After years of CM, Not seeing the *SIMPLICTY* of it. Doing it wrong?

I believe that there is a big jump that happens with that fifth child. From my experience, and in watching others, I think homeschooling is fairly manageable for one to four kids. After that, things get harder to juggle. ?

So, moms of large families usually need more systematic, scripted resources to free their brains from constantly worrying about everyone educational needs. This is when I would advise a solid workbook approach for the basics. Something planned for you, not too many moving pieces, and easy to use. If you can streamline the basics (reading, writing, math) then you will have time and brainpower to add in beauty.

Sometimes learning to spell is not beautiful. It just is. It has to be done, and efficiency needs to take priority over beauty for the large family mom. Beauty is important, and will have a place to grow, if the mom builds a firm foundation in the skill subjects.

I like Christian Light for math and language arts for the mom who needs students to work independently. It’s written to the student,is complete, thorough, and systematic. We use Saxon for math in upper elementary, but it’s too time-consuming in K-3.

This has been a hard shift for me. We’ve been homeschooling for 15 years. My oldest is 18, and graduating this year. He is six years older than his seven siblings (who were born in 8 1/2 years). He had s rich CM education. However his skill subjects were greatly lacking. While this is not the fault of the CM methodology, it’s the reality of juggling many children without a firm plan in place to cover the basics. So, my younger children may not have the depth and beauty to the same degree that he did, but they will be able to spell and do algebra.

You have decide on your priorities, get a firm footing in the basics, and THEN add in all the beautiful extras that you dream about.

Try thinking of teaching History as a chronological order of carefully chosen living books to compliment field trips.  Then pick a few longer books to read aloud from as a family twice a week.  For your older students, assign “reading” history, science, or literature daily.  They can also do oral or written narrations at their levels and add to their timeline once a week or two.  I have truthquest, but used it only for my benefit to help me in planning and understanding history better.  But most of the time, we go with SCM titles.  We combine ancients into one year, doing a separate Bible.  Spend one term on each Egypt, Greece, Rome.  Then we follow SCM modules 4-6.  Simplify your history with only one family read aloud and the rest individual reading at their level.  Hand them a book list and a timer.  Trouble choosing which books?  Look at SCM book lists and don’t give yourself too many options.  They won’t be able to learn it all now.  Go to history museums, events and performances, even documentaries, to foster a lifetime love for learning history.  Help make it real for them.  Schedule less than 36 weeks to allow for these and other field trips.

CM methods do not have to be complicated.  Read living books, narrate, explore, enjoy.  Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.  Play classical music in the background.  Enjoy some poetry at bedtime.  Go to a zoo, park, or museum.  Stop and enjoy the roses.

Language Arts: reading, narrations, copywork, dictation, poetry, Shakespeare, memorization, recitation.  Do some of these daily.

Math: the MUS seems to fit well for large families from what Tristan has shared.  Keep going with what works.  Daily.

Science: reading, narrations, nature study, experiments, field trips, documentaries.  2x per week

History: reading, narrations, field trips, documentaries.  2x per week

Fine Arts/extras:  add in as you can.  You can do a loop schedule and aim for once per day.

Meet state requirements and high school graduation requirements.  Then add where you can and have time for.

Realize you don’t have to schedule everything out for the whole year in advance.  You may not finish a whole lesson or chapter in a book each day.  Use a timer to help if necessary.  These are things I am learning as I go, now in 8th year of CM homeschooling.  I am not a CM purist, nor do I intend to be.  But I see much value in her methods over traditional textbooks and workbooks.

I also wonder how independent your grades 5 & up are working.  Do they have their own schedule in front of them to follow each day?  I found Self- Propelled Advantage by  Joann Calderwood of urthemom.com helpful.  It can be used with any method of teaching.

We use Truthquest but I use it mostly for the commentary. I choose a spine and then use SCM and Charlottle Mason Help’s booklists to choose go-alongs. My 5th grader reads her to herself. I read to my 2nd grader. If he was a strong reader I would probably assign some to him to read alone, but he’s not. The only planning I have to do is matching up the commentary to the spine chapters and choosing the order for the go-alongs (I don’t worry about them matching up exactly), which takes maybe an hour in the summer. Then if a child is particularly interested in a topic I can use the TQ list to put any relevant books on hold at the library for them to read.

I don’t have as many kids as you (5 total, 3 school-age) but have chosen to simplify to maintain my sanity. 5th grader switched to CLE math this year, because she can do it quicker and more independently than what she was using. We used English Lessons Through Literature last year and that helped make sure poetry, picture study, fable narration (for the 1st grader), and basic written narration (for the 4th grader) got done. 5th grader does memory work independently, and pretty much everything else independently as well with the exception of devotions, family RA, and the history spine. Hopefully we will add in poetry, composer study, picture study, etc for this year but they haven’t happened yet (we have a newborn). We use a lot of audiobooks, either at lunchtime or as independent assignments. Nature study doesn’t happen formally…they catch bugs, we grow a garden, we have a bird feeder on a window, and sometimes try to identify trees on walks, and that’s it. Handicrafts are free choice, not scheduled. I feel like it all gets in there somewhere, even if it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to look. This is what I can do for now. I can definitely relate on feeling like CM is too teacher-intensive even though I don’t have as many school-age kids…in fact, I posted about feeling this way last year, and have simplified further this year to make things more manageable.

