2026-2027 School Year
2025-2026, 2024-2025, 2023-2024, 2022-2023, 2021-2022, 2020-2021, 2019-2020, 2018-2019, 2017-2018, 2016-2017
This year we will have two high school students! I have two "hacks" for parents of high school kiddos. 1, keep a high school folder for paperwork you want to keep in one place. 2, create a special e-mail for your student where all testing, college application, etc. information will be sent. Our high school folder includes each year's transcript/report card, test results (like the ACT), CLEP college credit (see this post to see how we use CLEP), BETA club certificates and pins, awards or certificates from things like essay contests, student congress participation, etc. and any dual enrollment information.
I was not expecting to enjoy homeschooling high school when I first started out as a homeschool mom! I've also loved stepping into a role as a consultant to homeschool families looking to meet and focus their direction on ways to support their individual family - especially when it comes to high school options. Feel free to message me if you would like a one-on-one session! And I'll be happy to offer some free group sessions on specific topics like dual enrollment, etc. this summer.
On to our curriculum... if you've seen any of my past school planning blogs you'll know that I group our curriculum into three categories: Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe. Charlotte Mason wrote about these important groupings after reading the philosophical writings of Matthew Arnold.
"But we begin to lose the way to his mind from the day that he enters the schoolroom; the reason for this is, we have embraced the belief that ‘knowledge is sensation,’ that a child knows what he sees and handles rather than what he conceives in his mind and figures in his thoughts...we begin to see that knowledge is the aliment of the mind as food is that of the body...nobody took knowledge seriously; we announced boldly that it did not matter what a child learned but only how he learned it. As for mere ‘book-learning,’ for that we had a fine contempt! But we have changed all that. We are beginning to suspect that ignorance is our national stumbling-block, a chief cause of those difficulties at home which hinder our efforts abroad. For ignorance there is only one cure, and that is, knowledge; his school is the seat of knowledge for a child, and whatever else his teachers do for him, first of all they must sustain him with knowledge, not in homœopathic doses, but in regular, generous servings. If we ask, what is knowledge?—there is no neat and ready answer at hand. Matthew Arnold, we know, classifies all knowledge under three heads,—the knowledge of God, divinity, the knowledge of man, known as the ‘humanities’ and the knowledge of the physical world, science, and that is enough to go on with." (Vol. 6, p. 239 emphasis mine.)
These three categories are where I start with my planning. I've created this pretty graphic to help remind myself as I plan out our schedule.
I want to have a "let's be real" moment with you as well. The reality is that our students live in a world with a broken education system that requires you to "play the game" for important scholarship opportunities. I actually read an interesting section in Volume 2, chapter 20 that encouraged me as I work to prepare my children for popular merit scholarship test scores:
I am one who will always say "trust the process" and have a whole document on my opinions of the credit system in America if you would like to read about it here. So, when you look at the transcripts I've made for my Charlotte Mason educated teenagers, understand the WHY behind the document. I don't list every single thing we are learning on their transcripts.... it's a document that works for the system we currently live in. I'll put the images of our transcripts at the end of this blog post if you're interested!
Knowledge of God
We will continue through our New City Catechism books since we didn't finish last year. The first book I am assigning to their devotion time is A Tale of Three Kings. I read this last year and was so impacted by the writing as I continue to deal with church hurt, heal and surrender to the Lord. I think it is really timely to feel the Holy Spirit prompt me to buy copies for both of my children as they just experienced hurt at our church when their youth pastor was fired without any information (we have been told it was a mutual decision and there are no moral failures... which raises even more questions that haven't been answered.) I pray that this book will minister to them this year. Pray for us as I still feel being in church for solid teaching is important to our foundation and they both are disappointed with the current situation.
For Bible reading, I've made a super simple reading tracker to keep in their Bible as a bookmark. I just printed on cardstock, front and back, and will give them another as they complete each month.
I would really like to include more Church history into our school year this year. I'm still figuring out a way to do this - either through independent reading assignments or family devotion time. Hopefully I'll have a better update throughout the year as to what we choose.
Knowledge of Man
History (social studies)
In our current history rotation we are due to revisit American/British history 1000-1650 and ancient history Egypt/China. I'm assigning R.J. Unstead's book The Story of Britain because I've had it on my shelf for years and have only used it as a piecemeal resource. It's time to read it in its entirety and it is written perfectly for self-study and independent reading for a high school student. For ancient history we are going to continue with Genevieve Foster's amazing writings (even though the content is geared more toward middle school, I still find value in the writing!) and we will read Birthdays of Freedom. It is really hard to find a copy in print but you can borrow it from the digital library, archive.org.
Eva Mae will have some additional scheduled readings for her American History credit in high school. We had such a great time last year with our Government/Civics that she has asked for some additional readings to go along with that. Since Christian did CLEP American History in 9th grade I will assign her some similar readings to fulfill this high school requirement.
Our Book of Centuries is a great resource to us as we do our history readings. I have them make an entry each week in their BOC - usually from the history spine I've assigned (but also will remind them to enter something important from current events!)
