Combining Poll: My high schooler will . . .

[dragons in the flower bed]

I'm looking at my long term grid again. I seem to have two versions -- one with the high schoolers doing their own, specialized thing depending on their career desires, and the other with the high schoolers doing the same subjects the little ones are doing, but on a college prep level. Having freedom to find myself as a teen, I feel, allowed me to go into adulthood more grounded than any of my peers and without wasting any time or money on things I turned out to not be interested in. I really want to let my kids do that. On the other hand, I'd like to encourage family togetherness throughout adolescence (and academic excellence). Thus, my poll. Have you combined your high schoolers with your younger ones in the WTM cycles (or in another way), or do they do their own thing? And do they like it?

[AngieW in Texas]

I'm not really sure what to answer on the poll. My oldest will be doing everything separately from her sisters. She really doesn't work well with anybody. She sometimes listens-in on the readaloud I'm doing with her younger sisters (and often reads the book for herself after we've finished it), but she remembers all of them from when I did them with her. My youngers generally don't remember much about the books because they were so much younger when they heard them. 9th - American history with Core 100, 10th - world history up to 1900, 11th - 20th Century world history with Core 300, 12th - American Government with Core 400

My younger two will be studying complementary subjects for history all the way through.
5th - American history through 1850 with Core 3, 8th - American history through 1865 with Core 100
6th - American history from 1850 with Core 4, 9th - American history from 1865 with Core 100
7th - world history up to 1600 with Core 6, 10th - world history up to 1900
8th - world history from 1600 with Core 7, 11th - 20th century world history with Core 300
9th - American history with Core 100, 12th - American government with Core 400
...

They'll be in complementary Cores and the older of the two will listen to the readalouds that I'll be doing with the younger. She'll also sit in on the history for Cores 3/4/100, because she'll be doing Core 100 spread over two years.

Science is completely separate for everybody.

Up until this year, I have always had one history that I did with everybody. I really liked that, but it just wasn't going to work anymore since there are specific things my oldest needs for high school.

[Jenny in Atl]

If oldest stays home for HS this is my rough plan...

9th: Ancients (Trisms? or HO 3 or Spielvoel WH)/Geology
10th: Middle Ages (same as above)/ Bio
11th: Early Modern (same as above) & SL Survey Bit Lit/Chemistry
12th Modern (same as above) & SL American Civics/Physics

Her younger sister will be in 5-8th grade during this time. She will most likely do her science and history separate but I will try and match the subjects so they can do some projects together, movies, and listen in on each others lessons.

[Karen in CO]

My oldest is ten years older than the girls so it isn't possible to combine them. However, just because we don't combine doesn't mean they don't share. My oldest explains philosophy to his little sister. When we studied Shakespeare, the middle became interested and we took a first-grade jaunt into Shakespeare. The oldest and I watch IEW videos together and the youngers sit in and listen. We discuss theme, setting and such of picture books with the girls, and they do oral retellings of stories and fables.

When the oldest was doing physics, he explained his experiments to the girls. When we read the Odyssey for Ancient history for the littles, the oldest joined us. Just because they aren't on the same topic doesn't mean they can't benefit from each other.


The next two are 4 years apart. Perfect age range to combine. :D With the history rotation I have plotted right now they will be like this:

9th / 5th TOG 3
10th / 6th TOG 4
11th / 7th TOG 1
12th / 8th TOG 2

For science, I will probably keep them together for the older's 9th and 10th grade science then separate them as I plan to have her do science at the cc for lab sciences.

[RebeccaC]

Well my boys are only a 1.5 and a half apart so I might not be a good person to answer this poll :001_smile: But they do the same in just about everything. The exception is that my younger is more advanced in math and science than my older son is. My older so tho is the stronger reader. Their being so close in age has made hsing easy.

[FloridaLisa]

My high schooler has, so far, done separate history and science. Mostly this is because, thus far, he's had outside classes for science and history/social sciences. I'm looking into teaching American Government next year at two levels -- an AP level for my oldest and an honors level for my 9th and 8th graders. I'll likely break this into two classes, though I'm hoping there is overlap on my preparation and some of their readings and projects.

Truth be told, I think my high schoolers like being independent or with a group of older students, so I probably should also have checked that they *love* it that way. The only studies we still do altogether are Bible and read alouds.

HTH,
Lisa

[siloam]

Well the plan to date is to keep them together in TOG, while the oldest can go deeper if she likes, or just do the minimum. For Bible I will probably do the same with Lamp and Quill.

Science and all other topics I can't see doing them together. My oldest wants to be a scientist, so the plan is for her to do BJU Homesat, CW and other appropriate studies. None of the rest have any direction on what they want to do, so it is an open slate at this point...but they are young. :D

Heather (who plans too much)

[Katia]

We do ours separately and it works very well for us. Actually, we tried doing it together my older dd's first year of high school, and we found that since each girl works at a different speed (older was significantly slower than younger dd) they were always arguing with each other. It was not pretty and did not create an atmosphere of learning.

Now each do their own and we are all much happier.

[Karin]

We're just getting ready for high school starting next year, and my eldest will do her own thing for the most part. So far, that's the plan, even though both she and my youngest will both be doing Ancients (he's starting officially in gr. 3, not 1, even though he's had history read to him, it's not official.)

We'd like to get a microscope, and if we do, I'll probably let the younger ones look at any slides my eldest does, but not do it together.

[gardenschooler]

We're going to do TOG, but they will be *light years* apart. It helps me to have everyone sort of on the same year for history - just so I don't have to jump back and forth mentally. They won't be doing anything together, though, that I can think of.

There's no way to combine science - I sure don't think my little one would enjoy a whole year of chemistry!

I used to combine my older two that are only 2 years apart. It worked well to combine science, because the older one wasn't all that gung-ho about it and the younger one was.

[melissaL]

history is combined, the older ones just do more.
science is at different levels, it is just the way I started. I have combined the younger ones science. I find doing 3 different sciences each year is all I can cope with.
MelissaL