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Angel
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 3:45pm | IP Logged
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I'm starting to plan for next year and have run into a problem. My oldest ds (12th grade next year) and my dd (10th grade next year) have always been combined for much of their work. This year, for instance, we're doing a variation of Sally's Western Civ 1 plans . Now the logical thing for my dd, who is in 9th grade right now, would be to continue on to Western Civ 2 and medieval Europe. But my son feels he has already spent a lot of time on the Middle Ages (7th and 8th grade, much of it at a 9th grade-ish level), and in looking back, I see that we are lacking in modern history. So it makes more sense for him to jump forward in time to the 20th century.
That should seem cut and dried, but I am not really sure I can handle 2 separate high school humanities courses along with 4 other elementary-aged students, a preschooler who neeeeeds something to do with his time, and a baby who's about to turn 1. Then there's the college application process which we will undertake for the first time this fall. (Gulp.)
Any advice? I'm really torn on this issue... In a perfect world, I think I would not combine them this year, but I really don't want to drop the ball and let the perfect become the enemy of the good!
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Angela
Mom to 9, 7 boys and 2 girls
Three Plus Two
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 3:53pm | IP Logged
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I think would put them both in a modern history course and let your dd continue to the second part of Western Civ the following year.
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
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[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 4:17pm | IP Logged
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We were in the exact same position last year when planning for my rising 12th grader and 8th grader. My rising 12th grader felt passionately about a history course that was strong in modern history with some good Constitutional sources thrown in to prepare her for "stepping out."
We ended up letting the 8th grader continue with the next logical progression in history (Ancient for us), and I planned a modern history (emphasis on current events) course for my 12th grader. It has worked out very well (we're in home stretch of the 3rd Term here). It's been a year of "connections" - reading current sources and an ability to relate to the past years of history reading...ie. connections to mythology, Shakespeare, Crusades/Holy Wars, etc.
Other than the time spent preparing and planning, the split in history studies hasn't been a burden for me. My 12th grader writes narrations and keeps a current events calendar (in iCal) which we share so I can see her entries and comment. Other than the written narrations and our occasional {Socratic-esque} discussions from her reading, she writes essays at the end of each term from her reading.
The rest of my kids (1st, 4th, and 8th) are all reading from Ancient History sources. It's actually kind of neat - through the open discussions here during the day, the 12th grader makes connections from Ancient History to current happenings. It has begun that process for her of relating events and stepping into The Great Conversation.
I actually planned to hit Modern History for 12th grade all along, and I'm glad we've done it this way. My 12th grader brings the full panoramic context of her past years of history reading to the table, and a maturity that lets us hit current topics that are sometimes/often  .
Good luck deciding, Angela!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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SallyT
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 6:14pm | IP Logged
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Ancient-Medieval/Renaissance-New World/America-Modern is my planned progression -- I won't have overlapping high-school students, though, until my youngest two are in 9th and 10th, at which point I may be asking myself many of the same questions!
My own gut instinct would be to let them do the logical progression of history, separately, with a huge emphasis on independent reading (maybe with some Great Courses lecture series?) and narration/writing, as Jen describes. For your 12th grader, the emphasis on independent study would be an important piece of college preparation anyway. My own college student has stressed to me over and over that the single best preparation she had for college was having to manage her own studies on her own time. So if I had to budget my planning time, I would throw a huge part of it towards setting up a modern history course that the 12th grader can take and run with.
THEN I'd get the 10th grader similarly set up. I think what you want, ideally, is for each of them to be able to function pretty independently day to day, with a key meeting with you daily, weekly, however often you want to schedule it, to talk things over. If you wanted, you could have an "All-High-School" meeting, where each of them shares what he/she has been reading and thinking about. As Jen says, some interesting connections can happen.
The cornerstone of my planning for all this would be the development of a reading list (which I've done for WC II here-- haven't gotten to modern yet!), with the idea that truly, if they did nothing but read and talk to you, that would be fine.
THEN you do whatever planning you do for the younger ones. And not that that's not important (I know perfectly well that it is!), but getting your high-schoolers rolling with what they need is priority #1. I find that I spend more time on the front end in planning for my current high-schooler because, day to day, my face time is largely going to be devoted to the younger kids. With them I can just sketch out booklists and we're more or less good to go. I'm not juggling as many levels of need as you are by a long shot, but as a basic strategy, I find this very helpful.
