You mean I have to PLAN our Homeschool High School?!?

People who have known me since the kids were all little find this confession shocking, I know.  But when it comes to planning for homeschooling, I'm pretty much a do the next thing until something else comes along type.

I don't plan well.

I don't have pretty little schedules that show what each kid will be doing to earn the perfect number of credits by the time they graduate.  In fact, well, yeah, I just suck at planning.

Fortunately for you, most of the folks doing this Homeschooling High School blog hop are far more together and on the ball, so you can read their posts.

But if you are a lot more seat-of-their-pants in your approach, maybe I'll say something worth hearing.

So, for lame-planners like me, how in the world do we pull off high school?

Here is my approach:

1. I schedule a teacher-student meeting with each of my high school students sometime during the summer, and usually also the last week of December/first week of January.  Now that there are three of them, I start with the oldest and work my way down.
2. I print out some forms and we go filling things in.  What courses have they completed since we last met?  What is in progress?
3. We chat about what they want to be learning and what courses they would like to take.
4. We make sure things add up to some semblance of 'this will look okay on a transcript' before we consider ourselves done.
5. We talk about other stuff.

Let's talk at least a little for specifics.  I use the High School Planner from The Old Schoolhouse (available with a SchoolhouseTeachers.com membership!) and print out a handful of pages that I think we might use.  You can see those above.

I try to actually get just the individual student off somewhere with no siblings.  We've done Starbucks, we've done some restaurants.  Usually, though, I boot folks out of the dining room and we do it there.

That's what I did with Connor a couple of weeks ago.

He and I had a really good session, filling in a lot of information on pretty much all of the sheets I show above.  He has to whittle down what he wants to do, and we now have a plan for his senior year.

Today, I did the same with William.  That worked out a bit differently.  He's heading into his sophomore year and he'd be happy if he could just take 8 credits of history each year from here on out.

We had to work at getting more into his next year plan, but I'm pretty happy with what we did figure out today.  Algebra, English, Medieval history, Russian history, Physics, Latin, Driver's Ed, PE, and Art History.

I still have to sit down with Thomas and figure out things for him, but I have to work on some details for William first.  Like the art history.  I don't have the first clue what I'll do there.

For me, the bottom line in successful high school planning is just to meet with them twice a year and assess where we are and what needs to happen.  So much stuff is really a question of doing the next thing (math) or of turning something they are excited about into a high school course.  That stuff I tend to already be doing, I just don't always realize it.

I do try to go with a college-prep type of course load.  We shoot for 4 years of English, math, science and social studies, plus 2 years of a foreign language, something for PE and fine arts, and some electives.

Fortunately for you, my Crewmates on this blog hop are mostly much better planners than I am, so you can probably actually learn something by reading their posts.  Go.  Check them out!

Meg from Adventures with Jude on Planning Your Homeschool High School

Chareen at Every Bed of Roses with thoughts on Planning to Homeschool through the High School Years

April from ElCloud Homeschool shares Homeschooling High School: Planning For High School

Michele at Family, Faith and Fridays shares Here's the Plan

Lisa at Golden Grasses says Don't Panic! Homeshcooling High School Blog Hop

Debbie at Debbie's Homeschool Corner Planning Out a High School Program

Gena over at I Choose Joy! shares her The Top Tip for Planning Homeschool High School

Kym at Homeschool Coffee Break shares on Planning and Preparing for Success

Tess from Circling Through This Life shares on Planning the High School Years

Erica over at Be The One shares Planning and Record Keeping for High School

Jennifer from A Glimpse of Our Life on Planning For Homeschooling Highschool

Carol over at Home Sweet Life on Making A Plan

Wendy at Life at Rossmont shares thoughts on Planning for High School

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm shares on Making High School Plans

Dawn Oaks at Double O Farms shares Planning for the High School Years

Leah from As We Walk Along the Road shares her thoughts on Making Plans for Homeschooling Through High School