11th grade homeschool curriculum picks

This is our first time homeschooling 11th grade. And I just want you to know (especially if you have littles right now) that homeschooling gets better the older your kids get! We’re really loving this stage. So here’s a few of our 11th grade homeschool curriculum picks for ideas and inspiration for you.

One of the best parts of homeschooling high school has to be the flexibility for your kids to pursue jobs, apprenticeships, dual enrollment, and other hobbies and passions.

My 11th grader is so excited to be able to fulfill his high school requirements in 4 weekdays and work every Friday at a local insurance agency. He’s been with this company for over a year now and loves every minute of it.

Since our state requires that we either keep track of days (180) or hours (990) for high school, we choose to do the hourly tracking. Plus, a general rule of thumb is 120+ hours per high school credit.

So, my son covers all his classes in his four weekly school days, sometimes spending multiple hours per day on one subject. He divides it out as he needs to with at least 4 hours per class weekly.

Here’s what he’s working on for 11th grade homeschool curriculum.

English

You can easily craft an English credit each year of high school by focusing on these components:

• literature
• writing
• vocabulary
• grammar
• speech

Or, you could deep dive into one or two of those subtopics each high school year, making sure to cover them all from 9th-12th grades. Of course, make sure you’re in compliance with your state homeschool law.

By now, my 11th grader has worked on grammar for many years, so he just needed a recap. For this, we’re using Easy Grammar, which requires about 10 minutes per day.

Vocabulary is covered by Vocabulary Virtuoso, which also requires one page of work per day. So, it’s not too time intensive.

My son started out the year with an online writing class, which was compromised of 25 lessons. So this was the perfect component to treat as a block class. He worked on that entirely for his English for the first few weeks. Check out my review of College-Ready Writing Essentials™ by BetterRhetor.

My son will be completing additional writing assignments this year for his dual credit history course. You can count research papers written for history or science as also English writing assignments.

My son prepares and gives devotionals at the nursing home as part of his normal ministry opportunities with our church. He would do this anyway, but it also counts as speech!

Finally, high school students should be reading great literature and discussing it or writing about it. My son wanted to read presidential biographies this year, so that’s what he’s doing! Another place to find reading options for each level is at Classical Reader. You can search by genre, grade level, and reading difficulty.

Edited to add: Subsequent siblings have used BJU Press English curriculum for high school. Check out our review of BJU Press English to see how we used it.

Algebra II

Next up, our math choice for 11th grade homeschool curriculum.

We have continued using BJU Press Math through high school with this son. We purchase the student text, the teacher text (for answer key and solutions), and the tests packet.

For kids who are good readers, they are usually able to read through the lesson in the student text and understand through sample problems how to do the assignment.

My son does the assignment and checks his answers in the teacher text for immediate feedback. Of course, he could always look up an explanation video if needed on YouTube.

Now, I will say that most of my kids have been able to keep using BJU Press math even into high school because I am able to give them help as needed.

However, if your student is not entirely independent or has a harder time with reading (learning issues or dyslexia diagnosis), then upper level BJU Press math might not be a great fit for you. For my other high school son, we are stepping away from BJU Press math and using CTC Math instead, because all the instruction is in short video format.

Dual Credit History of Civilization

This particular son is a history fanatic, so having him dual enroll in a college-level History of Civilization course was the right call.

Since a 1-semester college course is worth 1 high school credit, he won’t need to take a history course next semester. He may take a different dual credit course. We’ll see.

His high school social studies courses so far have been: World Geography and American History. Next semester or next year I hope we’ll get to American Government, Economics, and possibly the second semester of History of Civilization.

Remember, you can do these high school credits in any order that makes sense for your child. World History is generally a 9th or 10th grade course, but we did our own thing. It’s fine!

Chemistry

This non-science-minded homeschool mom really loves Apologia Science for high school homeschool science courses! I can’t use a curriculum that is written for a traditional classroom, because I have no ability or desire to jump in and help teach my high schoolers their sciences.

We purchased the student textbook, the student notebook, and the tests and solutions book.

French

After using Rosetta Stone for two years, we realized that, while it covered the conversational aspects of the language, it really did nothing to explicitly teach French grammar.

I find that foreign language is a very hard course to do well in homeschool!

Personally, I learned Spanish in high school, so I’m not able to jump in and help from experience. My husband learned French, but he’s not here during the school day (plus he’s a bit rusty himself!).

So, after scouring all of our options, and knowing I had to find something that was made to be used independently by students and not in a classroom setting with a live teacher, we purchased French PACES from Christianbook.com.

I have to say that I don’t love them (and neither do my teens), but we’re barreling through it this year for my three high schoolers. Then, we’ll happily be done our 2 years of foreign language!

The French PACES do teach grammar, but the font is terrible and these booklets haven’t been updated in decades. It’s really old-fashioned looking and not user-friendly.

We supplement the grammar lessons with video lessons by Learn French With Alexa on YouTube.

And I have to do a face-palm right now. I absolutely did not realize that the French PACES came with an audio DVD. But now I do – and I just ordered one! Hopefully that will make this French curriculum a bit more palatable.

{Edited a year later: We now use Visual Latin from Compass Classroom for our foreign language requirement. This will now be our foreign language go-to course! Totally recommend Visual Latin.}

Cello

All of our kids take private music lessons. This particular son is continuing on with his 10th or 11th year of cello lessons… when it’s been this long, who’s counting?!

Private music lessons or sports team participation or other hobbies are great things to include on the high school homeschool transcript. It shows how unique and talented our kids really are.

Personal Finance

Dave Ramsey produces some solid financial literacy courses for middle school and high school. My three high schoolers are taking Foundations in Personal Finance for High School this year. We purchased a used DVD on eBay, and it includes video lessons plus a CD with all the teacher lesson plans and resources. It’s specified for a 90-day course, so we’ll count this as 1/2 credit.

We track high school progress in four places:

• Daily tasks are listed on trello
• Each high schooler has a small weekly calendar book where he writes each subject done daily and the time he worked on it (for accountability purposes and a paper trail in case I ever need it!)
• Grade sheets: each teen grades his own daily assignments and I grade the tests and papers. Points earned are then recorded in grade sheets in a binder. Each high schooler keeps his own.
• Transcript: End of semester or year-end grades are transferred from grade sheets to the “official” transcript.

And that’s it! I hope you’ve found some inspiration and ideas for your high school planning and more specifically 11th grade homeschool curriculum.

Check out this other homeschool curriculum picks posts:

• Middle School Curriculum Round-Up
• Homeschool Curriculum for 7th grade
• Our 6th grade homeschool curriculum choices
• Homeschool curriculum for middle school
• 10th grade homeschool curriculum plan
• Homeschool curriculum combined subjects: grades 7, 6, 5 & 2
• How to Piece Together an (almost) FREE Homeschool Curriculum
• 2 Things Homeschool Moms Need to Know About Curriculum