BJ's Curriculum Choices for - High School -

This article is all about our favorite homeschool high school curriculum choices for the core subjects. This post may included affiliate links to products that we love and have used or would use in our own homeschool. Please see my disclosure policy. 


At BJ's Homeschool, we started homeschooling when my daughter was 4, and went all the way to high school. She is now a rising junior in college. Homeschooling high school prepared her well for college, and she is thriving there.

So if you are thinking about college for your teen, be encouraged.

Our Favorites for High School Curriculum

We took our time choosing our high school curriculum. We kept our favorites from middle school, then added in some new ones too. And we kept our nurturing homeschooling style..all the way....

So what did we pick for:

•  Homeschool High School Science

• Math 

• English

• Social Studies 

• and Foreign Language

Let's get started!

HOMESCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE

Exploring our beautiful world is still so important during the high school years, too.

We spent time at the beach, in our favorite parks, taking nature photography pictures, too. This helped to motivate my daughter, when it came to her science studies.

We found many options for science including Oak Meadow, Apologia, A Beka, Switch-On-Schoolhouse (SOS), etc.

We chose Switched-On-Schoolhouse (SOS). We wanted a computer based program, and my daughter wanted to work independently. Plus it was all graded for me! We used them for:

Physical Science - 9th grade

Biology - 10th grade

Chemistry - 11th grade

Many families do two or three years of science.

Most college just require two, Biology and Chemistry with labs, unless your student is heading to a science oriented major in college.

Then they would likely look for another as well.

SOS also have tutoring available by the half hour. Working some of the science problems out with a teacher really helped, when complex concepts came up.

We also used Home Science Tools for our high school lab kits.

Other Science Options we considered:

Oak Meadow, Apologia, A Beka, Lifepacs, Apologia Science

HOMESCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL MATH

We looked at LifePacs, Switch-On-Schoolhouse, Math-You-See, A Beka, etc.

We also considered Teaching Textbooks, but found that, for us, it did not provide enough depth for good retention. It's all about what fits your student.

We found that SOS met our daughter's needs for math. It had the structured and depth to help my daughter retain what she had learned. We used it for:

Prealgebra - 8th grade 

Algebra 1- 9th grade 

Geometry - 10th grade 

Algebra 2 - 11th grade

Teens going into a computer, economics or math related field will need pre-cal in senior year,.......but I encourage you to check with the colleges, just in case there is another course required.

Others that we considered:

We check out The Curriculum Choice for a review of ALEKS, and No-Nonsense Algebra, Saxon, VideoText for Prealgebra, and more, all very strong.

HOMESCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH

One option that many families do for English, is to create their own courses, and pick out the living literature yourself. Pairing that your own writing assignments, essays, etc can make up a complete English course for your teen.

We decided to go another way, and chose Oak Meadow, which offered a number of living literature courses, from 9th to 12th grade. Oak Meadow helped our daughter with her essay writing.

We liked how Oak Meadow offered tons of great questions for each piece of literature, which helped my daughter to do her essays in a complete and skillful way. Oak Meadow was also great for teaching literary analysis.

With theses courses, my daughter learned:

• how to write a variety of essays,
• and also do bibliographies for her research papers,
• and to do literary analysis papers. too.
• It prepared her well for college English studies later on.

Then we found the homeschool high school English courses from 7 Sisters Homeschool. They do the same kind of things as Oak Meadow did, but at a much more frugal price.

They have a lot of well done complete English programs. Click 7 Sisters Homeschool English to see all that they offer. Their one year high school English courses are less than $30.00, and it is written to appeal to teens, avoiding busywork.

Click here to read more about Our Favorite High School English Courses.

Another popular choice for English is the Institute of Excellence in Writing, IEW, which offers a structured, step by step approach to composition. It is very rigid in its approach, but some students like that.

Other options we considered:

We also looked at such programs as Hewitt Homeschooling: Lightning Literature & Composition, Lifepacs, and SOS.

We found them all to be very strong.

HOMESCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL SOCIAL STUDIES

Social studies can include a wide variety of subjects, such as World History, US History, Geography, Economics, Psychology, etc.

Some colleges look for specifics in this, but our college let us choose from a variety of subjects.

We decided to use Oak Meadow's courses and some from the Rainbow Resource catalog.

We used Oak Meadow for:

Civics - 9th grade 

World History - 11th grade

and then:

We used Rainbow Resource for 

US History - 10th grade 

Then senior year, we did an online course in Government, from Northwestern Christian College.

It was excellent, and it my daughter a good introduction to how our government works.

Other options we considered:

We also checked out SOS and Lifepacs, for social studies, all strong programs.

 HOMESCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL FOREIGN LANGUAGE

We chose a Spanish 1 class from a regional school program in our area, Highline Choice Academy, which offered it twice a week, and gave our daughter in person practice.

For Spanish 2, we went with the homeschool version of Rosetta Stone (RS) @ http://www.rosettastone.com.

I liked the homeschool version best because it included grammar, while the regular RS version did not. Also, our college choices preferred the homeschool version. Most colleges require two years of the same foreign language for their incoming freshmen.

Other Options We Considered:

We also looked at SOS and Monarch from Alpha Omega, and, but wanted something that focused more on conversational Spanish, which we found in Rosetta Stone.

There are so many options for foreign language. Cathy Duffy has a number of reviews of foreign language curricula.

HOMESCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL ELECTIVES

Electives were the most fun of all! They were all chosen by my daughter. They were all chosen by my daughter.

Her favorite was based on a high school activity called Youth and Government. We just counted all of the meetings and activities that she attended and made it into a credit in State Government. My book below, tells you how to do that.

That is what she was learning through their fun youth mock legislature activities.

My teen also did a homemade video-making course, and homemade courses in creative writing, photography, drawing, and PE.

What is your teen passionate about? How do they spend their time, when they have free time?

What are their strengths or gifts?  

Would you like a guide to planning your high school at home?

Homeschoolers are being widely accepted by colleges, especially when they have good course descriptions and quality reference letters coming along for the ride. 

What is in this book? 

Click here for more information: Frugal College Prep for Homeschoolers

Homeschooling High School with College in Mind 

- 2nd edition

Click below to see what is in it:

Homeschooling High School with College in Mind - 2nd edition, 

Paperback on Amazon $11.99

Kindle on Amazon $6.16 

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool, 

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college junior, whom she homeschooled from day one. She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, high school & college and wrote the book - Homeschooling High School with College in Mind. She offers free homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting.

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This post is a part of the 8th Annual Back to Homeschool Blog Hop-Curriculum Week. Check out all the other great posts from iHN veteran homeschoolers.