Many high school aged children read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in high school. If you're looking for a free novel study so your high schooler can study themes in this Mark Twain classic, check out the following sites!

Book Rags -  Book rags has chapter summaries, discussion on 3 different themes throughout the book - conformity, humanity and picaresque - and information on the plot, characters and author. There are some discussion questions, but they're pulled from Yahoo answers, which you could do on your own.

SCORE - I like this site a little better, simply because they have a variety of different assignments to choose from. Combined with the summaries from Book Rags, this could be a good resource for a study guide.

Glencoe - Glencoe offers a PDF file complete with vocabulary, discussion questions organized by groups of chapter. I like the fact that there are questions and assignments for every few chapters, but I do think that they are at a somewhat lower level than we should expect from high schoolers. The questions, IMHO, are aimed at a much lower audience, and let's face it, younger kids are not going to be reading about Huck Finn!

Spark Notes - I have left the best for last (but of course you should check out each one, in case your preferences are different than mine!). Why do I like this site so much? Well, they have chapter summaries, discussion questions AND essay topics. They also cover the plot and character analysis, explanations for several quotes from the book, and a list of key facts about the book. I definitely recommend this resource!

Need help homeschooling your high school student? Check out the following resources:

Homeschooling The High School Student - Video 1: Presentation by Linda Stehnker, Video 2: Parent Panel Discussion

A great alternative to traditional homeschooling curriculum is online homeschooling. Make use of the Internet to enroll your children in online homeschooling courses.

Benefits of Online Homeschooling

Online homeschooling offers so many benefits it's hard to know where to start...first of all, by enrolling your child in some online classes, it takes a lot of the pressure of you. For those of us who have a few children we are homeschooling, it can be hard planning enough activities and assignments. Online schooling takes the pressure off, but still allows us to monitor what our children are learning.

Which brings us to our next benefit of online homeschooling: the ability to monitor and decide what and how our children are learning. Unlike sending our children to public school, with online homeschooling classes we are able to view what activities the instructor is having our children do. We can also control what classes our children participate in, and plan extra activities for topics our children are interested in.

Online homeschooling provides structure that is hard to provide (especially in my hectic family life!) One of the problems I face is planning...it's hard to sit down and plan any long-term lessons and activities for my 5 kids. Online homeschooling would remove that obstacle.

High school is hard when you're homeschooling. These last 4 years of school are so important; you need records kept for college and higher level skills in subjects we know next to nothing about! Online homeschooling is definitely a benefit in this case...you have a set schedule, and copies of work that your high schooled student has done.

Now that we've discussed all the benefits, it's time to discuss where you can find sites that offer online homeschooling.

Where to Find Online Homeschooling

If you're intrigued and want to check out the different online homeschooling options, here's a list to get you started:

Global Student Network Online Homeschooling - This site offers unlimited online classes, although they do limit it to 7 classes at once. Online homeschooling is available for grades 2-12. Tuition is $625 with $100 discounts for additional children in the same family.

Christian Online HomeschoolingThe Jubilee Academy offers online homeschooling courses for $895, but they have discounts available for advance enrollment. Unlike the Global Student Network, The Jubilee Academy doesn't have all its materials online; but they do send you all the materials.

K12 offers an interesting array of online homeschooling options. I know here in Texas, the public school portion of k12 is free; however, I personally didn't like the limitations, which is why I opted not to enroll my children. Part of the appeal of homeschooling is that you can work on your own schedule, not someone else's; the public school option that k12 offers has the same attendance requirements as the physical public school system. They also have a very expensive private school option, which leaves it open to only the rich portion of the population.

The last online homeschooling option I want to share with you is Keystone. Keystone offers online courses for grades 6-8, and is a great deal less expensive than k12.

For more information on online homeschooling, this book is an excellent resource:

Ashley (my ninth grader) is studying The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I wanted to share with you what I'm using for our The Grapes of Wrath novel study.

This Grapes of Wrath resource site has a lot of information useful for a The Grapes of Wrath novel study. The website is a mess, and isn't organized very well, but it does have a lot of information that you can use in your The Grapes of Wrath novel study.

I am using this novel study guide for her The Grapes of Wrath discussion questions. The pdf file has a LOT of questions, so you can pick and choose which ones you want to use in your novel study.

