4 Ways I Would Homeschool High School Differently in Hindsight

What I Would Do Differently to Prepare my Homeschooler for College

My oldest daughter just finished her first semester of college classes as a dual-enrolled 12th grader, and honestly, there are ways I would homeschool high school differently if I could go back in time. These are things that I wish I had done to make the transition to college easier for her.

The oldest child naturally becomes the guinea pig as we figure out for the first time how to homeschool through high school. This can be especially challenging when we’re trying to do everything right for college-bound high schoolers.

My daughter was homeschooled for her entire education, so I was curious to see how she would adjust to college classes. She has excelled academically and loves the college classroom environment. However, the first few months were very stressful for her.

In hindsight, there are 4 things I would do differently if I could do over her high school years. I think these changes would have made the transition to college easier for her.

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4 Ways I Would Homeschool High School Differently

1. Require MLA-Formatted Research Papers

Quotations and works cited are topics we touched on in high school, but I didn’t require my daughter to do them according to MLA-format guidelines. Colleges require MLA-formatted papers and professors will deduct points if these guidelines aren’t followed.

If I could go back, I would have introduced the MLA-format guidelines to my daughter and required her to turn in at least one high school research paper that adhered to this style and formatting guide.

2. Assign a Career Options Course for High School Credit

In hindsight, I would have assigned a half-credit class on career exploration for my daughter. She’s doing research on her own this year to explore career possibilities. However, I think an in-depth college major and careers class would have been really helpful to get her thinking about all her options. If I had a do-over, I would include a career exploration elective class in the first year or two of high school.

3. Use a More Rigorous Math Program

Another mistake I made in homeschooling high school was not choosing a rigorous enough math program for my high schooler. Since we used math programs that weren’t as demanding, we ended up needing to hire a math tutor to get my daughter ready for the college entrance exams. This was an expense we probably could have avoided if we had used a different math program.

To find out more about our experience with 3 different math programs and which one I recommend for college-bound high schoolers, check out my post, “Saxon vs Teaching Textbooks vs Math-U-See: Which is Better?”

4. Set Strict Deadlines

Lastly, if I could go back in time, I would have given her more deadlines. Don’t get me wrong, she had some deadlines. She took 2 years of Spanish with an online public school and we did a homeschool co-op, which both had deadlines.

However, in our day-to-day schoolwork at home, I gave her a lot of flexibility. If things would come up in our schedule, I gave her a grace period. I love that homeschooling gives us the flexibility to rearrange our schedule when things come up, but in hindsight, this wasn’t the best way to prepare for the strict deadlines in college.

Things I Think I Did Well Homeschooling High School

Now that I’ve shared all my short-comings as a first-time high school homeschool parent, here’s what I think I did well.

I Allowed Her to Explore Her Interests

I believe that an interest-led education nurtures a love of learning in our children. For English, I allowed my daughter to read high-school level literature that she was interested in. I also let her write fictional stories, which is one of her passions. Then, we used her stories to reinforce grammar, punctuation, and editing skills.

For electives, I let her decide what she wanted to learn about. She chose to learn a wide variety of skills including horseback riding, graphic design, computer programming, computer animation, and creative writing.

We Started Building Up Community Service Hours Early

In order to qualify for state scholarships in our state of Florida, students are required to log 75 – 100 community service hours before graduation. Thankfully, my daughter started logging service hours in 9th grade, so she’s not scrambling at the end of high school to meet that goal.

We Used a Block Schedule

In the younger grades, it makes sense to cover lots of subjects every day. They need repetition and short, focused times for each subject. But for high school students, the subject matter is more in-depth and longer chunks of time are needed to delve into each subject.

A block schedule is where you schedule blocks of time for each subject. In high school, the block schedule should include fewer subjects each day, but more time is spent on each subject. So, instead of doing 6 subjects every day, high schoolers might only do 3 subjects daily, but they would spend a longer time on each subject.

For more information on block scheduling for high school, check out 7 Sisters Homeschool’s post “3 Ways to Do Block Scheduling in Homeschool Highschool.”

I Kept Up With Her High School Transcript

The last thing that I did well, is I kept up with my daughter’s high school transcript each year. To learn more about the legal requirements and to find loads of information on homeschooling through high school, go to the Homeschool Legal Defense’s Homeschooling Thru High School website.

I hope that by sharing these 4 things that I would do differently, you can learn from my mistakes. We live and learn, and thankfully, God gives us grace for the areas where we fall short.

Comment below things you would have done differently or any comments about this post.