Homeschooling For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Invaluable homeschooling websites

Homeschooling websites offer solid educational material whether you’re looking for great articles worth reading, online lesson plans, or even textbooks and unit studies to ease your planning load.

Invaluable homeschooling newsletters and magazines

When you want a good read for yourself or the students in your life, turn to online newsletters, print magazines, and a mix of the two. Some of the periodicals listed here are designed specifically for homeschoolers, while others are written for children who aren’t necessarily homeschooled but whose publishers and content embrace homeschooling.

How to calculate grades in your homeschool

If you decide to keep grades in your homeschool, or you need to because of your state’s homeschooling law, this is an easy and consistent way to figure a grade point average.

To determine a grade point average, follow these steps:

1. Assign a point value to the final grade. Generally A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, and F = 0.
2. Multiply the grade value by the amount of credit for that particular course. This gives you the number of grade points for the course in question. (Course credits are also known as Carnegie Units.) To make it easy for everyone, most yearlong courses equal one unit. This gives a one-year course that was worth one credit a final point value of 4 (assuming your stellar student got an A.)
3. Add all the grade points for the semester, year, or four years, depending on the span of time you want the grade average to reflect. This gives you a total number of grade points. If our mythical stellar student takes two courses and gets an A and a B, the total grade points would be 7.
4. Divide the grade point total by the total number of classes. This gives you a grade-point average, otherwise known as a GPA. Your stellar student receives a GPA of 3.5 because 7 (the total grade points) divided by 2 (the number of classes taken) equals 3.5.