High School Homeschool – Soft Start in Summer

Like many people, I consider Labor Day weekend the end of summer. However, we are not waiting until then to continue our high school homeschool studies. We started up again with a few things this week, essentially getting a six week mini-session in before everything associated with a new school year kicks in.

After deciding to add another year to high school, we backed off a bit at the end of the last homeschool year to take some pressure off ourselves. We were weary. But we both recognize that it’s probably best that we not take the entire summer off from everything.

So this week we started up with Math (because dyscalculia), Visual Latin, Bible reading, and one other subject that changes from day to day (Psychology, Biology, etc.). One of my goals is to give us a running start with some of these (Math and Latin) to take off the pressure of starting everything at once. The other goal/need is to finish up a couple of subjects that we stopped because we knew we required a break before they could reasonably be completed (Psychology, in particular).

We’re using Introduction to Psychology from a Christian Worldview from 7Sisters Homeschool. We have a previous edition so ours will be a bit different from this one I linked to, but it is a good half credit elective.

We also need to do our final wrap-up of Devotional Biology which is basically done except for a final review/exam of my making. We both LOVED this course, but we also did a lot of adapting it to our particular needs and goals. We enjoyed it so much we were actually sad when we got to the last video lesson. Caroline has said that her two favorite courses so far are this biology course and the art history course I wrote about here: The Master and His Apprentices – Christian Art History for Homeschoolers.

(Sadly I cannot be an affiliate for anything at Compass Classroom such as Visual Latin and Devotional Biology because I don’t have a PayPal account. David and I closed our PayPal business account last year due to their new policy of pulling significant financial penalties from your bank account at their discretion if they find you guilty of anything they define as wrong speak. It’s so ironic because some of the courses we have truly loved and I would highly recommend are from Compass Classroom. Such is life right now.)

I am hoping to do two cinema studies this summer that will count toward our Literature tally. It will probably be Chariots of Fire and 12 Angry Men from 7Sisters Homeschool. We’ve already used and enjoyed their guides for The Wizard of Oz, The Truman Show, and A Christmas Carol. (See my post here for more details: 7Sisters Cinema Studies for Literature – High School Homeschool.)

So that’s what we’re doing. We’re spending about 90 minutes a day three or four days a week on these topics which is enough to move forward, but not feel like we’ve lost the rest of our much-needed summer vacation. It’s tempting to add more, but we both need time to do our own things for the next few weeks.

It’s striking how Caroline is so much more creative when she has loads of uninterrupted time to herself. I still don’t have all the answers for how to effectively homeschool a creative child, but I’ve learned quite a bit over the years. Creativity takes time and it is rarely forced into little bits of time squeezed in-between other mentally draining activities. God clearly values creativity. So how do we shepherd that in our children who are specifically wired in that way? Those are questions I continue to think about.

Photo credit