” attitude to learning something.
• It could be an essay or other long-term project that goes to the very heart of why you homeschooled.
• It could be for helping you to keep up with his records, learning about the computer and doing self-learning, which is called orientation in some distance learning programs. (more on that below)

All families are different and their goals in their courses and projects should reflect that.  Some families are sports minded, others have children who want to be professional dancers or music players, others are scientific minded or want college academics in high school too.  So you can see that beyond the 3 R’s you have room to tailor your high school program to fit your family’s values or goals.

Praise for the Paper/Pen Method

The best way I kept up with what we did the first year was simply to journal it in  Microsoft Word.  At the end of the year was a better time to assess his credit based on what I kept up with during the year.  As I sat down each time whether it was daily or if I skipped a few days because of life, I simply typed up what I thought was important to know about that day or week if it was something beyond the 3 R’s.

Now, I use part of Evernote with Mr. Awesome too because I can access it with any device, but a simple method is best.  All the fancy forms can’t substitute for plain old journaling your journey.  I probably made way more notes than I needed to, but I also had it all.  I did eventually put it on the forms I made on Step 5a. Choose Unique Forms JUST for You.

Too, having helped lots of homeschool families prior I knew that many of the high school distance learning programs give a 0.5 credit called orientation as they introduced the students to using a computer and learning about high school when they enrolled.  Since Mr. Senior 2013 could help me too by keeping up with his student planner, and my curriculum planner and typing down some of what he did as he learned the parts of the computer, I could at least give him that credit too.

Junior High and High School Curriculum I use:

Though it may seem a lot to keep up with, it can be pretty straightforward if you will remember to not worry about counting actual hours if your child is using a high school course or textbook and it equals about a year.  If he passes, then that part is already done for you and you only have to keep up with the hours he worked on electives or other projects you assigned.

{Elective courses like woodworking and home economics from Christian Light Publication and learning about computers from Alpha Omega.}

Even some of the electives can be easy to figure out too like the one we used by Christian Light Publication called Beginning Woodworking.  It flat out said it was one credit.  Easy enough to figure it out by choosing from publishers like Christian Light Publication, Alpha Omega Publications and Bob Jones because they specifically state the credit hours for the elective.

I hope this helps you some and don’t be too rigid about counting hours.  As you can see sometimes it is hard to put a “time or hour” on reading lists.  Your teen needs to be worried about earning his grade instead of you worrying about getting it exactly right.  Just use the same grading system and way of determining credit throughout all of high school and it will be consistent.

Hang in there as you homeschool high school.  It really is a huge achievement and one well worth all the information you glean along the way.  I hope I added to your empowerment today.

Also, check out some of my other tips!

3 Ways to Homeschool the BIGS (a.k.a. Older Kids), 10 Days of Planning a Homeschool High School Graduation and Should I be Teaching Spelling to my Homeschooled Highschooler?

Hugs and love ya,