Parents often harbor unnecessary fears at the prospect of homeschooling high school, thinking that their kids will miss out on sports, extracurriculars, graduation, and the prom. In my experience—and we’ve just graduated our second homeschooled student—that just isn’t the case. It may require extra time, driving, and dedication on your part, but with our numbers growing and homeschooling increasingly recognized as a viable and successful educational option, the possibilities are endless. Today I’m going to focus on one of these areas.
Sports and Related Extracurriculars
More sports teams are popping up as the number of high schooled homeschoolers continues to rise. Most of these teams are started and coached by parents who are passionate about these sports and want their kids to be able to participate in them, too. Bonus for the coach: you don’t have to teach classes all day at the local high school in order to experience the joy of coaching what you love!
Depending on the number of homeschool teams in your area for a particular sport, you may play against other homeschool teams or in conferences that also include private or Christian schools. We’ve done both.
Our kids participate in a band/choir program that works with local home and privately schooled students. Because we have homeschool high school football, two of our kids are able to perform in the halftime show at home games. Our 14-year-old son plays clarinet in the marching band and our 12-year-old daughter is on the flag team.
I love the absence of labels: our son’s dream is to play major league baseball, but he’s in the band. There’s no “jock” or “band geek” label attached to him.
If you don’t yet have homeschool sports teams in your area, maybe you are what it takes to help make it happen.
Here are some photos from our first varsity football game last night. The halftime show featured music from Pirates of the Caribbean. [Note the awesome costuming, especially from the student band directors. How often do you see a pirate directing a band?]
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WOW! I’d love to have something like this around us when the boys are in high school….
So glad you posted this – we are just starting up a homeschool music program – your post gave me hope that we can actually make it work
This is so cool! And I love the pirate theme – they look to be having a blast!
Wow. Those shots are great!!! I hope your highschoolers are as interested in photography as their mom! What the world needs is more pretty pictures – to go along with all that awesome big-band music, of course!
Our high-school aged son played on a homeschool ‘school’ baseball team this past spring. They played around 22 games against private schools and smaller public schools. They went undefeated in their season!
I wish there were more opportunities around us for football, band, etc but we are hopeful for the future
Great insights, and very true. There are many options for students if they look around to see what’s available.
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