The Homeschool Highschool Podcast - How to Show Extracurric

Mar 18 2025 20 mins 4

Other Episodes

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: How to Show Extracurriculars on the Transcript.

How to Show Extracurriculars on the Transcript

Recently, there were some discussions in the 7Sisters Facebook group about showing extracurriculars on the homeschool transcript, so we thought we would share a podcast episode on this fun topic!

What are extracurriculars?

Extracurriculars are anything your teen is doing that is:

of interest to them and they are putting time into

a gift that they are exploring or investing in

These were not one-time activities, but rather, activities that required some commitment.

Here are some extracurriculars our teens have shown on the transcript

There are endless ideas for extracurriculars. Here are a few that our teens have enjoyed.

Sports

Our homeschoolers have been involved in soccer, hockey, tennis, golf, baseball, dance, and swimming.

Choirs and church music teams

Our high schoolers have been blessed to have homeschool choirs, competition chorales, and madrigals teams. Lots of our teens have also been part of their church’s music ministry.

Helping out at church

Extracurriculars can be things like teaching Sunday school or regular working in the nursery. This could also be shown as service on the transcript. We generally have teens choose which one they prefer for the transcript: extracurricular or service. (They often chose service because they needed to record their service hours for the transcript for our homeschool umbrella school.)

Re-enacting

Some of our teens have been Civil War re-enactors. Also, a few that got involved in a reenacting community that did some things with World War I and the Revolutionary War.

Park historical interpreters

Some of our teens have been historical park guides or “interpreters” during the warm-weather seasons (that is when many of our local parks had lots of special programs that needed interpreters).

There’s not a right or wrong extracurricular! Here are more ideas in this episode on choosing extracurriculars.

How to record extracurriculars on the transcript

We always say: There’s not ONE right way to homeschool high school, and there’s not ONE right way to record extracurriculars on the transcript. So we are simply going to tell you how some of our teens have done recorded their extracurriculars.

Our transcripts have always had a section at the bottom where the teens could list their extracurriculars and the years they were involved in those activities. This show (especially for teens applying to college) their willingness to be committed to something.

For teens with a career interest

Some teens have a definite career interest, so they can use their extracurriculars to explore their career choice. We had some teens who wanted to be history teachers or college professors. So they participated in extracurriculars in activities like speech and debate team. These public speaking skills were useful preparation for teaching careers.

Teens who have a talent they are seriously developing

Several of our high schoolers wanted to play college-level sports. They spent lots of time at practice and competitions. Not only that, but they spent time off-season with fitness and nutrition training. They logged extracurriculars during the season, but their fitness training added to their Phys Ed credits. Their nutrition training beefed up their Health credit.

Log sheets

We created log sheets for our teens. They would write down what they did for each extracurricular, when, and for how long. Some teens simply used a calendar. Sometimes our teens would include hour-totals for each extracurricular, along with the years the in which that teen participated in the extracurricular. This was useful sometimes, because the teen would see that they had SO many hours recorded that they decided to count that extracurricular as an elective instead. (This is good for teens using the extracurricular as career exploration.)

For instance, one of our teens was interested in a musical career. He was in the church worship team, the homeschool choir, and competitive madrigals choir. He had LOTS of hours recorded on his log sheets. We would show those activities on the transcript sometimes as extracurriculars, or Fine Arts electives, or Career Exploration electives.

For non-college-bound teens

Many teens are not needing college these days. Why would you record extracurriculars on the transcript for these teens? Transcripts are like a little mini scrapbook that shows the richness of their high school experience. You do not want to sell them short just because they do not have to show extracurriculars on the transcript in order to get to the next part of life. Why not show off the awesomeness of their high school experience?!

For college-bound teens

For teens who are college bound, especially if they are looking at scholarships or a competitive college. Your teen’s extracurriculars give sparkle to the transcript. Admissions officers have often told us over the years is when they have 3, 000 applications for 1,500 openings, they look for those transcripts with sparkle!

Don’t forget that 7Sisters offers an editable transcript and guide that you can download.