And I mean, shake this out in your mind and see if it feels right. This is what I would do, but it's not what you have to do. I have just separated my very close-in-age youngest children this year -- they're 17 months apart, a grade level apart in their schoolwork -- precisely because I don't want them doing all the same high-school work at the same time, so that I'm left wondering what to do with the youngest when her brother graduates. I have found that once kids are able to work at least semi-independently, it's no more trouble, and in some ways actually less trouble, to have them in separate courses of study than to have them together. More planning on the front end, but in many ways very freeing in practice. But of course YMMV.
Meanwhile, I'm really glad the WC plans were helpful to you this year!
Sally
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pumpkinmom
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 6:23pm | IP Logged
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Great question! I see this happening to us in a couple of years and I was wondering how to pull it off.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 7:03pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
| For your 12th grader, the emphasis on independent study would be an important piece of college preparation anyway. |
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Completely agreeing with this!
Our lesson plans are usually pretty specific in layout and work expected each day/week. For our 12th grader, we consciously moved toward a plan that was more of a term syllabus. I identify books, a page range, whether or not written narrations or notebooking of some kind is expected. I indicate whether or not I will expect an essay at the end of a book. So, it's really a top-down view of a term. The actual day-to-day living is ENTIRELY up to the child!
We talked about time management for her term work before we started rolling and I won't say it was smooth sailing during that 1st term - it wasnt! She dropped the ball in a number of ways...ways that I didn't anticipate! And I had to exercise a fair amount of watching and *judicious stepping back* (wise and purposeful letting alone!!) so that the consequences could speak...and they did! But...I was SO GLAD for having lived out that 1st term like that because we both (she and I) found together the areas of time management she was weakest and SHE worked to identify solutions! I worked more as a sounding board and advice-giver while she was in charge of straightening out the mess. It was a FANTASTIC learning experience for her and she's rolling with living out her term syllabus/overview of plans very nicely now. She's learned to take a term outline of expectations and divide it out and split it up over the term.
Anyway...I know this is sort of a tangential part of your question, but when Sally mentioned her own dd's experience it rang so true with my daughter's experience this year that I thought it was worth underlining. And it does relate directly to how you can successfully break kids out of common studies. These older children move more and more toward independence in their work, and it really isn't always pretty or smooth at first. Honestly, I really expected a much smoother transition than we had - but I'm really glad that we worked through that in the senior year so that there was time to identify the problem and encourage the student to brainstorm the problem (on their own!!! Of course - I helped, but that's another skill they need - the ability to brainstorm their own problems and find solutions!!!) and find solutions that work for their individual needs.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 7:14pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
The cornerstone of my planning for all this would be the development of a reading list (which I've done for WC II here-- haven't gotten to modern yet!), with the idea that truly, if they did nothing but read and talk to you, that would be fine.
>> snip <<
I find that I spend more time on the front end in planning for my current high-schooler because, day to day, my face time is largely going to be devoted to the younger kids. |
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Underlining more from Sally because this is exactly how this plays out here and I do think it factors into the HOW of a deep and meaty liberal arts based high school education.
LITTLES - TIME INVESTMENT --> DAY-TO-DAY LIVING
I know very well that my investment here pays off in years to come.
Here is where I build good habits and REALLY spend time engaging in skill building and the wise offering of excellent ideas.
In the younger years, my plans tend to flex more as the child needs...this requires more of my very active involvement in the day-to-day.
HIGH SCHOOLERS - TIME INVESTMENT--> FRONT END PLANNING
Their day-to-day living is a skill they learn and exercise.
They submit more in conversations and written work (notebooking) that allows me to follow along.
We have periodic regular check-ins that work well for conversations on books.
Because of established habits of read/narrate, we can engage quickly on subject matter.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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Aagot
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 7:16pm | IP Logged
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So Jen,
What were the consequences when your dd dropped the ball?
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged
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She had a requisite amount of work (that we both identified and she agreed on) that had to be completed to finish the term. In between terms and throughout the term, I build a certain amount of down time into our year. These down times are weeks off in between terms and days off here and there. Our legal requirements are that a certain amount of days must completed by end of year. In order to graduate, she has to have the requisite number of legal days completed...or...wait to graduate. She is motivated to graduate. Therefore -- that 1st term, she had to use the flex time to catch up on her work rather than have any breaks in work that 1st term.
