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cm is not hard enough
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My kids are telling me that cm isnt difficult enough in some subjects. We purchased the queens spelling and vocab. I feel its fine. They are not enjoing spelling wisdom either. They say its dumb. So then what? My eldest son say ” History books are to juvinial”. Okay we are studing Matthew thru Acts. They deffinety dont enjoy doing history 3 day and Bible 2 and geography 1. Has any one used Mysfery of History? I am so frustrated!! I really thought cm would be a good choice but I feel like I am just failing at this. How do you all bet everything done and still have time fot yourself? We start school at 9 and still doing school at 5. Last year we were done by 1:00. I am having a hard time fitting in my 6 year old for school. She is doing math and explode the codeand listens to history and does106days of creationwith her sister. I just cant find time. What am I doing wrong? (tears) maybe I should just go back to Abeka even though my heart says no. We live In Michigan and cant find a good support group that uses cm.
Any one have suggestions on how to work this out? I need advice and how to implement it.
Thanks for all your help.
It would help to know how any kids you have and what ages. I know narration seemed weird to my kids at first. They didn’t understand why they had to tell me back what I had just read them. I could see that it would be the same with copywork or dictation. If they are old enough, I would explain to them why we do these things — we narrate to be able to process the info and to make it our own and we do copywork or dictation because we learn how to write well from studying others’ great writing. Also make sure you are challenging them. Maybe they are finding the work too easy. Though honestly I would ask them why if it is so easy it takes all day. Mostly I suspect they are testing you and you need to be firm that this is how it is now.
Nebby
I’ll add my initial thoughts …
Knowing the ages of your children would help too. I agree with previous posts.
The books in Ancients (all 3 years under SCM) work for some and not for others. It’s a suggested list of where to start. If your older students are finding the choices too easy, then simply search in bookfinder or maybe using Christie’s list for a new, more appropriate level book for them. Book finding is not a one time, one step process in a CM edcuation. My experience is that it is something you will spend a little time on each year planning for the next year and even then, you will always benefit from having a longer book list for each subject than seems necessary so that you can efficiently handle issues like “the wrong book” that come up.
How are they narrating? Read on the site all that you can to fully understand what and why narration works. Unlike other types of educational philosophies CM is not one that you can simply “do” without having a clear and deeper understanding of the methods and their implementation. It’s not rocket science. However, it is different. I have found CM to be a whole philosophy and not a curriculum as is more common in other homeschooling choices. That sounds simple but it makes a difference in my experience. But if you are past this point then I’d suggest you move the older ones along a little in the process.
If they do oral narration well and you feel that they are ready try having them write a narration. It’s really hard to advise on where your children might be with narration but you’ll know. Maybe they are a little bored, uncomfortable in CM if they have previously been in a “read, answer questions” style of lesson. There will be a big transition period. I notice families want to sometimes adopt CM and have it start its magic right away. I have noticed it is more nuanced than that and that it takes time to come fully to life.
Best advice – don’t let them see you waiver. Be steadfast. You chose CM and you are going to implement it. It will be a process. I’d ask them that no one complain about the new shift for 30 days! Ask them to give their best efforts to the methods and ask them to be active in choosing their own books if they are of an age where that might help them feel a part of this change and empowered in their own educations. You can have final approval of course.
It does take time but the results are very rewarding. I notice now that a CM education is much more like a college education than anything we see or understand as a K-12 education in this country. It illicits deeper understanding, more critical thinking, a greater ownership of knowledge than most other educational philosophies.
I hope this helps. I certainly don’t know where you are in the process or what you’ve tried or any other real details of your situation. I certainly don’t mean to sound like I have all the answers. I’ve had my ups and downs with CM too – times where it flowed beautifully and times where it felt a little awkward. Eventually you’ll find the right tweaks that make it work for your family! Best of luck.
You have gotten some good advice from the other ladies, I just wanted to add that if your kids are used to ABEKA, then CM may seem too easy to them. They are right, the CM *process* is very easy but the ideas presented to the mind of the child (and the Mama!) are varied and rich and will result in an education, not just the learning of facts. The ABEKA work may seem more difficult but the actual content can be lacking. If your kids are old enough to understand and like a challenge you could approach it with them this way and see if they accept the challenge to dig deeper. It can take a while to change the mindset from work text oriented fill in the blank to thinking about and integreting deeper ideas, but its well worth the time and effort!
Why is school taking so long? Are they dwadling over their work or not staying on task until they finish? I will admit that sometimes around my house the kids stay on task but *I* try to throw in one more load of laundry or get a phone call and that delays us and then everyone is off track. When I find that happening here it is time to work on the habit of attention for both them and me.
Just curious, I went back and re-read your OP and you mentioned both Queens spelling program and Spelling Wisdom. Are you currently using both of these prgrams?
