by Tricia
Electives can cover such a wide range of topics in homeschool. And electives are often where our students find the most joy – plus develop unique talents and interests.
We offer you an abundance of homeschool curriculum reviews for electives below!
~don’t miss the giveaway at the end!
Our Homeschool Curriculum Reviews for Electives
Below are some of the many electives reviews our Curriculum Choice authors have written. You’ll be amazed at all the resources available to you and your homeschoolers!
Econonics
Fine Arts
Art
Music
Foreign Language
High School
Home Economics
Logic
Review Team Group Posts
Once a month our review team shares an ‘ultimate’ list of reviews and helps on a certain topic. Those they share are both reviews here at The Curriculum Choice and links to their personal websites.
Homeschool PE, Fitness and Sports
Foreign Language Curriculum Reviews for Homeschool
Bible, Character Training and Parenting Resources
Art in the Homeschool
Patriotic Resources
Holiday Fun
More Encouragement from Our Authors
The Curriculum Choice authors have active blogs where they share all kinds of homeschooling advice and experiences. Below, you’ll find links to helpful posts on electives from a few of our veteran homeschooling authors.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
Dover’s Art Masterpieces to Color: Sharing our favorite art themed coloring books.
Teen Smart: Driver’s Education: We used this program with both my teenage boys to receive a reduced rate on our auto insurance. I combined it with their regular driver’s education course to create a really great high school course.
How Artists See: The How Artists See series from Abbeville Press is one of my favorites. Every single book is filled with wonderful artwork based on a theme….elements, families, heroes, animals, etc.
Susan & Megan Education Possible
Homeschool High School with Online Psychology Course – In addition to strong course content, this program offers students an opportunity to work independently, become familiar with the format of online courses, and prepare to take the Psychology CLEP course.
How to Help Your Teen Study Smarter: Sponge Learning Skills – Learning how to study is a skill high school students must learn. The Sponge program explains how memory works and then teaches important skills including textbook reading strategies, time management, note taking, and text taking prep.
How I Teach Keyboarding to My Child With Dysgraphia – The unique finger guides available with the Keyboard Classroom have made all of the difference in teaching my child proper keyboard techniques!
Stephanie @ Harrington Harmonies
Apologia Biblical Worldview: What We Believe Series- As a mother of two adults, I know just how hard a task we face in raising our children for Christ. It’s a mission at the very crux of my homeschool heart; a sublime task we face as parents who really want to pass along our faith to our children. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a program or curriculum we could follow as we instruct our children to be in the world but not of the world? The What We Believe Biblical Worldview Series from Apologia is such a program.
A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels- After a quick listing of supplies and hints the tutorial takes you step by step from beginning the drawing to completion. The tutorials often offer a new angle of approach and highlight specific techniques, skills or terms applied to the specific project. This adds perfect variety so that each tutorial is enjoyable.
Homeschool in The Woods: Artists Hands On Activity Pak-“Hands-on” is the perfect description for this product because there really isn’t much reading and text except for what is presented when doing the activities. That makes it ideal for the tactile learner. You can first do the learning projects and activities of your choice and then later use them to build the lapbook.Lots of fun!
Heather at Blog, She Wrote
Homeschool Foreign Language Instruction with iTalki- Learn a foreign language from a native speaker. We loved our Arabic lessons with iTalki.
The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Sewing in Your Homeschool- Our daughter is passionate about sewing and fashion design. As she begins high school in 2014-2015, sewing will be one of her electives annually as she builds a portfolio for her future.
Betsy at BJ’s Homeschool
Our Steps to College – How Electives Help, or High School Electives – “There is so much more to homeschooling to college than just meeting the college admission requirements. Our teens want to explore the world around them, follow their interests, and delve into new subjects, as their hearts lead them. And that’s where the high school electives come in! And they can also help with getting into college.”
Video Making – Our Homemade Elective – “This post tells how we put together a homemade course in video production. It includes how to’s, equipment needed, links to the videos that my daughter made, the fun that we had, and how we went about assigning credit for it.”
Being a Legislator for the Day – Youth and Government – one of our elective courses – “In this elective, teens learn all about state government by acting as legislators, and debating their own mock bills. It is so hands on, that my teen and her friends loved it, while building self esteem and leadership skills along the way.”
Tricia at Hodgepodge
How to Fit in All the Homeschool Extras – Well, in our house we call them the extras because they are the really fun part of homeschooling. The icing on the homeschool cake. The things we look forward to. But I feel strongly that mixing in a balance of enriching subjects makes for a happy child and a happy mama. A well educated child.
Harmony Fine Arts Plans for Art and Music Appreciation – For this mama, using HFA plans is easy. I just click to open the plans, click to print what we might like to complement our studies, click to print a coloring page for the younger ones.
Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett – a round up of the unit studies reviews here at The Curriculum Choice. “Unit studies encourage the use of imagination, creativity, and analytical thinking. In a typical textbook curriculum, the “facts” are simply memorized and regurgitated, only to be forgotten soon after the test. Unit studies teach children how to find the answers to their questions of how something works and why it is that way. They learn to seek the information that satisfies their need to know. They learn how to learn.” ~ Amanda Bennett
High School: Electives/Volunteer Work – in this weekly wrap up post, I share a peek at how our two high schoolers stay busy with volunteer positions besides the extracurricular drama troupe, piano and online computer courses.
Homeschool Electives and Extracurricular for Multiple Ages – Homeschooling Multiple Ages tip: group your extracurricular activities together on the same day as much as possible. It surely takes some organizing but helps so much to be HOME the majority of the week to homeschool.
Annie Kate at Tea Time with Annie Kate
Personal finance is an important topic that many adults have not yet mastered. Dave Ramsay has put together a high school curriculum, Foundations in Personal Finance, that can save your teen from many financial mistakes. Besides being informative, this course is also wildly funny.
How to Raise your High School Grades by Half a Point in One Semester is a course my children were sad to finish. It is exceedingly opinionated and therefore funny, but it also presents many valuable concepts and generates a lot of discussion.
Traditionally-schooled teens have guidance counsellors. Homeschooled teens can benefit from The Complete Career, College, and High School Guide for Homeschoolers. Its questionnaires helps teens think about their own talents, interests, and personality in relation to their future. Also, each time one of my teens has gone through this guide, I’ve learned something new about them. This new knowledge has helped me understand them and help them structure their high school courses, their hobbies, and their volunteering.
Logic is an important topic in our homeschool. We use resources from The Critical Thinking Company, including the James Madison Critical Thinking Course for high school. The children have also enjoyed The Fallacy Detective so much that they reread it for fun.
Follow Curriculum’s board Electives/Enrichment on Pinterest.
Our Electives Pinterest Board
We are joining up with our iHomeschool Network friends in a summer hopscotch!
Now for the Giveaway!
I am giving away two (2) Art for All Ages Curriculum bundles valued at $62.94! If you don’t win the bundle, be sure to take advantage of the 25% sale to get yours by August 1st! Just follow the instructions in the rafflecopter widget below…
a Rafflecopter giveaway
We hope you’ve enjoyed our week of homeschool curriculum reviews. Be sure to pin each post for future reference! (Each link below will be live on that day).
Five Days of Homeschool Curriculum Reviews
Monday – Homeschool Language Arts Curriculum Reviews
Tuesday – Homeschool Math Curriculum Reviews
Wednesday – Homeschool History and Geography Curriculum Reviews
Thursday – Homeschool Science, Technology and Nature Study Reviews
Friday – Homeschool Electives Reviews
~ Hosted by Tricia Hodges of Hodgepodge
Download The Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Planning and Organization ebook today!