From the High School Lesson Book - Planning for Grad

Goodness, I'm late to my own linky party this week - how embarrassing! I've been distracted today, and some of the things on my to-do list are items for Landon's upcoming graduation. Which is, of course, what I'd planned to write about here.

We have graduated two from our homeschool already, and we are involved in a homeschool umbrella group that offers a graduation ceremony for those families that would like to participate. We also belong to a homeschool fellowship that does some special recognition to grads.

The homeschool group's grad ceremony is planned over the course of several months, guided by a committee, and with input from the grad families. At a very reasonable cost to the grad families, the group provides the cap and gown and a diploma. We arrange for a photographer to be there and families usually come away from the ceremony with not only beautiful portraits of the grad, but some wonderful family pictures as well. There's a reception after the ceremony as well. Basically, our commencement exercises include the traditional things you'd expect at a large school ceremony - Pomp and Circumstance, presentation of diplomas, and a commencement address. The parents present the diploma to their student. We include some music and a time of worship, and put together a powerpoint with photos of each student through the years accompanied by music of their choice. We also print a program that includes a short bio of each student. That kind of individual attention to each student's personality and achievements make it a very special event, even when we have a relatively large class as we do this year. For us, a large class is about 15 students!

I don't have pictures easily available from Harrison's ceremony, and my time is short, so I will settle for just this one.

At the reception, each grad has a display with some photographs, trophies, mementos from their school years, etc. This is the board we put together for Spencer. It has a few pictures of him and a few drawings that he chose.

This is how we displayed it at the reception.

This is how we did Harrison's. He had just a few items he wanted to display, including a huge inflatable microphone I got for his party, because he was headed to broadcasting school.

I have to get to work on Landon's display at some point, but before that there are many other things to do! I have to finish writing his student profile that will be featured in our grad program. I just sent off the information that will be in our fellowship group's yearbook. That's right - homeschoolers can get yearbooks! We had Landon's senior portraits taken a couple weeks ago, and I've got his grad announcements ready to send out - just as soon as we also settle on a date for his grad party, so I can include invitations to that event. Here's the front/back view of the announcement (with some details scrubbed from the photo I took, obviously) that I designed and and ordered from HomeschoolDiploma.com. I did that the same day I was finalizing my review of HomeschoolDiploma.com, which you can read here: Diplomas for Homeschool Grads (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

The other special thing that our family has done for our grads, and will do for Landon (and Kennady, in her turn) is to give them an opportunity to choose our vacation destination the summer following their graduation. So this year will be The Summer of Landon, and we're still figuring out what we'll be doing! You can read about this family tradition of ours in my post Vacation Plans.

My related posts:
Vacation Plans
Diplomas for Homeschool Grads (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

How do you plan to celebrate your graduate's achievement? Or is it still a few years off and you haven't thought about it much? Leave a comment and let me know, and link up your posts about homeschooling high school here. Visit your neighbors and leave some encouraging comments!

An InLinkz Link-up

If you're homeschooling through high school and have not yet joined the Blog Roll, please take a moment to do that as well.

Don't forget about the Schoolhouse Store freebies I'm offering this month! You can find the coupon code here: Free Helps for Homeschooling High School.



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This post has also been linked up at the Homeschool Mother's Journal hosted by NextGenHomeschool, as a Fifth Saturday featured post.

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