I use the editable term schedule from Charlotte Mason Help (free, can’t remember if it’s on the website or yahoo group) for schedules for them. I just use a sticky or tell 5th grader if something is changing for the day. She has a copy and I have a copy of her schedule. I wouldn’t want to have to write everything out for each kid every day!

Hi Kelly! 🙂 One way I’ve simplified is to just add one enrichment per day. We do the basics every day-history, science, math, language arts, and Bible. Then I add in one enrichment per day. I don’t worry about getting to 1 composer study, picture study, etc. per term. I simply do one at a time and we get through what we get through. My goals are more like 1 artist per year,lol. We don’t even do formal composer study any more. We listen to classical music a lot and my daughter learns classical pieces for piano. We read biographies of composers when we come across them in our history studies. It is not a separate, scheduled subject.

If I were you, I’d go with something like Queen’s Language Lessons or Total Language Plus for language arts so that it’s all planned out for you and the kids can work more independently.

I would drop geography for the younger kids and have the older kids do something that can be done independently. The SCM guides can be done independently by older students. We barely did any geography until middle school in our home.

We don’t do formal hymn study or poetry study. We sing hymns at church and my daughter learns hymns for piano and I am content with that. Sometimes we read a bit of poetry here and there but it is not formal nor is it on the schedule.

Neither do we do formal nature study or habit training. The habit training is something that is more organic for us and we just enjoy nature, paying attention, and looking up new things here and there.

Also, I too, find the Truthquest guides to be too much work for me. I have to spend a lot of time planning, checking out books, making trips to the library, etc. I’ve found it easier to just choose my books and use the SCM planning book to schedule them for the year.  I also don’t like the jumping around in spines. I’d rather choose 1 spine at a time and read a bit from that each day/week in order, than jump around from spine to spine per topic.

I do love the thought of Truthquest and loved using the U.S. guide in the elementary years when we didn’t use a spine, and there were plenty of U.S history books available at the library. I was also younger and I had more energy. 😀

Last but not least, please, please, please feel free to do what works for your family, your lifestyle, your culture, etc. Each of us are in a unique family, situation, and season and only you can know what is best for you and your family right now. You don’t have to do all the CM riches. They are there to be a blessing to you and your family but if they are a burden-cut them out until they begin to feel like a blessing again and then add in a little bit, here and there as you desire. You can also make the riches more casual-enjoy being in nature and noticing God’s creation, listen to beautiful classical music while you go about your day, hang pretty artwork in the house, or set it as your computer screen saver, or put on the fridge.

I, like Christie, have realized that being a CM purist is not realistic for my life and situation. I have relaxed a bit and added in non CM components when necessary, and I have also dropped CM components when it is best for my family. I had to stop and think what drew me to CM methods in the first place and keep those as a priority in my homeschool, while letting go of some of the methods that have become more burden than blessing, and really never resonated with my heart in the first place. For me, the things that really drew me to CM were living books, narration and the appreciation of beautiful music, art, nature, etc. I’ve learned to keep these things at the heart of our homeschool while also pursuing many of them in a more relaxed manner.

God has called you to homeschool those amazing children of yours and He will lead you and guide you and equip you every step of the way. Sometimes we just have to let go of our own ideas of what is best so that we can fully embrace His.

Well, I have only four kids so you can take my suggestions for what they’re worth. 🙂 As a low energy person, I became very overwhelmed trying to fit so many things in to each day. And it wasn’t getting done. I finally made peace with the idea that ‘good enough’ that got done was better than striving for perfection. So no we don’t do poetry and composer and artist and shakespeare every week. I pick one at a time to focus on, and just do that one once a week (or less) till we finish the book or whatever, however long that takes. Then we move on to another one. Over the course of the year, or years, they are getting exposure to the ‘feast’. It’s just not all at once.

I think picking easy to use curriculum is key. MUS is great for this. Why not use it for your younger kids too? This year I’ve switched to using English Lessons Thru Literature and it has greatly simplified things for me. (I picked it over SW and ULW just because having everything all in one book makes it so much simpler) I’m still doing all those lovely CM things, but not all at once. It’s written to be used 3 days a week. So the kids get a poem three times each week and picture study every other week. I did prefer doing those things as a family, but this way requires no work from me. Nothing to plan or schedule or remember or get dropped. I open up the book and there’s a poem included in the days work, or a picture. I bought the workbooks to go along with it, because it made copywork SO easy. I think ELTL could easily be independent for 5th grade and up.

History- if SCM history was much less stressful for you to use, why  not go back to it? you can use years 4-6 as written and combine years 1-3 into one year, reading just the spine together and giving each kid just 1-2 books to read on their own from each module.

Handicrafts- I only teach new handicrafts in the summer. Then during the school year they do them on their own. I let each kid choose their own. I find that way they enjoy it and just do it on their own.