So, we are at that summer between seventh and eighth grade with our oldest child and we need to start looking ahead and figuring out options regarding homeschooling high school (or maybe we don’t need options and that is an option!)…It has always been our plan to homeschool through high school, but sometimes it is hard to figure out how that will look, and I find there are not a lot of people to even talk with about the options as so many homeschooling parents in my area or whom I know personally plan to use a public or private high school.

Our family lives in a big metropolitan area that is in a relatively friendly-to-homeschooling state, so these are some of the options I have found so far:

• Some people do hybrid homeschool programs, where the student goes to class two or three days a week and the off-days the student works at home.  At the end, the student “graduates” high school  from the hybrid program.  However, we don’t feel as pulled to the hybrids, because unfortunately for us, almost all of them use very conservative Christian curriculums, including science. So for our family that is out.
• Some just use selected classes that they find locally, on-line, or distance,  to round out classes.
• Some find accelerated private programs that are labeled “homeschool” programs but run three days a week or so 8-noon and contain an entire high school program (usually geared toward athletes or musicians who need to do their thing and still finish high school). 
• Some homeschool at home with no outside classes or support.
• Some homeschool with help of outside classes or not until the child is age 16 and  then does dual enrollment, which is where a student enrolls at a local college and earns both high school and college credit.
• Some homeschool high school with an emphasis on real-life experiences, internships, etc and translate that into a transcript as needed – unschoolers do this all the time of course, but I find some families are drawn to this in the high school years – especially if their child has a certain passion!

So, for this eighth grade year we are homeschooling at home and using Oak Meadow distance learning for high school credit for Spanish I.  That is about as far as we have gotten, and I guess the rest will unfold over time.

I would love to hear your homeschooling high school experiences, thoughts and plans.

Many blessings,
Carrie