Cornell has a great list of Grapes of Wrath essay topics. Have your student write a one or two page essay on one or more of these The Grapes of Wrath discussion questions.

Also worth of note is Cornell's Grapes of Wrath blog and their Grapes of Wrath Reading Project. The Grapes of Wrath Reading Project includes valuable information on the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck, and more! You will find Cornell's Grapes of Wrath website very helpful in your high schooler's Grapes of Wrath novel study.

Need a copy of the book? Click the link to the right to purchase your copy of The Grapes of Wrath. Use it with the links I've provided above to broaden your homeschooler's horizons!

I've still been trying to finish up Ashley's curriculum. So far I've done the yearly plan for the following courses:

• US History


• Biology


• English


• Health

I still have to figure out Spanish (her selected language elective), Geometry (having problems finding course info for Geometry), Music, Art, Web Design, and Forensics (another elective she chose). I'm not even halfway with her curriculum! This isn't good...here it is nearing the end of July, school's supposed to start in just over a month, and I haven't finished Ashley's curriculum, let alone Dakota's, Amber's and Kia's.

How I Plan

I'm not really trying to get a daily activity plan set up, or even a weekly "set in stone" plan...I'm trying to set a general guideline of what I want to do in each course so that I have something to keep me on track.

My goal is to have a general year outline of what I plan to teach each week, then each month I will go through the material and set up a daily activity plan, including in-class activities, homework, tests and worksheets.

What I want to know is how other homeschooling moms do it. Do y'all schedule the entire year in advance, like I'm trying to do, or do you fly by the seat of your pants? Am I putting too much work into this curriculum creating venture?

I am currently working on creating Ashley's 9th grade curriculum, and I realized that I don't have any ideas for her journal entries...sometimes she has a hard time deciding what to write about. Therefore, I've been looking for English writing prompts for her journal writing, and I found some great ones to use that I wanted to share. I was surprised when I found ones that I can use for some paper assignments too!

Writing Prompts for High School

This is a link to a pdf file that offers several suggestions for paper assignments. It includes the following types of high school writing prompts:

• Cause and effect;


• Definition (speech writing);


• Expository and Informative Writing Prompts;


• Persuasive Essay;


• Descriptive Essays;


• Persuasive Essays;


• Narrative Essays;


• Literature;


• Non-fiction;

Write On Writing Prompts

I really like this site for high school writing prompts. Write On has an entire list of different types of writing prompts, although the link that led to the high school specific writing prompts is broken. I think a lot of the other ones could still be used for some high schoolers.

Creative Writing for Grade 9

There aren't too many listed on there right now, so I don't have a full year's worth from this site, but there are several that I can use.

Creative Writing Prompts

I've saved the best for last I think! This one has 329 different writing prompts; some are rather simple, some are challenging, but they're all perfect for journal writing!

I hope that this list helps some of you; let me know which writing prompts sites you like and which you don't, or please let me know if you know of some that I don't!

My oldest daughter is starting high school this fall. I am trying to find a good secular curriculum for high school. It's not easy! I've been having a really hard time!

Until I found this web site. It has a wealth of links to free high school homeschool curriculum. Here's a list of what this website offers for homeschool high school curriculum:

• High School English


• English Composition


• English Grammar


• Literature


• Creative Writing


• Screenwriting


• Journalism


• Debate




• High School Math


• Algebra I


• Geometry


• Pre-Calculus


• Calculus


• Probability & Statistics




• High School Science


• Biology


• Chemistry


• Physics


• Environmental Science


• Forensics




• High School Social Studies




• American History


• American Government


• Free Enterprise


• Western Civilization




• Physical Education


• Computers


• Computer Literacy


• Programming


• Computer Science




• Electives


• Foreign Language


• French


• German


• Icelandic


• Italian


• Ancient Greek


• Modern Greek


• Social Sciences


• History of American Religion


• Science


• Astronomy


• Fine Arts


• Music Theory


• Music Appreciation

If you are looking for free homeschool high school curriculum, Hoagies' Gifted is the perfect resource for you! I found an entire full high school curriculum for my daughter, and I am so excited!! It's not going to cost me a thing!! Well, some of the courses do require text books...but, some of them are really cheap on Amazon, and I'm sure it will be cheaper than a "traditional" curriculum which would cost a LOT more!!