graduation

How to graduate your child from homeschool

Applying to college as a homeschooler

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

As promised, this article is about the process of making a transcript and sending one off to college for your home educated teen. Making the transcript isn’t hard, I promise you, it is not. You don’t need to pay for a transcript service. You can make a professional looking transcript all on your own. I have provided you with an example in my FREE FORMS page. I put that printable form into a word document format to be easily edited by you, but you will want to export and save your final document into a PDF when you’re ready to send it to a college. I will explain the steps in more detail. The image to your right is exactly what I use for my children and what I sent to college for my graduated teenager. To be honest with you, I wasn’t worried about what was on the transcript or how it was presented, it was only nerve racking because it was a homeschooled transcript, and I wasn’t sure how it would be received. I need to point out that my graduated teen applied to community college which is generally an easier process to begin with. He went this route to save money on his general education classes as opposed to starting out in a 4 year university. He had other choices in his list of colleges. Whatever college your teen is interested in you should look at their admission’s process. If they don’t have it on their website (most do), call and ask.

Continue reading →

Graduation 2023

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

Today I’m going to share about graduating my first homeschool teen. My oldest is now 18 and he will officially be done with his coursework on May 23rd and his evaluation is set for May 25th where our evaluator will sign off on his final evaluation and sign his PA Department of Education diploma along with myself. This is a recognized state diploma for homeschool students, although you can certainly (as I have one) issue your own that is signed just by you. Both are parent-issued diplomas but the state has said their diploma is more acceptable. You can decide. I will soon be finalizing his transcript as well. Your evaluator does not need to sign that document and unless you print it, have them sign it, scan it and save it, it’s probably just going to be a hassle if you need an “original” document that is not photo-copied. Your signature is sufficient anyway as you are the administrator of your homeschool. You can see my example in my Free Forms with the certification and place to sign it. It does not need to be notarized. You will most likely want to save your document as a PDF before you submit it to prospective colleges. That brings me to my next point.

Applying for college, should your teen choose to go to college, can be daunting. You need to keep good records of your high school student’s grades in order to make their official transcript. How you grade is up to you but you should be consistent. Most people use a grade scale and that itself varies. For example my grade scale looks like this, 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, and so on. In my homeschool they must pass with a C or better so grade scales for D and F don’t factor in. If they would get a grade lower than a 70 they are required to take an alternate quiz/test or redo their assignment. I do have other posts on transcripts that can be worth your while to read. Once you establish a grading system you would convert those into points that also depend on how many credits the course earned. For example, an A = 4.0 points if the course was a 1 credit course. To be a 1 credit course it must have been a yearlong course (2 semesters). If the course was only half credit due to being only a 1 semester (half year) course, an A would earn 2.0 points. Example below:

CourseFinal GradeCreditGrade Points
EnglishA14.0
MathB13.0
HistoryB13.0
ScienceA14.0
ArtA.502.0
MusicA.502.0
Total number of Credits: 5

Grade points are calculated by Grade x Credit. EXAMPLE: 4.0×1=4.0 GPA, 4.0x.50=2.0 GPA. Calculate the yearly total GPA like this; 4.0+3.0+4.0+3.0+2.0+2.0 = 18. Divide 18 by the number of credits, 18/5 = 3.6, which is the GPA for that year. Calculate the cumulative GPA (that’s the GPA from each school year) like this: (9th) 3.6, (10th) 3.8, (11th) 3.5, (12th) 3.9 – add the numbers together and divide by 4 and it gives you the cumulative GPA of 3.7

Continue reading →

Winter 2023, 60 days to go

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

It is soon to be March and soon enough spring should arrive. Springtime is full of, hopefully, more sun than we get in a Pennsylvania winter, new beginnings, as plants start coming back into bloom, and an indicator to me that we’re in the homestretch of our school year. This year it also means my soon-to-be 18 year old will graduate from homeschool and prepare for his future adventures, where ever that leads him. It usually means for me that I have paperwork to finalize; grades to complete, transcripts to update, and making an appointment with our evaluator to close out our year so I can send that paperwork and next year’s affidavit off to the school district. How different it will feel only putting one child’s name down and only shopping for education materials for one child, for the next 2 years, which will be the last 2 years of homeschool. Lord willing nothing prevents it.

