How to Earn a Life Skills Credit

By request, we are discussing how to earn a Life Skills credit.

How to Earn a Life Skills Credit

Homeschool high schoolers, like any teens need to be prepared for adulting and all the things that entails! The lovely thing about homeschooling is that all of life is education, so we can capture those life skills on the transcript!

Should you include Life Skills on the homeschool transcript? Why not? This is an elective that shows your teens:

• worked on preparation for life, not just academics
• understand balance (academics and life)
• have a variety of experiences
• developed a broad set of skills
• are prepared for life!

All our 7Sisters teens earned some form of life skills credits. Sometimes the transcript was too full to bother recording it but when we needed to show breadth of experience, we did. Here are some ways our homeschool high schoolers prepared for life:

How can your teens earn Life Skills credits?

Remember: there’s not ONE right way to homeschool high school, so mix and match any of these approaches (or do your own thing… and share YOUR ideas with us)!

Textbook Approach

Your teens can learn a lot about relationship and self-knowledge adulting skills through textbooks. That’s why 7Sisters developed downloadable e-texts that cover skills we wanted OUR homeschool high schoolers to master:

• • Many young adults learn the hard way that money will manage them if they do not learn early to manage it! Our teens learned so much from our 7th Sister, Sara, in her local Financial Literacy courses that we asked her to capture her interactive course in textbook form. It has become one of our top-selling texts because teens get so much practical training from it.

• • Financial Literacy from a Christian Perspective is not simply a *read the chapter and answer questions* text. It has interactive, internet-oriented activities that teens love (and love to learn about). Homeschool high schoolers learn budgeting, the REAL cost of *stuff*, taxes, insurance, planning for the future and LOTS more!

• Human Development from a Christian Worldview 
  • Human Development is the study of of the ways people grow and change from womb to old age: physically, cognitively, and socially. It helps teens understand why their friends and family members behave the ways they do (and understand themselves). This is such an important life skill! All people need to understand the other people around them. 
  • 7Sisters Human Development from a Christian Worldview covers the scope and sequence for a full credit at an average, very readable level. It includes meaningful readings or activities to level up to College Prep or Honors for teens who need this on their transcripts, or simply get interested in the topic.

• Early Childhood Education

  • For teens who babysit regularly or desire to get married and have children of their own someday, this is an excellent life preparation course. It is a practical how-to guide to understanding preschoolers and ways to help them learn in ways that are developmentally appropriate for them.
  • 7Sisters Early Childhood Education course is an average-level .5 credit course that teens tell us they love!

• Career Exploration
  • It mystifies me that some teens might want to graduate from homeschooling high school and not have at least a partial plan for what they will do after graduation. Don’t let this happen to your teens. Career Exploration is a simple credit to earn!
  • Simply download 7Sisters Career Exploration Bundle or, if your teens are too busy, simply do the Career Exploration Workbook (included also in the Bundle). It will guide your teens through exploring the way God has given them experiences, gifts, guides and interests to help them uncover His purposes and plans for them.

• Apologetics

  • Apologetics is an important life-preparation course that helps homeschool high schoolers answer questions about their faith. 7Sisters and Good Answers Ministries put our heads together to offer a FREE Apologetics course! 
  • Our no-fee Apologetics course is a series of voice-over powerpoints (and a free syllabus) that explore many fascinating topics such as archeology and understanding Scripture. Our teens have loved this course put together by Dr. Gerald Culley, Professor Emeritus of Classics at University of Delaware (and father of 7Sisters Allison and Sabrina).

• Health

  • Health is a required subject for graduation in many states, and rightly so. Teens need to understand how to be healthy as teens and adults. This is an important adulting course.
  • 7Sisters High School Health for the Whole Person is a practical, user-friendly downloadable etext that helps teens understand how their bodies work, how to be self-aware and safe, how to manage human dynamics and how to grow spiritually.

• Communication Skills

  • Our friend Julie from Working While Homeschooling podcast, reminded us that teens will be communicating for the rest of their lives. It is a good idea to have them learn solid writing and speaking skills.
  • Check out 7Sisters no-busywork, adaptable writing and speech downloadable workbooks.

The Carnegie Unit (Logging Hours) Approach

One of our favorite ways to earn elective credits (or level up core-subject credits) is by logging hours. (If you are not familiar with this approach, here is a post that gives an explanation and how-to for earning credit by logging hours.)

To log hours for a credit, simply decide on the name of the credit your homeschool high schoolers will be working on for life skills, keep a log of each activity for that specific credit until you get to 1/2 or 1 credit. (The required hours vary by state from 120-180.)

If your teens will only be working on one Life Skills credit, then you can title it: Life Skills.

• Include anything from the list below and add important skills like:
  • Filling out forms (our FB friend, Jenifer, reminded us about this one)
  • Meeting new people/networking. Download this freebie from my coaching website!
  • Self-advocacy: Talking to doctors, coaches, teachers and bosses. Asking for things they need. Setting boundaries. (Suggested by our friend, Jenifer.)

If your teens are working on several life skills topics, perhaps you will want to break them down into several different credits.

We asked our 7th Sisters on our 7SistersHomeschool Facebook group and other places what kinds of life skills they have taught their teens. They gave us suggestions, such as:

• Home Economics. (Click here for a post on how to create a Home Ec credit.)
• Home Maintenance.
• Personal Safety
  • Self-defense
  • Internet safety (Don’t know where to start with this? Listen to this episode of Homeschool Highschool Podcast with our internet subject matter expert, Leah Nieman and check out her website for more help!). 
  • Modern America issues such as drinking, drugs and lock-down safety (included in 7Sisters Homeschool Health for the Whole Person)
• Fitness
  • Homeschool high schoolers need 1-2 credits for graduation.
  • Here’s a post and a Homeschool Highschool Podcast episode on fitness and phys ed.
  • Also 7Sisters High School Health for the Whole Person includes a chapter on fitness plans by homeschool graduate and personal trainer, Joel Hayes.

If you haven’t seen this excellent post from our friend, Misty at Year Round Homeschooling, you should definitely check it out!

Want some more ideas about life preparation? Check out these Homeschool Highschool Podcast episodes:

• Career Exploration for Teens who Don’t Have a Clue
• Helping Non-College-Bound Teens Find Success (one of our most popular episodes)
• Preparing Teens for Military Careers, Interview with Gretchen Mahoney
• Apprenticing Teens for Adulthood, Interview with Susan Landry