Homeschooling for highschool...

My oldest is 18 and we have home schooled her since she was born. It took some reevaluation when she turned 14 and she asked if she could go to the local all girls Catholic high school near by. My husband and I prayed and talked about it. Then my husband reminded me that one of the main reasons we started homeschooling in the first place was because of high school.

We are very blessed to be part of a Catholic Tutor Academy that meets two days a week. This has been in existence for eleven years and has provided parents with an alternative to going to and paying for High school. Parents pay for tutors...it is not a school. Parents are still the primary educators of their children so they are responsible for making sure they do the work and understand the material they are being taught.

We have done something unusual in our family. Due to the great umbrella school we belong to, we have been able to make sure our kids have completed all their high school credits well and on time. Since our county requires three maths, three sciences, three history credits as well as four English credits we have had our two oldest decide if they wanted to work extra hard to finish early and go to the local community college. Most of our other homeschooling friends have used this great community college to send their kids there for high school. We didn't realize at first with our oldest that one of the benefits to graduate, ment we could fill out a FASFA form which made them eligible for scholarships. So not only did they get to attend this great school, they got it all paid for!!!***

I am sure this decision is different for each family due to their children as well as what is available to them for choices. So we will decide with each child whether to have them finish HS early and go to the community college. As with all decisions in this family...seek your husband's advice!!!

***updated on Aug 27th:
Well we dropped off our first baby at college this week...lots of stress...not sure how I feel about living on campus...more on that after we see how it goes.
An interesting thought before you "graduate early" is where your kids are planning on going to college...in our case (one kid) it worked out...but in many cases kids who are freshmen, not transfer students (like my daughter), get MORE MONEY AND OTHER PERKS like housing, and other aide. So watch out for that.

THY WILL BE DONE!!!+JMJ+