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CharlotteMasonHelp.com
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Curious if anyone here has used CharlotteMasonHelp.com as a curriculum resource? I particularly like the looks of her history schedule. Since she doesn’t have her own YahooGroup or discussion forum it’s near impossible to find other ladies out there that may use her curriculum.
Anyone have thoughts to share?
At a quick glance, plus looking at the history plan (looked at Year 1 and 2) it looks pretty good. I like that she shows her history timeline cards…
Thanks for sharing. I do think it’s neat that they study American History and World History together; I may take that idea into consideration for HS. I think I personally prefer the 6 year History rotation of SCM to CMH’s 12 year schedule though, just because my children of different ages can jump right in, knowing they’ll get around to what they’ve missed eventually and get through the whole rotation without me having different years going at the same time. This is just from a first glance look-over though. Make sense?
I also looked at some of her other pages and saw a wonderful idea for copywork; she has her children do their copywork 4 days per week. Then on Fridays, they get to decorate their copywork with borders or stickers or whatever, so at the end of the year they have a neat book of “noble ideas” to look back on- my 8yo would eat that up!
Thank you for sharing the resource.
LillyLou
I have four kids, each three years apart. I used this in total for a couple of years with my oldest, I prefer teaching my kids together, though. I use some ideas from there, however, but not the history rotation.
Here are some previous threads re. this. Note that HIFI (Higher Up and Further In) is the blog that became Charlotte Mason Help.
http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/2009/07/how-and-when-to-begin-book-of-centuries.html
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/missceegees-book-lists-lots-of-them – booklist that includes HIFI, AO and more
http://www.valerieslivingbooks.info/booklists.htm – great article in light of the above book list link.
HTH,
Christie
I use many of her ideas. I like how she schedules history too. But since Sonya recently added a United States study resource, I will be using that instead of TCOO (although TCOO is free online!) that Charlottemasonhelp recommends.
We will do world history (SCM) 3 days a week in combination with America study the last two days of the week.
simple home…what resource are you speaking of from Sonya? the American Stories 1 or something different? thanks joanna
It is Stories of America. I think TCOO is good too, but I like the “grandpa telling” appeal of Sonya’s resource.
I do think it’s neat that they study American History and World History together
I thought it might be worth mentioning why we do this a little differently in our curriculum guide and books.
The Charlotte Mason Help curriculum, like the Ambleside Online curriculum, is based on the way Charlotte did things as much as possible. Charlotte taught British history (because that’s where she lived) along with world history. So if you just substitute America for Britain you end up studying American history along with early world history. But unlike Britain, America doesn’t have thousands of years of history to fit nicely with earlier world history (although the limited information of earlier civilizations could be studied). So we modernize what Charlotte did a bit. We still integrate American history with world history, but only in the time period where it fits.
Neither approach is right or wrong; just different.
We’re kinda using the approach mentioned by Doug, as in fitting in Australian history where and when we can alongside other things. But, I’ll admit when we find a good piece of historical fiction no matter where it fits, we just read it! 😉 Or is that devour it..
I am a fan of all things SCM – including the history modules – and I share that with people often! Just so you know. 🙂
As for the history – there are some great, rich selections on AO or CharlotteMasonHelp that SCM doesn’t include. I don’t want to miss these so that’s why I’ve been looking at the others. I know that I wouldn’t be as good at just “sticking them in” as we go along.
It seems to me that AO does concentrate on the British history more whereas CharlotteMasonHelp focuses on American History alongside world history. CMH also has the focus on the Bible, just as SCM does. Then with SCM you have just one thread of history starting with the ancients, including US History where it falls naturally in the timeline. One difference, too, is that SCM hangs out in the ancient time period longer to get through the Bible text that goes along with that. Is that an accurate assessment? Did I miss any main differences?
So, like I said before, some of those texts that I don’t want to miss are only at AO or CMH. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel so I’ve been thinking of choosing one and following it. Unless, of course, there was a book that we really needed to substitute b/c it wasn’t working for our family – which I hear happens some times.
Just trying to sort this all out in my mind. So any advice or feedback would be great!
Callie
Is that an accurate assessment? Did I miss any main differences?
That’s probably a good summary. One other difference we have from AO is that we try to make it so you can teach all your children together for as many subjects as possible. I’m not as familiar with CMH in that regard so maybe someone else can weigh in on that.
The other really important thing to note is that we consider our curriculum guide as just that—a guide. It’s a starting point that you can customize to your particular needs. The other choices mentioned here are great options too, either in whole or to borrow parts. In fact, it is not our goal for this site that you use our guide or materials. It is our goal to help you find what best fits your family.
CMH does NOT combine children together for any subjects. That is the major difference, IMO, and the reason I began looking for alternatives after a couple of years with CMH. The selections were fine, but with 4 kids (2 at the time) each 3 years apart, there is simply no way for me to keep that up. I GREATLY prefer combining my kids where possible, especially history. While using CMH, I did do world and American history simultaneously, but I came to realize that I want us to learn where America fits in history and that isn’t with Ancients and Middle Ages. That said, I have tons of wonderful picture books for American studies that my kids are welcome to browse whenever they choose.
I love CMH’s selections for personal Bible and character development and many of the how-to ideas (picture study comes to mind), but for our framework, SCM is simply a better fit for us because of its, well, its simplicity. I’ve simply added in a book or two here and there from CMH and it’s been wonderful.
HTH,
Christie
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