It’s difficult for me to write about one subject that has been most beneficial for life after High School. While I was homeschooling my son, many times our learning wasn’t really broken into subjects but was a more integrated approach. The best example would be my son’s most enjoyable year of high school, 10th grade. His favorite subject that year, if asked, would have been Social Studies. It was always how he wanted to start the day. On his transcript, his Social studies credit is titled World Geography, but in reality it was so much more than that.
The World Geography & Cultures curriculum we used included links to listen to music and look at works of Art from each country. This would lead to an Art project or learning to play a song on the keyboard. We would cook a recipe from the country, and he would need to use Math skills and follow directions. Because my son is very interested in animals and nature, we also decided to learn more about the animals that live in the countries we were studying by reading a beautiful book about the Wildlife of the World (with photos and maps) and watching documentaries. This led us to make the decision for him to take Biology for his Science credit because it was a perfect compliment.
His English credit included books about different countries we were learning about through the Geography course. We also incorporated his unique interest in Godzilla into English and Geography. He researched the origin of Godzilla, the timeline of all the eras, directors, actors, and suits. He organically learned about the history and culture of Japan while pursuing his love of all things Kaiju. He taught himself to play music from the movies on his keyboard. We incorporated some of his writing into this as well: writing a descriptive paragraph about a figure in his collection or re-writing the ending to a movie. He joined a weekly online discussion group with other students to analyze and discuss the movies and monsters. Yes, this group really did exist, and we found it!
So, he earned Social Studies (Geography), English, Science (Biology), Elective (Japanese Film Study), and Music-Keyboarding credits that all were planned because of one subject. I think there were so many wonderful lessons learned that year with the approach we used, but probably the biggest benefits were seeing how everything is connected and that life isn’t broken up into 45 minute periods of different subjects. We have great memories from that year and the study of World Geography ignited a lifelong love of learning — a passion I believe is the most valuable life skill of all.
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