Okay, my childrens ages are sons 16, 12 girls 9,6 and one in college. Weused a traditional curriculum when we started to homeschool 7 years ago. I felt that the history had a lot of gabs. Curlywhirly, yes my kids are doing both queens spelling and rod and staff spelling two different kids and the boys are doing spelling wisdom and my 12 yr old son is doing queeens spelling too. My 16yr old is the one who says its easy mostly the history. So today I checked so books out of our homeschool library. Hopefully he will enjoy them. I feel like I dont have enough time in the day to do what I need to do between drivers training now and band and all the hkuse stuff, doctors appointments/dentist plus my husband and I are youth leaders. I feel like we havent done a completeday yet with all we have going. Hopefully it will slow down soon. Hate snow but… it keeps us in alot more. 🙂 can any of you help with nature study? We use 106 day and out door secrets. I honestly dislike Science.
Sorry got off topic. My oldest wont do the spelling wisdom the way it is intended. He says” mom, lets see you memorize these huge passages.” I do see his point. Can he just copy them?No one dictated to Albery Einstein.
I feel that the Story of the Romans is way to young for him and for myb12 yr old. Is there a more indepth spine for Rome? I enjoy the other books except for Detectives in togas. Where do I find Christies list?
In regards to nature study – have you looked at Handbook of Nature Study or NaturExplorers to help guide you along? I’m not an expert at all and am really still trying to implement nature study better myself. Just wanted to share those two websites with you incase you weren’t familiar with them.
Schooling can be really hard sometimes, but I think once you get things ironed out, it will be smoother sailing (at least tha is what I keep telling myself). I need a teacher inservice day already! 😉
If you’re coming from a traditional schooling (Abeka or other textbook) method, ease into CM a bit at a time. All at once can be a big leap.
- Spelling via dictation – Memorization IS NOT what you should be doing! Prepared dictation means that the child studies the passage (regardless of length) until confident of spelling the words and possibly of grammar/punctuation.
- There should be only a few words that are unknown or that he is unsure of. Those are the words to study, don’t waste time studying what you already know.
- How should the child study? There are a variety of ways – copying the passage (copywork–>transcription), breaking unknown words into syllables, writing unknown words in the air, visualization, build with tiles, whatever works for your kid.
- When the child is confident of the spelling (and grammar/punctuation if you choose), then you dictate the passage, one phrase at a time, and he writes it. He need not memorize the passage at all!
- For really long passages of multiple paragraphs, then you could choose to dictate only a portion of the passage. The student prepares the full passage, but only has dictation on part of it.
- Re. errors – In our home, we correct errors after the dictation. We find it distracting to cover the mistakes during the dictation. If done correctly, there should be few errors.
- For my struggling spellers we use prepared dictation and Phonetic Zoo (fully independent and takes 10-15m per day). This two pronged approach requires minimal time on my part and is producing results.
- History – Textbooks are not better for this. Reading a few well written biographies or first hand accounts will go so much further to helping your child grasp history than any text. The text may “seem” harder because of the cramming in of dry facts. Those facts are easily sourced if needed, but the understanding of life that comes from learning from history is the real hard work. Couple real books with narration (oral and written), discussion, mapping, and a Book of Centuries and you have a very solid history program. For ancients, some more reading selections are below – if you need additional books, check out All Through the Ages.
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The Book of the Ancient Greeks by Dorothy Mills
The Book of the Ancient Romans by Dorothy Mills
Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbot
Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff
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The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff
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The Centurion by Henry Treece
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Horned Helmets by Henry Treece
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The Queen’s Brooch by Henry Treece
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Viking’s Dawn by Henry Treece
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Lucius by Alfred Church
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Three Greek Children by Alfred Church
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The Spartan by Caroline Dale Snedeker
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Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker
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The White Isle by Caroline Dale Snedeker
Time Management – Set amounts for each subject, use a timer if necessary and stop when you get to that amount of time.
- SHORT LESSONS ARE KEY!
- Start with your young one. 45m – 1 hour is more than enough at this age of planned work. Add in extra stories later in the day.
- Off the top of my head –
- Grades 1-3 = 10-20 minutes per subject, includes prereading review and narration
- Grades 4-6 = 20-30 minutes per subject, includes prereading review and narration
- Grades 7-12 = 30-40minutes per subject, ” (may not include written narration)
Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. Do not make the mistake of dragging school all day. Work on habits of attention and obedience to avoid dawdling. Do things in their own time. Don’t cram more into tomorrow bc you didn’t get through it all today.
Sorry this is sort of rambling, but I’m tired and about to nod off. Be encouraged! Learn more about Charlotte, her philosophy, and her methods.
Blessings,
Christie
Looks like you’ve received some great advice here! I do want to add that I’ve found much at Queen’s homeschool supply to be way too easy for older children. They may work well for young ones, but the difficulty doesn’t increase enough with each passing grade in my opinion.
