60: Why Every Homeschooled Student Should Get Fine Arts Credit on Their Homeschool High School Transcript

In this enlightening episode of the Music in Our Homeschool podcast, Gena Mayo dives into the essential reasons why every high school student should earn a fine arts credit. Whether your homeschooler is college-bound, entering the workforce, or pursuing other paths, fine arts education can enrich their educational journey and provide lifelong benefits. 

Gena, a seasoned music teacher with over 30 years of experience and a homeschooling mom of eight, passionately discusses how integrating disciplines like music, art, dance, and theater can bolster cultural understanding and historical awareness. Discover how a fine arts credit encourages a more integrated understanding of diverse cultures and historical contexts. 

Gena details practical ways to incorporate fine arts into your homeschool curriculum, providing a comprehensive list of activities that can count towards a fine arts credit. From music appreciation and art history to drama productions and choir participation, there are endless possibilities to engage your student. 

Learn how to structure these activities to meet credit requirements, and explore creative methods for assessing student progress in fine arts courses. Gena also offers tips on grading and expanding coursework to enhance your child's educational experience.

Whether you're in search of a fun yet educational component to add to your homeschool schedule or exploring ways to fulfill state curriculum requirements easily, this episode is packed with informative guidance. Tune in to find inspiration and resources that will help you seamlessly integrate fine arts into your homeschooling efforts.

For additional support and resources, visit MusicInOurHomeschool.com, where Gena offers full courses and membership options. Don’t miss this opportunity to enrich your student's high school transcript with the power of the fine arts!

Find links to all resources mentioned in this episode here: https://musicinourhomeschool.com/fine-arts-credit-on-the-homeschool-transcript/

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Transcript

60: Why I Believe Every Student Should Get Fine Arts Credit on Their High School Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Gena Mayo from Music in Our Homeschool Today I'm thrilled to be talking to you about why I believe every student should get a fine arts credit on their high school transcript. Now, it doesn't matter what they're planning on doing after their high school years. I think all students should get a fine arts credit.

I know they're all different. Some are highly gifted, some have special needs, some are planning on going to college, some maybe to the military, some straight to a job, some straight to marriage. They're all different, but fine arts is something that I believe they should all have because it helps tie together the disciplines of history and culture.

A fine arts credit will help a student have a more integrated understanding of people and the world that we live in. If the student is learning some music or art history, and it's [00:01:00] fascinating for them when they see how the arts and the culture influence one another during the historical period, they're studying.

Furthermore, there are many references to different historical music or art, or even literature themes that people will see in movies and TV shows, books that they read, and if you haven't studied in any of that, you'll miss it. And so it makes it much more fun as you are watching these shows or listening to different things to know that, yes, I recognize that piece of music, or I understand why they're talking about that painting in this instance, because I've studied it.   

Another reason to get a fine arts credit is because it's easy. It's fun at least for most kids, it's fun and they're doing a lot of hard work in high school. They need a little easy thing to do as well. So along with their algebra and [00:02:00] physics and Spanish, let them take a fun class like music appreciation.

So let's talk a little bit about exactly what fine arts is and what it entails. The basic, very basic definition of fine arts is that it includes music, art, dance, and theater. But you can broaden that if you'd like and make it include things like, well, let me just read through some of these so you can get an idea of what all could count as fine arts on your transcript.

And let me quickly say that, depending on where you live. You may be required to include it on your high school transcript, and they may have a more narrow definition of what you should be learning for that credit. If you live in an easier state like I do, I can define it more broadly. So let me read through this list and give you some [00:03:00] ideas: art lessons, voice lessons, piano, guitar, or any other instrument lessons, church praise band or vocal group, choir, band, orchestra, a music ensemble, like a barbershop quartet, a string quartet, a jazz ensemble or a garage band. Any dance lessons like ballet, jazz, tap, ballroom, lyrical, or praise dance, drama productions, drama camp, film making, playing in or attending concerts, attending ballets, operas, plays, or musicals.

