HS Electives (Everything Else)

If you follow the standard Oregon credit plan for high school, then 11 out of 24 credits (45%) will be Electives.  That's a lot!  

At a public high school or charter, some of the non-core classes are actually required (PE, Health, etc) but as homeschoolers we can really customize those to whatever makes sense for our student.  Here are some general categories and ideas for each.

Life Skills:   This might include cooking, paying bills, financial literacy, consumer skills, driving or public transportation practice.  Check out the many "adulting" websites or books out there for ideas.  For example the Life Skills For Kids book has a great list of practical skills to cover.  The Actuarial Foundation has an excellent free series of lessons either online or print called Building Your Future, which covers banking, loans, budgeting etc.  

Career and Technical (CTE):  If your student wants specific skills or exposure to various career ideas, online classes or community college are a great way to do this.  Sometimes you can also take a CTE class as a homeschooler at your local high school.  Things such as culinary science, woodworking, welding, 3D design printing, computer coding, auto mechanics etc, all take specialized knowledge or equipment.  This is a great way to experiment with what is interesting and attractive as a potential career, but also to just be more aware of how the world works.

Health:  High school health textbooks are an inexpensive way to cover some of the "Health" basics like anatomy, reproduction, fitness, relationships, hygiene, drugs, and puberty.  For example, a Prentice-Hall Health used book is less than $10 on Amazon.  You can either read it together or just use the sections as jumping off points for your own study.  Or for a more homeschool friendly print curriculum, Oak Meadow has a good high school health unit.  Online, CK-12 and Time4Learning both have several health units.  Outschool has frequent classes on nutrition. 

For our neurodiverse kids, it may be that they will interact more with medical providers than the average person, so this is a good time to cover their own specific needs in detail.  Do they take medications?  How do those work?  Do they see a specialist?  Why? 

Physical Education:  Most homeschoolers do a variety of activities, whatever they are interested in and able to do, and call it "PE".  Since ASD kids are frequently not into group sports, that leaves things like going for a walk, biking, the climbing wall, or treadmill at the gym.  Some people hire a fitness coach to give their student some custom activity and encouragement.  Or you can skip it altogether - this is your custom education after all.  

Foreign Language:   Languages are not a required thing to graduate from any Oregon public school, but they may be required for a university.  If you need specific study, online is the way to go here.  HomeschoolSpanishAcademy and SpanishExpedition have online or self-paced options.  Outschool has many live or private tutor options for Spanish, German, French, Russian, Chinese and many more.  If you like print, books such as German Made Simple are a good start (many languages in that series).  

Also there are many American Sign Language classes available online.  

Fine Arts:   Creative pursuits can be included if your child is interested, but some kids are "artsy" and some aren't.  Music appreciation, learning to play an instrument, painting, drawing, art history, going to museums or folk art displays, are all ways to include some type of art awareness.  Game design often includes a large art component, as does film production.  Sewing, cosplay costumes, drama, even comedy or improv are creative arts.  YouTube videos can be a big help with learning aspects of any of these subjects.  Also there are frequently community art classes for kids or adults, in things like pottery, weaving, painting and crafts.  A good place to find classes is the local homeschool Facebook groups.