As far as the SCM modules go, I think they are a wonderful base to build your CM history studies on. I plan on using them next year and am really looking forward to knowing that our basic history is covered each day and I can add additional biographies and historical fiction books to suit our family’s tastes.
One really needs to spend some time learning about CM methods and how and why they work to apply her philosophies well. I would watch as many of Sonya’s videos as possible and read all the old blog posts to get a better understanding of how it all fits together. If fincances permit, the SCM dvd’s are a WONDERFUL! I haven’t been able to purchase the new Living and Learning set but am hoping to buy it in the future. I bought the old All Day Charlotte Mason Seminar DVD’s on ebay and they have been SO helpful. I can’t wait to buy the new set and learn more! Sonya is a wonderful teacher-watching the DVD’s is like a breath of fresh air.
I think I understand where you are coming from regarding the history. My 13 and 12 year olds are doing the Omnibus 1 curriculum from Veritas Press. We do it in a CM way, using written narrations rather than doing the written assignments in the Omnibus book. My 13 year old, who wad raised on living books and has never enjoyed history, says that Omnibus is the best homeschool thing we have ever done. Her words, not mine. She enjoys reading the real books written by the real people, rather than the condensed versions.
I am not suggesting that you buy Omnibus and scrap everything else. But i would suggest taking a look at the booklist that goes with whatever year of Omnibus coordinates with your SCM history timeframe. Get some of those books for your 16 year old and let him read those and give oral retellings to the family as you are having history time. Read the books along with him so you can discuss together. The books are challenging but not hard to read or understand.
One word of caution if you choose to go that route. The books are not written for children and so do not skip over all the bad stuff. That is why you need to read the books if you can and be prepared to discuss. We have chosen to skip three of the books for this year because i just dont think the material is appropriate for my children at this time.
Since you mentioned Roman history specifically, you could get Livy’s The Early History of Rome for your older kids. We are reading the Penguin Classics edition. It contains the first five books that Livy wrote. He was a Roman historian in the first century. We are reading it right now and it is quite interesting.
Regarding nature study, i would not do Outdoor Secrets or 106 Days with older kids, though i think they are wonderful for the younger ones.
I want to add one more thought. Everything need not be overly rigorous or even super challenging to teach us. Meaning that I, as an adult, have often learned significantly from children’s books. We need to challenge our kids, yes, but don’t negate the learning from what may seem a simple resource. A Louis Vernon bio. Is not a difficult read, but much can be learned from it. Personally, I think we need to strike a balance between properly challenging and enjoyable and too much rigor for the sake of rigor.
I want you to consider all the ideas above, and especially to consider whether you are doing lessons CM style–do you have a good basic understanding of the philosophy? Give yourself some time to work kinks out.
HOWEVER, once you have done this and if your children still complain of it being too easy, I want to put out the idea that maybe it IS for them. Especially for very bright children, going too slowly or not providing challenging enough reading material can actually shoot your educational endeavor in the foot. Easier is not always better–for a certain group of children, easier is torturous and painful!!!! And many children will react in the same manner bright children react in public school–by tuning out, doing their own thing, and causing trouble. I was one of those kids myself, and so are all 3 of mine. We had to fiddle around to find a good “settling spot” for each child and each subject, and then this was subject to rapid change, and there were times it was all I could do to keep up with them! However, finding challenging enough materials was critical, because otherwise they poured their mental energies into other pursuits—and if this had happened unchecked, my neighborhood might not still be standing. 🙂 Just a word of warning. You may need to find meaty enough activities and books that they can wrap their minds around. You do not want a brain that is having ideas lobbed at it so slowly that it has time to come up with too many clever uses for plastic pipe. Trust me. 🙂
I was hoping you would chime in Bookworm. 🙂 Great points! My son was always content to mosey a long at a smooth and easy pace. My daughter, however, definitely needs to be more challenged. Every year, we start out with the basics and I slowly add things as I see her need for them. I also drop things that are too easy and add in more challenging material when needed.
I really don’t think one can call a Charlotte Mason education too easy. It’s all what you make of it. Charlotte gives us principles for education and then we have the freedom to apply them as needed for each child. Need more challenge? Increase readings and written narrations. Choose harder books. Do more copywork and dictation from those harder books. Require different types of written narrations that require more critical thinking skills. Go more in depth with nature study, composer study, picture study, geography etc. All of these reasons (and more!) are why I love Charlotte’s methods. Her methods are simple but so effective and can be applied so as to fit each individual child’s learning abilities.
- Spelling via dictation – Memorization IS NOT what you should be doing! Prepared dictation means that the child studies the passage (regardless of length) until confident of spelling the words and possibly of grammar/punctuation.
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