New Here-Introduction and questions:)

[JennaB]

Hi, I have been lurking for years and have been so encouraged by this site.
I read the WTM many years ago and used it with many Charlotte Mason ideas. I found in reading CM's original series a method to pursue music, art and nature notebooks with my children and it made our time together interesting and exciting for me. These years together has been not only a growth time for the kids but for me as well.
We are daily reading great stories, studying foreign language, pouring over maps etc.
Suddenly, I find my oldest entering HS this next year.
I am having a hard time transitioning my thinking from learning for the joy of it to counting hours and credits. I know it is necessary to do so, but has anyone else transitioned to teaching your olders while not feeling you have to chase requirements only?
For example, we have always pursued a 4 year history cycle and we are just finishing up modern history (well ,we just scratched the surface), anyway, my state requires 1/2 year of state history, 1 year of American History and gov/civics etc for HS and I was wondering how you all follow the WTM and meet these requirements?
thanks for any feedback:) j
ps-can anyone instruct me on how to change my user name?

[Nan in Mass]

I'm doing high school without an emphasis on chasing credits. For us, the secret has been in how I keep track of what we do. I have a notebook divided into subjects (with room for new ones) and when we do something, I choose a subject to list it under. In the end, I'll look at what work we've done and decide how many years' worth of work it is worth and how many credits to assign. Some things are easy, like math: 1 mathbook = 1 credit. Some things are much looser, like literature/history. I think my son will have 1/2 credit of music when we get done, by the time he has finished the easy sight-singing books we are doing, made a xylophone, and various other small projects over the course of the high school years. I do keep in mind the list of courses colleges want and try to make sure we are working towards that goal, but this has much more to do with which materials I pick for us to work on each year than what we do hour by hour. For that, I have a schedule that goes more like 1 hour of math, 1 hour of science, 2 hours of great books, etc. I follow the school schedule for which days we "do" school and which we don't. When you put that together with the hours/day, we come out doing the right amount of work every year, more or less, and I don't really worry too much, beyond making sure we finish a math book each year. If I choose to do a textbook for something like physics, I try to make sure we do the appropriate amount of work out of it before we move on to something else. We did natural history instead of biology. We read our literature out loud together and answer the questions in TWEM. My son's travels plus The Geography Colouring Book and the Teaching Company anthropology tapes will make 1/2 a credit of geography. The travel interrupts the school year, so it isn't easy to finish any one credit in one year, but when we tally it all up at the end, we'll be fine. This year, his junior year, my son has begun to take classes at the community college. This serves three purposes: it will ease him back into the classroom, cover some subjects like chemistry that I don't want to teach, and will provide outside validation for his transcript, since we're not doing grades.

HTH
-Nan

[JennaB]

Thanks for your wonderful reply. You gave such a great example how one can continue on doing what they do, and keep track of it. The binder with tabs is a great idea. Thanks for helping calm my pre-HS jitters.
j

[Nan in Mass]

You're welcome. Just before we got this new board, I wrote a post about switching to high school. I'll see if I can find it for you. It had info about different ways to tally up a credit.
-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Ok, I think I found it. Try this: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=26706#poststop