Build Your Own Charlotte Mason Curriculum

For those of you who like to put together your own curriculum from a variety of options, here are some handy links and helpful information to assist you in creating your own custom plan.

Putting Together Your Plan

Build Your Own Charlotte Mason Curriculum

Download this free planning form to help you organize your thoughts and put together your plan. It will guide you through the subjects listed below.

You might also find this article on planning helpful, or watch the video version below.

More Helpful Resources

Our Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education book and video guides you through creating a custom plan for your family in five steps, from the big picture overview down to what you’ll do tomorrow.

For help planning for high school, our book Your Questions Answered: High School gives you plenty of ideas and reassurance that the Charlotte Mason approach is more than enough for high school.

Our free CM Bookfinder is a searchable database of books that we’ve reviewed and other Charlotte Mason homeschoolers have recommended. It’s a great place to find resources and books that you can use in your homeschool plan.

The CM Organizer is our online record-keeper and homeschool tracker designed especially for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. Keep track of your assignments by simply focusing on what you accomplished today.

Learning Charlotte Mason Methods

If you are new to the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling, our free Subject-by-Subject blog post series will walk you through how to teach each school subject using Charlotte Mason methods.

Book Lists and Plans

We have plenty of great book lists to help you know where to start to find the best books and resources to use for each subject. Our lesson plans are also designed to be mixed and matched, so you can grab just the lesson plans you need and save yourself some time.

Family History, Geography, Bible

We like to approach history studies as a whole family. That allows your students to share connections and insights about each history time period. In each book list, there will be certain living history books that you read aloud to the whole family, then additional books to assign to the older students on their grade levels. The whole family can do oral narrations from the read-aloud book that they share, and the older students can do written narrations on their independent book assignments.

Start with any time period you like. If you are just starting out, you may want to start at the beginning of history with Genesis. If your children have already studied a time period, feel free to pick up from there and move forward in subsequent years. Also, keep in mind that if you are starting with high school students headed for college, they will most likely need to cover Early Modern and Modern history before graduating. Once you finish Modern Times, you can start over again with Genesis, using the older-level books.

Follow the links to see our suggested book lists for each time period.
Genesis—Deuteronomy & Ancient Egypt
Joshua—Malachi & Ancient Greece
Matthew—Acts & Ancient Rome
Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation & Epistles
Early Modern & Epistles
Modern Times & Epistles, Revelation

Family Enrichment Studies

Enrichment studies are subjects like art, music, poetry, literature, and more. These subjects are part of what makes a Charlotte Mason education so enjoyable! Most of them take only 5–15 minutes to do, and you don’t do all of them every day. And these are great to do as a family. Sprinkle them throughout the week to spread a generous feast with wonderful variety and enrich your children’s lives!

Get started with these suggestions:
Scripture Memory
Literature
Poetry
Picture Study
Handicrafts & Art
Hymn Study
Music Study
Shakespeare
Habits & Personal Development
Foreign Language

Here are four examples of how you could combine all of the enrichment subjects into a year of enjoyable studies. The first three examples are incorporated into our daily lesson plan guides: Enrichment Studies, Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3. (We are planning to create more enrichment lesson plans but they may not contain the exact recommendations listed below for Ideas 4.)
Enrichment Year Ideas 1
Enrichment Year Ideas 2
Enrichment Year Ideas 3
Enrichment Year Ideas 4

Individual Studies

Only a few subjects need to be taught individually: math, language arts, and upper level science. These subjects depend on a student learning skills that build on each other, so you’ll teach each student at his or her grade level. For those subjects, we have grade-level suggestions.

Math

Use whatever math curriculum you prefer. The book Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching will give you all the details on how Charlotte approached math. You can also see live demonstrations of her methods for elementary arithmetic in our Charlotte Mason’s Living Math: A Guided Journey video series.

Science

Grades 1–3: You can combine your students in grades 1–3 for science if you would like to. The grade-level suggestions give recommendations for living science courses that will help you do that.

Grades 4–6: You can combine your students in grades 4–6 for science if you would like to. The grade-level suggestions give recommendations for living science courses that will help you do that.

You might also like this list of hundreds of living science books that we have reviewed and recommend.

Grades 7–12: We recommend that students in the upper grades use the conversational science textbooks listed in the grade-level suggestions. While living books might be more interesting, at this level of study it is difficult to find such books that present current, accurate information. We have also found that many living science books on the advanced science topics teach about the science rather than teaching the science itself. To keep things fresh, we list one optional living science book per course as a supplemental read to the conversational textbook.

Language Arts

Watch this free overview video for an overview of how to approach language arts in a Charlotte Mason way across all the grades. We also have grade-level suggestions for recommended books and resources.

Sample Schedule

Here is an example of how you might set up your weekly schedule. Some subjects are done every day, but many are done only once or twice a week to add variety and keep things fresh.

MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday

Scripture Memory (5 min.)

History (20–30 min.)

Picture Study (10 min.)

Foreign Language (15 min.)

Literature (20–30 min.)

Math / Science / Language Arts per student

Scripture Memory (5 min.)

History (20–30 min.)

Music Study (10–15 min.)

Habits (10 min.)

Literature (20–30 min.)

Math / Science / Language Arts per student

Scripture Memory (5 min.)

Poetry (5 min.)

Geography (10 min.)

Handicraft or Art (20–30 min.)

Literature (20–30 min.)

Math / Science / Language Arts per student

Scripture Memory (5 min.)

Bible (20 min.)

Hymn Study (5 min.)

Shakespeare (20 min.)

Foreign Language (15–20 min.)

Literature (20–30 min.)

Math / Science / Language Arts per student

Scripture Memory (5 min.)

Bible (20 min.)

Nature Study (30 min.)

Habits (10 min.)

Literature (20–30 min.)

Math / Science / Language Arts per student

You can also see detailed schedules on the bookstore pages that feature the open-and-go daily plans for each of our History Studies, Enrichment Studies, and Individual Studies.

More Free Resources

You will find additional free resources in the Simply Charlotte Mason bookstore, including a printable Book of Centuries template, Scripture Memory verse cards, and more.

This free Blank Weekly Schedule Chart download can help you plan your week.

And be sure to take advantage of the generous free samples provided for all our resources in the Simply Charlotte Mason Bookstore. You will find book lists, scheduling ideas, and other helpful tips in those samples.