Fun-Schooling the High School Students

It's hard to believe that I'll have 4 kiddos in high school come this fall. Ethan will be a 9th grader, Brent 10th, Caleb 11th, and Annette 12th. Oh- where did the time go? Was it just yesterday we were using Rod & Staff 1st grade with Annette & Josh!

With my three boys I plan to use the Just for Teen Guys and/or the Steampunk High School Guide. It depends on the boys with which one they choose.

Our fun-schooling looks way different from Sarah's and that's okay. My boys learn better with lots of structure and textbooks (that's why I love the new high school journals because they work so well with both).

In my perfect fun-schooling world we'd use lots and lots and lots of books. "Real" books, like from the library or from the hundreds and hundreds that I've purchased (because you know, my kids were going to love reading). Unfortunately I have reluctant readers which puts a wrench in my fun schooling plans, haha!

I can make a beautiful basket or put together a cool container of goodies for a subject, set it out and guess what? Yup, nobody (when I say nobody, I'm talking about my 4 boys not Josh & Annette) touches it. 

So, with that said, I am still a fun-schooler even though we use textbooks like ACE and Notgrass. We are just a different kind of fun-schooling family. My high schoolers will learn lots of real life skills, read great leadership books that aren't found in your average high school curriculum, have fun baking, playing games, and kicking a soccer ball around, and of course use some Thinking Tree books and journals. 

My high schoolers will even use the new Yum-Schooling journals which reminds me, I need to order another Yum-Schooling Journal. You can watch a video of this journal HERE.

Now, because we are more of a traditional fun-schooling family I plan to use the high school journals a little different. At first I was going to have them use the journal every day. I thought that instead of them writing in their workbooks they could sum up what they learned and write in their journals instead but then I started thinking and praying and remembering how my boys learn best. Unfortunately for this fun-schooling mama is filling out workbooks, bleh, but it is-what-it is.

Instead I'm going to have them use a days worth of pages over a week. My teen guys will write what they learned or found most interesting in each subject that week and write about it. Basically I'll use the High School journal as a portfolio. 

FUN-Schooling is Happy-Schooling. If your teens are enjoying what they are doing  and learning, I believe they will retain more, yes, even if it's a textbookish. My boys have LEGOs near by and in between lessons they are free to "play" with them. In fact having them do something like playing with LEGOS (or coloring in Thinking Tree journals) gives the brain some downtime so it's not so stressed out it will help solidify memories and information. Mental downtime is a good thing and we need to make sure our teens get plenty of if in between learning and lessons.

 There are some other Thinking Tree journals and books we'll use but I'll write about that another day!

Hope that helps all you Thinking Tree mamas that not all Fun-Schooling looks the same. I'm sure to many our way of Fun-Schooling may look more like Boredom-Schooling to you all (smile).

Remember too that season change. At times we have used the Thinking Tree journals as our main curricula and other times as more of a supplement.