Visiting art museums, art galleries or local art fairs. A music theory class, music appreciation, or music history class. Art appreciation or art history, class music, recording and producing, a virtual choir [00:04:00] participation, photography, drawing, painting, pottery, leather working jewelry making, ceramics, printmaking, and sculpting.

Reading about and studying artists, composers, musicians, dancers, or actors, video production, script writing, playwriting or screenwriting, audio editing, poetry study, poetry recitation, 3D design, graphic art, animation, songwriting and music composition acting, and pantomime. Musical theater class or performance, technical theater, stage craft improvisation in music, theater or dance, puppetry, fashion design, including costume history, textile and fiber arts [00:05:00] and architectural history and design.

So hopefully as I was reading through that list, you thought of something. Oh, I bet my high schooler would like that. That would really interest them, and they'd get into it and they'd find that much more fun than maybe one of the other disciplines that I read.

So how exactly do you go about creating a class for your kids to get this credit in? Let me just give you some basics for determining credits for high school. In the United States at at least, we typically think of a high school credit as about 180 hours. And half of that is 90 hours. Now that would be the absolute maximum.

Most schools do not do 180 full hours of schoolwork, do they? And for half credit, 90, no. So you can definitely go down from [00:06:00] there, but that's just kind of a ballpark. Maybe you think 45 minutes a day. Five days a week for a semester would be your half credit and 45 minutes a day all school year would be your full credit. Something like that. 

So one thing you can do is find an actual textbook and go through that. If it says this is a half credit. It, or this is a full credit, then you already know what you're doing. Or a course online, and usually it will tell you: this is a high school half credit course. And if you complete it, then you know that you've got that.

If you're coming up with something on your own though, like, here's an example. I had my son do an advanced graphic design course. What he did was he just picked out projects that he wanted to work on. He had already learned the software the year before. That's why this one was called advanced, and now he was actually putting it into practice, and so he would just write down every day how long he [00:07:00] worked on it.

And when he reached enough hours, we were able to count that as the credit. So he needed to log his hours. He just had a spiral notebook sitting by the computer, and he would write down when he started and finished each day, and that way we knew what he was doing. You could do that in an app, you could do that in a fancy, homeschool high school planner, a lot of those have been made. You can, they're usually places for you to mark those things in there. So those are a couple of ways to plan your credit. You log the hours and then you want to write out the description of exactly what they did and how you graded it. 

Now, how do you grade this type of course? Usually what I do for this type of course is if they are doing good work with it, like they're completing their assignments when, if you're assigning them, if they're completing them on time, if they're working hard at it, then [00:08:00] they're getting an A. If maybe they're being kind of sloppy with, if they're doing like a painting class and you could tell they're really not trying very hard, but they're still completing their work. Maybe that's a B. So that will give you some idea of how to grade the course.

What are some different things that you can do? Say you are doing the graphic design, would it just be creating the designs on the computer? Well, you can expand that more. You could actually, read some books about graphic design or some famous graphic designers.

You can write an essay about it. You can do a speech about it. You can print out your designs and try to sell them at a craft fair or make something with them and sell them so you can expand it further and further rather than just doing that one little activity. 

Here's another [00:09:00] example. If you're studying music history and you are learning about the history, you're learning about the composer and you're listening to the music, what else could you do? Well, you could learn to play one of those pieces or learn how to sing one of those pieces. You could search out a concert in your area that is playing some music of the historical period that you're studying. So you'll want to expand it if you can, because that just brings even more depth to the course.

I hope that I have inspired you today to do fine arts with your high schoolers, that you can find something that will interest them, that it will be a fun class for them, and that it will really broaden their high school career as they lead into further life. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer those for you.

I actually have full courses in different fine arts areas as well as a [00:10:00] membership for fine arts students. So you can check me out at music in our homeschool.com, send me an email, and I would love to connect with you and answer any questions you might have. 

Find links to all resources mentioned in this episode here: https://musicinourhomeschool.com/fine-arts-credit-on-the-homeschool-transcript/