Another subject we will do as a family (both Christian and Eva Mae) will be a sociology course. This falls under social studies and will be an opportunity for both of my high school kiddos to earn college credit through CLEP. They have the choice later on if they want to use this course as a transfer credit to college. Right now I am using the experience more for college preparation. I remember back to my college requirements and I did not enjoy my sociology class or teacher. I would hate for them to feel like they were wasting money on a class they could CLEP out of. We will use Modern States to take the course, earn a free voucher code, and take the test at the end of the year.
We will continue our citizenship study with a Plutarch Life (Demosthenes) and Charlotte Mason Volume 4, Ourselves. I print off our readings and we each have a binder that includes the scheduled sections for Plutarch and Ourselves! I love the topics of discussion we have as we read through these texts together. Teenagers and their ideas and thoughts are so awesome!
Literature
On the transcript, we will have "English 9" and "English 11" as the subject titles. We do SO MUCH in literature/language arts and I like to use the blog post as the detailed list for posterity.
Book club is our main source of literature study. This year we will be reading: Gulliver's Travels, Time Machine, To Kill a Mockingbird, Christmas Carol, A Connecticut in King Arthur's Court, Scarlet Letter, Great Gatsby, and Tuck Everlasting. Although there are a couple British authors in the mix, the majority is American literature and we are looking forward to discussions and deep dives into the literary elements of each book! I love using resources like Course Hero at home. These books are also the books we do together as read alouds at home. I buy a copy for each of us, sometimes I will read as they follow along in their books, sometimes I have them each practice their diction by reading aloud to me. An element we never miss is writing a commonplace entry each week. The Commonplace Book is basically a "quote book" where students write down any quote they find insightful and would like to remember. I hope they will reach for their quote book as they continue to grow into adulthood... right now it's more of a practice in habit training and a duty for school!
I will also encourage written narrations in the form of book reports after we have read our literature book for book club. This encourages fluidity in writing and organizing thoughts so they can become better essay writers for higher education.
I let poetry drop off our schedule last year. I'm hoping to do something fun this year with Shakespeare since Eva Mae will be performing Something Rotten with her musical theater group! We might try to make it a spring semester subject with some Shakespeare sonnets and poetry tea time days!
Economics and Finance
This is the new academic group I am leading this year. For high school, our state requires a semester of personal finance. We will be following the lessons from Finance Park for our personal finance curriculum with several friends and attend the live practicum, and then we will spend the second semester on a study of economics with MRU and special guest speakers.
Languages
Eva Mae will continue with ASL 2 and Christian will do Spanish 1 as a dual enrollment student at Columbia State Community College. We'll also have our Latin 2 studies (but I could also add that as part of "English" since it focuses heavily on grammar.)
Art
Christian will be taking an art history class at the community college to experience college homework, lectures, and assignments. As I spoke to the guidance counselor at the community college she recommended that this is a great class to start with. I am looking forward to going through the textbook with Christian as all of us enjoy the topics in the class and plan our visits to the Frist Art Museum for their 2026-2027 galleries!
Music
We are continuing with our Nashville Notes ensembles. Christian and Eva Mae will both be in select band (baritone and flute), Eva Mae will be in choir, and Christian will be in jazz band. We'll also have our composer study lessons that fit with our symphony field trips! Mozart, Marsalis, John Williams, and Mendelssohn are just a few composers featured this year!
Knowledge of the Universe
Math
We are continuing with CTC math - Algebra 2 for Christian and Algebra 1 for Eva Mae
Science
We will be returning to our biology cycle (we started a cycle of physics, chemistry, biology back in 2021. Each subject has been a middle school focus and now it will be a high school focus. All those school year links at the top of this blog will give you more information on our science through the years!) This year, we will be using Masterbooks, Crash Course, and Tiner's The World of Biology as our textbooks and will be gathering with our science club to share narrations of the book Microbe Hunters and dissection kits from Home Science Tools. I love the way we do science and I've been so pleased with the learning and narrations! Here's a screeshot of the schedule I make for our science club to give you an idea of how we break up our readings and activities:
Natural History
We are continuing our teen nature journal club with meetings each month of an object lesson and hike! Here are our previous lessons: https://kindandcultivated.home.blog/nature/
All the rest.....
Honestly, I don't see us getting too deep into geography this year with all the other courses we are focusing on. And that's ok! We have done some amazing geography work over the years with maps, literature, and reading. I will attempt to do something next school year to focus on world geography as a high school credit. Our PE credit isn't too official.... right now it is going to the rec center 2-3 times a week for weight training, vollyball, and swimming! Handicrafts was fun last year as we prepared for a handicraft fair, but I don't see us doing too much in this subject either this year. There are probably other areas of learning that are in a traditional Charlotte Mason program that won't be reflected in our schedules this year... and that's ok! I've found such a sweet spot for our atmosphere, discipline, and life and know that each year looks a little different. I'm excited for Christian's new adventures in community college this year and pray that both he and Eva Mae continue to love learning! Here are their blank transcripts this year:
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