Someone e-mailed me to ask if I could write a clearer how-to on doing my structured unschooly high school thing. I don't know if I can! But here I have tried.
Step 1: Figure out what credits are required in each subject area (and what number of hours -- 180, 150, or in my state 108 -- constitutes a credit). For example, four English credits, two math, two science and three social studies seems to be a kind of minimum standard. Another way to say this is "two year long courses in science." During this step you'll want to have your kid take a guess at what kind of college they want to get into (and look up that college's entrance requirements), as well as show your kid your state regulations about homeschooling high school.
Step 2: Ask kids what they want to do for that number of hours in that subject area. This can involve looking at your community college course catalog for course-title inspiration. Need to do three science courses? How about quantum physics, marine biology, half a semester of wild edible plants and half a semester of New York geology? This is the most fun part.
Step 3: Help kids fill out a form showing what they propose to learn and what materials they'll use for each course. This involves a lot of brainstorming about how to learn something, but let the kids have final say, and make them write the lists. Remind them it doesn't matter if they change their mind later.
Step 4: Make a binder that your kid can carry around with him. Put all the course description pages in there. Also put sheets of paper in it on which the kid will write down what he does that can be counted towards each course (and how long it took him to do each thing). I think I'm going to have my kids' papers bound up into a spiral-bound notebook at Lulu.
Step 5: Check in with your kid each day to make sure they stay on task. Try to catch some proof of their coolest activities in each course and file those in the binder, too. Take photos. Save essays. Print emails. Save fliers for events they attend. Hole punch these or put them in a folder and file them in the binder next to the applicable course description.
Step 6: At the end of every so-many weeks (we'll do quarterly because our state requires quarterly reporting) harvest your activities. That is, go through the logs of hours-spent and relist all the financial math activities to the financial math course description pages, all the engineering activities to the engineering course description page, etc. Don't wait til the end of the year because then it will be too late to balance it out if you discover your geekling has more than enough engineering hours already but not even ten hours yet on that pre-calc course.
Step 7: Translate all this into an awesome, narrative style (ungraded), undated (organized by subject not year) high school transcript. Send it to the college of your dreams and impress them with your child's sense-of-self and internal motivation.