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Nancy Nicholson has just finished High School of Your Dreams – a long-anticipated 200-plus spiral bound pages of information for your high schooler. Nicholson has created a curriculum that’s flexible and fits the needs of different kinds of students. In fact, based on the information and advice in this book, I have decided to build my own high schoolers’ curriculum rather than relying on a canned curriculum!

This volume is very liberating to a homeschooling mom who believes in adapting the coursework to the student, focusing on learning over just passing tests, and still getting the student a good "leg up" on post high school living.

The first third of the book discusses developing a record-keeping system so that at the end of the high school time, the student has a valid transcript that would be accepted at most school and work places. She shows you how to transfer volunteer, internship or work hours into credit hours applied to the transcript.

This is NOT a book for those who need everything clearly scheduled and organized. This is a book for those who like to do their own searching and finding the best resources. Nicholson gives lists of suggested books, websites, essay topics and Church teachings. But it’s all up to the student and her parents to develop the individual “High School of Your Dreams”.

This book teaches the parent and student how to look for and find options to traditional subjects and ways of doing high school. She stresses that the student should be doing this resource work WITH the parent. The student needs to have buy-in with the plan throughout.

I love the way it embraces Catholicism (which you can use or not depending on your own household) through links to Catholic teachings on the various subjects. I also really appreciate the way she encourages the student to LEARN, not just study for tests.

In the back of the book there are sample charts including lesson planning forms, monthly hours’ charts, transcripts and a sample diploma. I would like CHC to have these available on-line – so you could download them right into your computer.

There are a few downsides to this book. I think to fully benefit from this “program”, you need to buy it and digest it while your student is a 7th or early 8th grader – possibly much earlier than a parent is ready to start discussing! That said, I think there is still great value to this book even if your children are already in high school.

I also found that some of the subjects are a bit deficient in their coverage of what the student should do (lack of links or creative suggestions). But, again, she has given you so many great examples that the savvy parent and teen could easily ferret out the information they need.

There is a lack of emphasis on the standardized tests. Nicholson implies that the SATs and ACTs are not as important as the portfolio and transcript. While this may be true for some schools, I would have liked more explanation of prepping the kids to take these standardized tests. From all that I have read, the test scores are often the “first” cut for applicants to most colleges and universities.

Those deficiencies aside, I was amazed at the scope of the solutions that Nicholson and CHC have created here. This answers so many questions parents have trying to get their children through and beyond high school. It’s a wonderful resource and well-worth the purchase price. It opens so many doors and helps parents and students go beyond the traditional high school experience.

Catholic Heritage Curriculum publishes this high school resource – as well as many other excellent Catholic homeschooling products. CHC is available on the Web at: http://www.chcweb.com/catalog/index.html or by calling 1-800-490-7713.

Unit Studies, or integrated curriculum, present a wonderful opportunity to study one topic in depth while taking side-trips to study related topics. The History Links units have been prepared to help Catholic families study a broad range of subjects, over all grade levels, organized by historical time period, from a Catholic point of view. That doesn't sound too easy to do, but the authors have made it so.

This unit on Ancient Greece is not a structured, day-to-day lesson plan. Rather, it is organized to guide you to develop your own daily plans and longer term assignments. The book begins with traditional Catholic prayers and patriotic hymns derived from Greek that can be learned during the unit and used for memorization, dictation, copywork or spelling. Next is a lengthy list of topics that will be studied and a listing of specific books, church documents, videos, and internet sites. These lists will help you to gather materials for your students to use during the study of Ancient Greece. The "preparation" section ends with vocabulary and spelling lists and a timeline.

The bulk of the unit is organized in outline style, with many, many suggestions of things to do as you explore Ancient Greece. Each of the topic headings and activity suggestions includes background teaching information, which I think is one of the best features of the program. The activity suggestions are coded with an age recommendation and a subject classification. For example, some activities are best-suited for preschoolers or elementary students, while others are best for middle school students or high school students. Each page also includes ideas for including babies and toddlers in the activities! Main subjects covered include religion, language arts, literature, research skills, critical thinking, and geography. Some suggestions also include study in foreign language, math, science, citizenship, architecture, art, crafts, drama, music, and physical education.

The authors recommend spending approximately 2 months on this unit, but there are so many things to do that you could easily spend much longer on this time period. I think that these courses are wonderful all by themselves, but they would also be very useful as a supplement. If you are enrolled with a formal curriculum such as that of Kolbe Academy or the Angelicum Academy, you could use History Links to add some fun projects and a Catholic perspective to the courses. History Links really are family-centered education, making learning fun and memorable.

This is a rather interesting story, set in Biblical times (about 1200 B.C.) of a great battle led by the Hebrew Barak (at the time of Deborah) and told from the perspective of a young Hittite Warrior, Uriah - one of the enemy. The story gives the reader a real sense of the culture of the time - from the land of the Hittites, to Ancient Israel, to the major Canaanite cities of Tyre and Sidon (where the people fearfully sacrifice a child to the god Moloch in time of difficulty). Through the shock of becoming involved in rescuing a child from Moloch against his will, Uriah becomes involved with the Hebrews and eventually comes to see difficulties with the pagan beliefs. The author also ties in details of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece from the same time period.

It's so important to have books which tie Biblical and other historical events together - helping us to better understand the Old Testament.

Did you know that Jesus is also known as "Divine Mercy" and "The Incarnate Word"? OK, those were easy ones. Do you know the story of the "Infant Jesus of Prague" or "The Black Christ of Esquipulas"? Mrs. Ball has written an interesting book describing the numerous names by which Our Lord has been known throughout time and throughout the world. The earliest names, of course, come from the Bible, but many of the others have been made known through the writings of the saints, visions, and documented miracles. Others are simply devotional. She says that her goal is "that a study of some of His holy names will call forth a greater love of Him Who is Love" (p. 9). In addition to the main text, Mrs. Ball includes the Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, a lovely prayer, as well as an extensive bibliography.

This book is laid out in short sections that may be read in a few minutes while providing food for thought for hours. Forty-four names by which Jesus is known have been listed and described, with a short prayer or meditation after many of them. Those names whose origin is well-known have longer passages than those names that are less familiar. I must admit that two of the passages struck me as a bit odd: the one titled "Cosmic Christ---Jesus, Priest" which is a modern piece of poetry and the one titled "Jesus, Our Mother", which is a commentary of the universal natures of Christ. Both seemed out of place and less than reverent, but the book has both the "nihil obstat" and an imprimatur. Most of the remaining names were familiar to me and quite traditional.