My Four- (or Five- or Six-) Year Plan

(aka "Scope and Sequence")
When all my children were young, our homeschool lessons were totally interest-based. I didn’t really have an over-all plan. As Je got closer to high school, however, I got more organized. I decided to follow my state’s requirements for high school graduation, although homeschoolers don’t earn a state-recognized high school diploma. College entrance requirements tend to match (or exceed) the high school guidelines—so we needed to follow them.

All of my children do math and language arts at their individual levels each year, but our social studies and science we do together. My state requires two years of high school science, but exact courses aren’t specified so we can follow our interests. It’s the social studies requirements that are more detailed, and so I plan my years around those guidelines.

*We spend a year on ancient history (of the Western world)—Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome.
*Our next year of world history covers mostly the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
*When we have time (depending on who’s in high school and what they still need), we study other parts of the world—the Orient, the Arctic, or Africa, for example
*We begin U.S. history, beginning with exploration of the New World and including a significant unit on the U.S. Constitution.
*Whenever we get to the Westward Expansion, we do a semester of Washington state history. Then we finish U.S. history, up to the present.
And start over!