January 11, 2001 - LA & High School

HIGH SCHOOL and LA
Many of you have elected to continue on with LA and plan on supplementing
for your high schoolers with additional materials. This can work well and
will allow you to continue using a family-learning approach. However, I
just need to remind everyone that this study was written for grades 4-8 and
includes skills and concepts for those grades only. You MUST supplement if
you are using this for high school! There are more advanced concepts you
need to cover in order prepare your child for whatever will come after high
school - and these are NOT covered in LA. IF your child is college-bound -
you need to supplement - (or replace, because in my opinion doing both will
probably be too much) LA science with a traditional/formal course of study
(Apologia, or another science textbook series, for example). You should
also be supplementing in writing and language skills, as well as in
literature - by providing more advanced literature (some of which I suggest
at the beginning of each unit). You could still stay together as a family
in the literature of LA and assign the advanced books for your high
schooler as collateral reading and towards the hours needed for each
literature credit. Advanced grammar, and writing assignments and
techniques for high schoolers go beyond what we cover in LA - unless you
have a Bachelor's degree in English, you really need a formal text to help
you out in this area - even if it is to keep you on track with what you
need to cover in order to prepare your high schooler for college courses.
Other than these areas, I think all the other subjects can be done "unit
study" fashion - using library books and assigning term papers and projects
to reinforce and extend the reading. The only other areas I can think of
that you would need to use formal texts to add to the high schooler's
schedule are: foreign language, and perhaps texts for: government, speech,
geography (and other more "specific" branches of the major subject areas).

PLEASE use a homeschooler's high school guide!! Don't try to do this on
your own! Don't find out TOO LATE that you should have been forming a
transcript a certain way - or covering certain classes. There are certain
courses required of each high school student - see to it that you know what
these are! The book that Robin and others mentioned is one of these high
school homeschool guides. Another book - the one we use - is called HOME
SCHOOL, HIGH SCHOOL, AND BEYOND - by Beverly Adams-Gordon (the author of
Spelling Power). This book covers time management, career exploration,
organizational and study skills in a course for high schoolers. It
includes transcript preparation, credits/units information, courses of
study needed for graduating seniors, high school specializations for for
those planning to continue their education, and gives EXCELLENT ideas for
forming elective courses under the umbrella of each major subject area.

My advice to you - whether you follow LA for your high schooler or not . .
. BUY ONE OF THESE GUIDES!!! You will NOT regret spending $20 or so - and
will be impressed by the information and security these books provide.
They will give you the confidence you need to take your teen through the
high school years at home.