This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Choosing This Year’s Curriculum for Homeschool High School.

Choosing This Year's Curriculum for Homeschool High School

Choosing This Year’s Curriculum for Homeschool High School

Let’s talk about choosing this year’s curriculum for your homeschool high schoolers! This is one of the most fun (and sometimes stressful) parts of the homeschool year.

Every year, you have different circumstances and a different budget. Every year, you must choose curriculum that fits your teen’s goals (and your goals) for their graduation.

Featured in this post:

Tips from homeschool veterans on how to choose curriculum
Start with prayer
Clarify your budget
Remember your long-term and short-term goals
What kind of learning situation or curriculum is needed?
Factoring in circumstances
Used resources
Curriculum reviews
Every teen is different

So, here are tips from homeschool veterans on how to choose curriculum

Remember, there’s not ONE right way to homeschool high school, and there’s not ONE right way to choose curriculum. You are homeschooling to do what is best for your unique teens.

Start with prayer

The number one thing to do is to pray. As our 7Sister Kim always says, “Pray first and pray always.” We all need skillful and godly wisdom in all areas of our homeschooling, especially in purchasing curriculum.

Clarify your budget

The next thing we want to consider is the budget. These days, everything is more costly: groceries, gas, and medical expenses. Everybody needs to balance the budget as best they can.

What fits in your budget for this year’s curriculum purchases?

Remember your goals

Most, or all, of our curriculum choices need to reflect our short-term and long-term goals.

Long-term goals
- We know what our teens should have accomplished by the time they get to graduation day. If not, think about your teens walking across the stage or the backyard at graduation. While you are watching them, and you’re so proud, and you think, “These are the things they have accomplished, and we’re so grateful that they have accomplished those things, and we know they’re ready for the next part of life.”
- Those are your long-term goals.
Short-term goals
- What are this year’s specific goals that should be accomplished for those long-term goals to happen? (BTW- 7SistersHomeschool offers a self-paced online course for parents to help get started, including how to do your goal setting.)
- Look at the long-term goals. Break out the specific goals that need to be completed this year
  - What academic subjects will they be covering?
  - And is my teen this year working towards college or a career or the military or missions?
  - What should they work on towards those goals?

What kind of learning situation or curriculum do our teens (and we want) this year?

Talk with your teens. What are some considerations for curriculum and learning experiences that need to fit your budget?

Are they hoping for co-op, umbrella school, or digital classes? (Remember: you will need the required textbooks and supplies, along with any other required fees.
- Some teens really want to have live online classes. They want to learn with a teacher that they can see, but they don’t wanna leave home. Funda Funda Academy, our friend Meryl, who also does the Homeschooling with Technology podcast right here on the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.
- Many teens prefer to work with self-paced (or asynchronous classes), as 7Sisters offers.
What are my teen’s areas of interest?
Which careers or majors is my teen exploring?
Are there some areas that need extra textbooks or experiences to build a strong transcript?
What courses do I need to beef up?
What are my teens’ learning styles?
- Some teens love to sit down and read a textbook. They really like it.
- Some teens do not like to sit down and read a textbook.
Are our teens self-directed learners yet?
- Or are they working on a course they will need or want a lot of direction in? If your teen is facing a subject that they will need more support for, take a look at possible curriculum choices and make sure you and your teen both like it!

Factoring in circumstances

Are there circumstances that will affect curriculum needs and choices?

Teens’ Needs

Sometimes, teens hit a rough patch. For instance, let’s say your teen all of a sudden started worrying about whether they wanted to go to college. Like, “Oh, no, maybe I can’t do it.” And before we had been thinking, “Oh, let’s, let’s do a more competitive college,” or, “Let’s aim for our state college.” And the teen all of a sudden gets angsty and says, “I don’t know whether I can do this honors-level work that is required for admissions to competitive colleges.”
- When this happens, you might be hearing some burnout, so you might need to back it off this year. Thus, you will be looking for a curriculum that gives them a little bit of time to recalibrate (more of the basic college-prep curriculum rather than Level 5/Honors work.
Family’s needs
- What are our family needs this year?
  - Do you have multiple high schoolers or multiple kids?
  - Do we need portable curriculum because we’re gonna be road schooling this year
  - If there are needs for less space, you definitely want to look into PDF curriculum like 7Sisters Homeschool.

Used resources

Are there some subjects that my teens can share a textbook or borrow one from a friend? (Our umbrella school has a lending library of sharable curriculum.) Of course, this is limited by any copyright rules (such as sharing downloadable curriculum is usually only okay between family members).

Curriculum Reviews

Many homeschooling families feel best with actual curriculum, whether this is downloadable PDFs or hardcover textbooks. Check out these resources:

Our friend, CJ at Homeschooling Through High School provides helpful YouTube reviews
Cathy Duffy at Cathy Duffy Reviews is the matriarch of homeschool curriculum reviews and has been around since the early days of homeschooling
The Curriculum Choice provides in-depth reviews

Every teen is different

There’s not one right way to be a learner. Some teens are more interest-led, preferring a more relaxed homeschooling or even unschooling situation. For those teens, you may just totally toss out the textbook and work more on logging hours.

You can always change things up

Relax. You can give yourself comfort in knowing that even if you get a curriculum that doesn’t really fit, it is okay at any point during the year to say, “this isn’t working,” ...