I am in the process of finding a curriculum that my son would like for 9th grade (HS) homeschooling but will allow for DE as well. He was homeschooled in 8th grade, and we used several different curriculum rather than one standard program. However, I feel as though maybe just one curriculum would be better and perhaps more cohesive for him. Does anybody have any experience they’d like to share so that we could make DE an option as well?
You might want to post this on the homeschool board.
My kid homeschooled and was a DE student in 11th and 12th grade (he could not start earlier in our state). It did work well. Prior to DE he used a mix of curriculum, online, and co-op classes. It has worked better here to pick things by subject area and not use one overarching curriculum. Especially when we started adding DE classes in the mix. For example English 9 was a grammar curriculum, 2 online writing classes through Bravewriter, and a book club discussion group that read 10 classics (1 per month).
I homeschooled my 4 all the way through and we always used a mix of curriculum/programs. I saw no advantage for us to use just one program. Mine started DE in 10th or 11th grade (varied with the child and their situation) as we live near a very good community college. If you are near a college, just set up an appointment with the guidance dept and learn about what they offer as every school has different programs and rules. You’ll want to see how open the particular school is to having high school students in the classroom.
Online is an option as well, but my kids preferred an actual class to an online option.
AP online classes are also an option as are preparing for CLEP exams.
Our 6th child will be a sr next yr. All of our kids have homeschooled from K. I also see no advantage to using a single program. Our kids have all taken wildly diverse high school courses since each high school sequence has been designed specifically around their individual needs/interests. Our kids have done the majority of their courses at home with me as their primary teacher. Some have taken a couple of DE courses and 1 who was quite advanced in math DE in several math and physics courses at the local U.
Fwiw, the only right answer is whatever works for your family and your student. Homeschoolers do not need to replicate ps in their home. (We absolutely do not. That is not the reason we homeschool. If I wanted them to have the equivalent of a ps eduction, I wouldn’t have spent my life homeschooling.)
If you want more support for your adventure into homeschooling high school, you might want to consider the hs2coll yahoo group.
We don’t use a single curriculum, we mix and match what works best for each kid in any given year. My girls have both participated in DE and our other curriculum really had no bearing on it, or their ability to be successful.