Simply Charlotte Mason — Charlotte Mason method homeschool helps.

Ever since we began homeschooling, I’ve combined all the school-age children for as many subjects as possible. That decision has saved countless hours, both in planning and in teaching. I love to recommend that strategy everywhere we go.

At some recent seminars, several moms have had questions about how to combine the grade levels. So I want to take the next few posts to explain how we’ve done it. We’ll talk about which subjects work well for this strategy, what it actually looks like in practice, how to do narration in a combined group, and a few other tips along the way. [Continue reading Combining Homeschool Grade Levels, Part 1 …]

You may be thinking, “Combining all my students for certain subjects sounds like a great idea, but what does it look like?” Glad you asked.

Let’s talk first about Family subjects that are taught primarily with living books. In our house those subjects are history, geography, Bible, poetry, science (in the younger grades), and Shakespeare. Here’s what combining the students looks like when we’re using living books. [Continue reading Combining Homeschool Grade Levels, Part 2 …]

Many school subjects are easy to do all together as a family regardless of the ages of the children. Last week we talked about how to combine the grade levels for subjects that involve books. This week let’s look at subjects that are more hands-on.

Picture Study

When you do picture study the Charlotte Mason way, you are allowing each child to form his own relationship with the picture and artist, so it’s easy to combine all your students. [Continue reading Combining Homeschool Grade Levels, Part 3 …]