High School Credit for Morning Time Studies

We have done some form of morning time or family learning throughout our years of homeschooling. If you look back at what I’ve shared about our morning time over the years, you will notice that each year is different. We have changed what we did in different seasons of life and as we found new resources.

*Some links in this post are affiliate links, see disclosure below*

We are currently in a season of life which involves preschoolers to high schoolers. It is an exciting time, but it also has its challenges.

Today, I want to primarily talk about how we do morning time with a high schooler and when/how we incorporate it into his high school credits.

First, it is essential to note that not every part of a homeschooled high schooler’s education must be for credits.

The reasons we homeschool and the goals for our family have not changed just because our children are in high school.

For example, we memorize scripture because we believe it is beneficial to our Christian walk, not because we are trying to get high school credit.

However, when we can use our morning time activities for part of a high school credit, we do. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we can be creative about structuring classes and education.

High School Current Events

One of the main components of our morning time this year was watching World Watch News. World Watch is a ten-minute daily news program (Monday through Friday) that shares real-world news for students from a Christian perspective. (You can also see our review: WORLD Watch News Review)

We started just watching it and discussing it as a family. However, we decided that our rich discussions were valuable and could be part of a social studies elective. So we took the watching and discussing and added a journaling component to turn that part of our morning time into a current events elective for my son.

We watched it together, discussed it together, and then had him complete a journal entry each day that shared what he had learned. Some days our discussions lasted five to ten minutes, and some days they ran as long as an hour.

High School Fine Arts

Another way to incorporate your morning time into your child’s high school credits is through fine arts. This can vary by family, but most morning time picture or music studies are not robust enough for high school credit on their own. However, they can form a great jumping-off point or base for the credit.

We plan to incorporate fine arts into our morning time next year by using the curriculum from You Are An Artist. We will go through some of it together and then have my high schoolers go more in-depth independently.

They have options by grade level or some unit studies for the whole family. I am still deciding which of their courses we will use, but I’ll make sure to share about it when I do my curriculum posts later in the summer.

You can find out more about their fine arts programs in this post about adding music to your homeschool.

High School Morning Time Literature Study

While we will not replace high school literature with morning time, it can be a great starting point. For example, we are working on memorizing some passages of Shakespeare together during our morning time.

We use Ken Ludwig’s How To Teach Your Child Shakespeare. We will also read a children’s version of the play and discuss the characters and plot.

Then my high school students can read the full version and have a more in-depth discussion as a part of their literature course.

You could also read other novels together during morning time and have your high schooler do literature analysis, projects, or papers connected to those novels as a part of their literature work.

High School Morning Time Conclusions

These are just a few ways to incorporate high school credit work into a mixed-age morning time plan! Look for part two of this post coming later, where I talk about using morning time for a few other subjects.

Remember, not everything has to be for credit, but it can be beneficial to look at how what you are already doing can be incorporated into the credits your child needs.

I would love to hear what subjects you incorporate into your morning time and high school credits.

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.