These consequences were not arbitrarily decided on, and I think this is a key component of home education in high school: communication. It is NOT my job to drive a high school lesson plan. By high school, the student should be able to work independently. This requires clear communication up front about expectations and a sort of "signing off" on expectations by the student. I'm always available for advice, guidance, resources, suggestions...but the student lives the plan...and the student digs out of any holes.
In fairness to my dd, I want to add that this is the first year she's had a number of outside the home activities that were time-demanding: jobs, trips, classes, volunteering. All of this really did muddy the waters so to speak - in a very good way! Life isn't always straight-forward either, is it? She was forced to begin to identify priorities and work habits that had been spelled out for her in earlier years. In other words, *SHE* had to do the brainstorming, shifting and adjusting in her plans and her school day...and as she evaluated she easily saw that she lost ground and knew what that meant.
She learned so much though! And now...there may be an opportunity to go somewhere or do something, and when I invite her, she consults her planner first and it's not unusual for her to decline in order to get her work done! I think that's a HUGE lesson learned in setting priorities and managing time!!!
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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SallyT
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| Posted: March 10 2014 at 10:28pm | IP Logged
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Yes, it's the juggling that's hard. My tenth grader has had, basically, a good year so far, but the bumps he has run into have all been about balancing time spent on work for me, work for outside classes (hey! am I not as important as Dr. Chemistry Professor??), and a job which we let him take because of the educational benefits, mentoring from a very fine Catholic man in our parish who's his boss, etc.
Some of the answer has been to adjust what I was asking for, because I'd just piled everything I ran across into our syllabus, which was probably more than any one human being could reasonably expect to do. But some of the answer has *also* been that we've had to work on accountability and time management.
We do a short weekly meeting on Tuesday mornings, which helps -- I can look at the week with him, we can talk about what's important for him to do, and I can learn what he has on his agenda that I might not have known about otherwise (tests in his outside classes, changes in work schedule, etc). All of that helps us to prioritize. And I have to get him to let me help him prioritize -- he's very much a lone ranger, so sometimes I have to push him to admit that something's not working and to let me help him figure out how to change that.
But really, overall, it's his education. He has some goals and aspirations, and he likes to know things, so in many ways he's a very easy case, in that he is fairly naturally self-directed and has self-made consequences in place -- he wants to graduate on time, wants to go to a certain kind of college, wants to do any number of rather competitive things. All of that keeps him fairly serious and in the road.
But as Jen says, it's a learning process, and it's not always neat and tidy. Sometimes the very untidiness of it is what's so valuable.
Sally
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Angel
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Wow! Lots of great discussion! Thank you, Jen and Sally, for your thoughtful replies. I'm going to re-read everything in the morning when I can process it better, but I just wanted to mention that we have had the same experience this year with my oldest re:time management and independence (also due mostly to an outside chemistry class). I've been very pleased this year with the leaps in maturity I've seen him make because of those bumps he's had to handle, and now he keeps his outside classes running very smoothly. I think this has spilled over into our at-home studies, too, although if he's going to let something slide, it's usually work for me. Probably this is my fault to some extent, though, for not setting up the proper expectations and in some cases not being able to finish making up book lists and assignments in an organized fashion so he could complete them.
This is what worries me the most, I guess. His 10th grade year we dropped the ball in certain areas because I was pregnant with a baby born in March. I just didn't or couldn't stay on top of things. So - knowing myself -- I don't want to stretch myself too thin and drop the ball for everyone.
On the other hand... I really do think I am leaning in the same direction that you two are taking. So often it seems like the oldest sets up the scheme for everybody else to follow in a large family, and I'm not sure that's always to the benefit of kids # 2- plus. Of course, it helps that Sally has Western Civ II plans already written that I can use! We ended up expanding the non Western civ sections of the Ancient World quite a bit, but it has still been so helpful just to have a template to fit things into. Both my kids have requested an apologetics course next year, so we could probably end up sharing some of the religion resources at least...
Hmm. Lots of ideas to sleep on - thanks! 
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Angela
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SallyT
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| Posted: March 11 2014 at 8:33am | IP Logged
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I'd love to hear about your expansions of the ancient history course!
Sally
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: Combining high school students