Everything to this point has gone pretty well as far as the education materials are concerned. I have had no real issues with curriculum choices, my teens may say otherwise. They really did not enjoy Jensen’s Vocabulary for the 1st half of the year. The reason they didn’t like it is because they were bored, but pretty much any language arts curriculum they are bored. It’s not a reflection on the curriculum itself. I felt it to be valuable to them. They just didn’t agree. It wasn’t the most exciting thing to read/study. It was learning new words and there definitions and there roots. I even learned some new words. To me, it was beneficial. They are working on British literature in the 2nd half of the year and again, they are bored. Probably more my son than my daughter. They have read things like Utopia, Beowulf, Taming of the Shrew and others with plenty more to come. The Science course has given them some decent foundations. They studied math in science, moved on to physics, and completing biology currently and will finish up with chemistry. My 12th grader is not taking a history course this year having met his 3 required credits (and focusing instead on other things) and my 10th grader is using Lifepac, which she prefers this type of reading, comprehension, self evaluation and testing approach. The course is something she needs little help with and can do on her own which is what she likes. Next year she’s requesting all her subjects be Lifepacs, which is something I need to evaluate and make a decision about. Lifepac is solid instruction and it does take a motivated child to complete the work. I personally don’t like all the work contained as worksheets. Finally, for Bible we completed the our journey through the New Testament with curriculum from Christian Liberty press and moved on to a curriculum about Bible Truths: patterns for Christian Living, from Bob Jones Press. I have taken my own approach to the lessons that fit our needs and style. There is a teacher led lesson and a student led lesson with comprehension questions at the end of each and there are unit tests. When there is something I may not entirely agree with, I will explain to my teens this is the publisher’s viewpoint, and than share mine. They can then decide what theirs is.

Continue reading →

Getting ready for 10th and 12th

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

It’s the 2022-2023 school year! Most people have begun their homeschool program or will be soon if they have not chosen a method of year round schooling. Learning does happen most days of the week all year long, but since we do formal curriculum for most subjects, I set a start date as to when they begin working on those courses. Things have been slightly different this year for my teenagers because the oldest, who will be 18 come March, will be graduating from homeschool this year, around the middle of May. He is continuing to work at his job he’s held since June 2021, although with slightly less hours due to school work. He was working mostly full time over the summer and will be trying to keep up with as many hours as possible during the school year. Another perk about homeschooling is how flexible you can be and there is no homework he needs to worry about. Is there homework in homeschooling? I’ve actually heard of that happening, which to me is very odd. But, moving on to curriculum this year.

Continue reading →

2021/2022 End of Year

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

We’re rounding home plate on this academic year, and yes, of course learning never stops. My children and myself do, however, take a pause on any sort of text book or workbook or formal type of learning for a couple months before we begin again. This gives them an opportunity to spend time doing other activities, for example, my 17 year old will be adding more hours and days to his work schedule. We have just a few weeks left to “officially” meet the 180 day requirement, though we will have more than 180 days by the time of the penciled in “last day of school”. Why is it penciled in? Because if we are completed before that date, we’re done, so long as we’ve met the law requirements. We won’t, however, go any longer past that date. So May 20th is the slated end of our academic year. The teens will be done with most of their work before that. It’s not a requirement to complete your texts or workbook materials, but I like to get it all done when possible. I’ve also implemented a “year end” science presentation poster project they will have the last few weeks to complete. This was an optional assignment from the Marine Biology course, but they are teenagers and if they decide to go on to more schooling, it could benefit them to work on such a project. The way we’ve chosen to “schedule” time for their work is by my teenagers request. They like to have goals (dates, time) by which to get things done.

Continue reading →