“A Time Management, Organization, and Career Exploration Course for Christian Home- Schooled Teens.” A rather lengthy subtitle, but very accurate. The author of Spelling Power has placed both a learning and planning tool in the hands of teens. If you want to control your child’s educational plans for the future - skip this. But if you want to empower your teen to begin to take charge of his life - this is great! As students work through this 9-week, ¼-credit course they learn essential planning and organizational skills while constructing a plan for high school and beyond. Definitely Christian in perspective, students are encouraged to seek God’s will when setting goals and to “make time for God” when creating weekly and daily schedules. The book is interesting, well-written, and logically organized into nine main units: Establishing Goals and Setting Priorities; Create Your Tentative High School Plan; Working Out This Year’s Plan; Planning Individual Courses; Completing Assignments and Projects; Making Weekly and Daily Schedules; Keep Records of Your Accomplishments; Making Decisions About Post High School Education; Paying for College. Accompanied by a helpful array of reproducible forms, these take your students through long- and short-term goal setting, through the nuts and bolts of planning each year, down to weekly and daily scheduling, keeping records of progress, and looking into the options for the future, including college. Your student will emerge with a better, “big picture” view of his education and its relevance in his life. The author does not assume a particular philosophy of education throughout, but, rather, does an excellent job of allowing for different educational approaches and learning preferences. She explains how to include outside activities and learning experiences as coursework and translate them into credits. While it would be ideal to use this course at the outset of high school, it could be implemented any time during the high school years.

Customer Review

 
Emily S. from Annandale, VA 22003 wrote the following on 05/23/2008:
Home School, High School, and Beyond is probably the best $20 I have spent in my past 13 years of homeschooling. It is definitely the best home-schooling high school book I have. Self-explanatory & self-guiding, it walks the student through managing his own studies for high school and develops the organizing skills and planning needed for college. Most useful of all was the process of a joint shopping trip to buy the recommended supplies followed by the students setting up their own record systems: printing forms and preparing personal information sheets, calendars, course records, four-year plans, checklist for each grade's progress, and more. A challenging exercise and a lot of sweat for young scholars, but very productive. Best of all, it puts them in charge. Although it is advertised as a 9-week course, my children have turned to their system again and again to complete job applications, update their goals and course summaries, and organize their entire high school curriculum. The included CD and copy masters are so flexible that I have used them to set up my younger child's studies and even my own schedule and projects. It is designed to work with either a structured traditional approach to high school or a relaxed unschool style.