CM and interest led learning

I’ve always made room for interest led studies in our CM inspired homeschool. I let my kiddos choose what topic they wanted to study for science all the way up through the 7th grade. Each child would pick his own topic and I would take him to the library where we would check out all of the good books we could find on that topic. He would read from one of the books for a predetermined amount of time each day until he finished them all. I required oral narrations always and written narrations when my children were the appropriate ages.

I still give them some voice in their high school science studies as well. We discuss their goals and what they need to do in high school to attain those goals. Then we plan and pursue a course of study accordingly. For example, my son was not college bound and chose to study Forensic Science in high school instead of Chemistry. My daughter is college bound and  has chosen the more traditional science sequence of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and an advanced science course of her choice for her 4th science credit.

For history, I choose the time period for the most part, and we study it chronologically. However, I let me kids choose the areas where they want to go deeper and I don’t force a book if a connection isn’t being made. I pretty much let them choose their books for independent reading with a lot of guidance and direction from me.

Now that my daughter is in high school, I assign her history spine reading and allow her to choose the living books she wants to read to accompany that spine.

I also allow my kids to choose their foreign language and I get a lot of input from them when choosing curricula for all subjects.

They choose their Bible studies, composer studies, picture studies, poetry readings, literature readings, etc. Again, I give them guidance but the final choice is up to them. Of course, all selections must meet our family standards.