clarification on Cm

I’m just going to c/p, to make it easier to reply.  🙂

I just started jumping in and reading Charlotte Mason companion and love it. I am on chapter 15 and so far so good.

I am wondering since we just started cm last year and I didn’t really implement all of her ways, is it to late to start with my children now?

It is never too late to start CM!

I have two dd ages 8, 11 just turning these ages in less than a couple of months. I also have a son who is 13.

I just want to make sure with the copy work (spelling wisdom I am suing it the correct way) do I start my 8 year old in it as well? she is just beginning to read.

I would wait. Technically CM doesn’t recommend starting spelling/grammar until grade 4. While SW/ULL can be used at age 8/grade 3, it’s not necessary. Where she is just beginning to read, I would really give her more time to develop that skill without the pressure of mechanics. Some (Trivium Pursuit) even recommend holding off until grade 5/age 10.

I love her view on vocabulary, writing down words they don’t understand in their reading and have them look them up.

I am a little confused on the Narration part. what does she consider the early years?

The early years are PreK and K, basically 0-5.

what about composition?

Now, someone else may know more on this, but until grade 3, you would just do oral narration (oral composition). In grade 4 they would start dictation and written narration (which is the beginning of composition). And that doesn’t mean they jump into a 500 word essay either. Start small and slowly build. Start with a sentence if you need to, and then slowly build up to more. Also, something I do – if I catch my son writing anything for “fun”, I do NOT correct it. If he asks for spelling help, I give it. But I do not correct spelling, grammar etc… In these younger years, it is more important to encourage an enjoyment of reading and writing, than to weight them down with mechanics.

how many narrations a day and what age do you start the written narrations?

^^Written narrations begin in grade 4. How many narrations per day will be a matter of preference. We normally do 2 – one for whatever the topic of the day is (ex. nature study, science, history etc…) and one of required reading.

spelling is an eye soar around here for sure. Is spelling wisdom enough or could I use All about spelling?

That is completely your preference 🙂 For many kids Spelling Wisdom will be enough. There are others who may require more. I can see me using AAS for my daughter, and SW for my son who basically has a photographic memory for spelling. He sees and writes it once and that’s it, he has it.

I am trying to get it all figured out before next year. Thanks for your help.

Just remember, you make a curriculum work for you. Tweak as necessary. You are not a slave to the program. So if it says start something at grade 4/age 9 and you know your child isn’t ready – then don’t start it yet. If you know your child is going to do better with AAS than SW, then use that.

2Corin gave great answers. I just wanted to add that if you are new to CM you might want to have all your kids ease into written narrations. Make sure they have the hang of oral ones first.

I don’t know what you mean by Enrichment studies. For science before high school I just like to do nature study and read living science books like the Storybook of Science. Geography we do map drills and again read books though you can also try the Visits to… Series from SCM.

For geography there are many different ways to do it.  Puzzles,  card games,  board games,  maps, travel videos.  Map Tangle is a game like Twister that my younger ones like.

We are currently reading “Operation World” which is from a missions group. We read about a country and pray for them. There is a children’s version also that is called “Windows on the World”.

“How the States Got Their Shape” is another favorite.