How Do You Fit Electives Into Your Homeschool Schedule?

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As homeschoolers, we are often curious about the schedules of others. Do we do school every day? Stick to a strict time block schedule? What time do we start in the morning? I'm definitely going to get to questions like those in this series! But today, for the blog hop's Work It In Wednesday theme, I'm going to focus on this schedule-related question:

How Do You Fit Electives Into Your Homeschool Schedule?

It's quite a timely question too, because it's something we're starting to wrestle with for this school year. If you looked at our curriculum line-up yesterday (What Curriculum Are You Using in Your Homeschool?), you might have noticed that it was a pretty full list. Yeah, I've seen homeschool schedules that pack a lot in and make us look like slackers, but honestly that's nine credits worth of work right there. So where do we find room?

Thankfully, that line-up does include the electives for which she is earning high school credit. In addition to the core academics, our high school graduation requirements include:

Bible - 2 credits

Phys.Ed. - 1 credit

Technology - 1 credit

Fine Arts - 1 credit

Health - 1/2 credit

Electives - 5-1/2 credits

Phys.Ed. and Health are already looked after, as is one of the two Bible credits. And I don't even know how many Fine Arts credits she already has. A lot. She has enough credits, but she still needs one more Bible credit and the Technology credit. 

Because we use Notgrass courses for high school history, those Bible credits are easy to fit in! She earned one for Exploring World History, and will get the second one this coming year with Exploring America. That's one easy way to fit full electives into the schedule - with a course that combines credits!

For the Technology credit, we have been a little stumped, but it did occur to us that working in the piano shop might give her a chance to learn about tuning and repairing pianos. While we were still in the thinking stage, the shop beat us to the punch and offered the training to her in order to prepare her for a Piano Technician job! So that just became her credit course. In order to do that, she'll be keeping track of her hours and what she is doing and learning, and she will earn what is basically an apprenticeship credit. 

Helpful Tip: For an unusual high school credit that doesn't come out of a textbook, write a course description that states what the objectives are and what the student will be doing to learn those skills and acquire that knowledge. Log the hours spent on the training or study. If they are doing something like this - apprenticing or interning - some documentation from the employer or expert that is guiding them is best. We'll be using (and we highly recommend!) the resource Internship for High School Credit  from Apologia Educational Ministries to help us document this particular credit.

(Read our full review here: Internship for High School Credit - from Apologia (A Homeschool Coffee Break Review) or the follow-up about how we used it last year when Kennady interned as a Director's Assistant with the Children's Chorus: Internships in High School (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

Fine Arts has been very easy for Kennady to fit in, because it's what she gravitates towards anyway. It's more a matter of fitting in the academics around the music and art, as far as she's concerned! She takes guitar lessons, plays and sings with a couple of our church worship bands, and sings in a children's chorus program. We count hours for lessons, chorus rehearsals and performances, and band rehearsals and performances, but I saw no reason to even attempt to record hours for all the hours spent practicing on her own. 

Helpful Tip: If you're giving high school credit for music lessons, have your student keep a simple log of their lesson and practice times, and award the credit based on hours. You may find that the lesson times alone make up enough hours, but practice time can certainly be counted if needed. If your student is hit and miss with practicing, having to keep a log may help them be more consistent.

She enjoys drawing and painting, so even though she hasn't done an art course as such during high school, she has still earned some credit. How did we "fit that in"? I totaled the hours she spent on a couple of big projects, even though the majority of the work was done "outside" of school. (When you homeschool, are there really school hours and non-school hours?) Twice she designed and painted full size backdrops for the kids Christmas plays at church. This involved coming up with a design idea and sketching it for approval, preparing the canvas, blocking the design, and painting it. For both of the backdrops, she got some help from friends, but she was in charge of the project, so she had to manage and direct her assistants. Worth some credit? It sure was! She's also done live art during Easter and Christmas Eve services, which also involved design and planning to pull off.

Helpful Tip: This is a great example of an elective credit earned without a formal curriculum. If your student is involved in any kind of ongoing project or service (e.g. - learning the details of the sound system and how to mix the sound board, and running the sound every Sunday morning for your church service), it may be worth an elective credit. Log the hours and write a description of the skills developed if you choose to include it on the transcript.

Christmas in Kid City Skyline, KAT - December 2015

What about field trips and other fun add-ons? To be honest, it was a lot easier to find time for all kinds of field trips and outings and legitimately include them as part of our schooling when the kids were young. The schedules and their studies were more flexible, even if herding everyone into a vehicle and getting them to and from was a bit more challenging. As my students got older, and their studies were more focused, we became just a bit pickier when it came to field trips, and we stopped going on every outing our homeschool groups offered. Our schedule was a bit more complicated because we had part time jobs and music lessons and other time commitments that we planned around. And we found that we evaluated possible field trips with a more critical eye. Sure, the visit to the one-room schoolhouse historical day would be fun and educational, but it's an entire day out of our schedule and we're studying ancient world history rather than American history, so is it worth it? Sometimes we decided it was, but often we decided to take a pass. It depended on the timing and the appeal and relevance of the trip.

How do you find time and space to Work It In? Leave a comment and let me know! Make sure to visit the Homeschool Review Crew Blog to find out how other homeschool moms are doing it on Work It In Wednesday in the 5 Days of Homeschool Encouragement Blog Hop!

Use the linky tools to visit the other participating bloggers, or start with these:

Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures

Lori @ At Home: where life happens

Margaret @ Creative Madness Mama

Marla @ Jump Into Genius

Meredith @ Powerline Productions: Being World Changers/Raising World Changers

Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays

Missica @ Through The Open Window

Monique @ Mountain of Grace Homeschooling

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