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CM Style Schedule Not Enough? & Diligence
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I’m new to CM and am starting out with a dd going into 9th grade high school. I’m confused with scheduling because in our previous years its taken much longer to do certain subjects than CM’s daily schedule allows for so I’m worried that adding all the CM stuff is going to overwhelm dd and me! For example: We’ve used Apologia for years and plan to do Biology this year. There is no way that’s going to be completed in a couple times a week for 20-30 mins! The same with Math. We’ve vacillated between Saxon and using Khan Academy and either way, a day of math takes her up to 2 hours. This just doesn’t fit with the CM style of ‘short lessons’.
We did try incorporating CM things like narration, dictation, etc… a couple years ago but got overwhelmed and went back to just the basic subjects and textbooks. High school seems big and I’m just apprehensive.
Here’s what I’m planning to schedule this year (some I’ve chosen curriculum, some not yet.)
English: Analytical Grammar/Daily Grams, Vocabulary for Classical Roots, some writing program (unless I can cover it in another section)
Reading: assigned books with narration (verbal and written)
Math: Saxon Algebra 2 as a guide, while we work our way thru Khan Academy
Science: Apologia Biology (wanting to add in some living books but don’t know where we’ll find the time.)
History: Sonlight Core 200, History of God’s Kingdom. We usually just read the books, sometimes talk about them. I’d like to incorporate more into this, time line or activities, country studies, cooking; again, reading takes up most of the time, don’t know…
Spanish: No curriculum picked yet. Might have a co-op available but don’t know if it will be indepth enough for a full credit. Looking at Spanish Now or another program that is all CDs.
Bible: reading our way thru the Old testament w/verbal questions of each chapter at the end of the week (family style), plus weekly bible memorization
Art: Artistic Pursuits, Sr. High Book 1, plus various projects during the year
* Want to add in dictation, narration, music appreciation, poetry, nature notebook, Shakespeare, etc…
Extras: Drum lessons (1 hr lesson/wk, 3X/wk 1/4 hr practice), swim team (3x/wk 1 1/2 hr practice, + extra at gma’s house), walking, 2-3x a week
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We’re also working on diligence. I honestly don’t know how to make her move faster. We’ve tried timers, rewards, punishments and I feel like I’m frustrating her. Each subject is done at a snails pace and 1/2 the time she retains only 10%. However, If I read the subject with her (ie: Apologia) she gets it more, gets thru it more. I have trouble with this now though. She’s going into high school and should be able to retain this and work faster. Maybe she’s not a read/comprehend person. Maybe she has to hear it… I don’t know. She reads living books, fiction books and can tell you the whole thing back. Sometimes exact words, but science? Forget it.
I NEED HELP!!
I have an audio learner. He does really well reading fiction on his own if he’s really enjoying it, but will almost always get much more out of something if I read to him, especially science and history. He will start Apologia General Science this fall and I plan to get the audio cd to go with the text. Maybe they have an audio CD to go with biology? In high school it makes sense to study science daily for a minimum of 30 – 40 minutes, especially if there are experiments involved (experiment days possibly longer).
While I personally think 2 hours is way to long for math, 20 to 30 minutes may be too short, especially in 9th grade. Are you doing math daily? Studies have shown that we remember best what we learn in the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes the best. This is a great argument for keeping lessons from going over 30 minutes. Perhaps one solution could be reducing the number of problems she completes per lesson. You are not under some kind of obligation to do every problem on every Page. Try doing just the odd or just the even. Another option is to break the days work up so that she has two math sessions daily. Schedule something that uses a completely different part of the brain right after each session to give that part of her brain a rest before tackling more math later in the day.
Hi! I have 5 kids. Two are graduated and one is in 11th grade. My older two worked very independently, and made it though high school pretty easily. My son who is in 11th grade has always stuggled. Like your daughter everything took way longer than it should have. For math, the only thing that helped was getting him a tutor.He meets with his friend’s grandmother twice a week and he gets all his geometry done at that time. He is doing great! If you don’t know of anyone, I saw on currclick that they have online tutoring. The suggestion to do all the odd or even problems is a good one. We did that before he had tutoring and that helped a lot. I also have to say that the CM method is so enjoyable! This is my first year totally using the CM method. But I am using it with my youngest 2 children. So, I don’t have a whole lot of advice for the high school student.
I would also suggest the audio cd’s for apologia. I remember being in college and retaining TONS from a lecture, but learning by reading a textbook was just painful. Everyone learns differently.
If you look at Charlotte Mason’s actual upper grade schedules, they are not just doing some things for 20 minutes 3 times a week. I do subjects like math and biology and foreign language daily (helps with retention) but I seriously doubt that working on math for 2 hours is a good use of time. We may spend more like 45 minutes to an hour on some subjects, especially occasionally (big paper due, for instance, or math test.) But very, very few teens are going to have the kind of attention span to concentrate fully on math with no dawdling for two hours!!!!! I doubt I could do that, actually. You need to train her to attention. Habits and other elements of CM are just as important as the times the lessons take or the living books. I’d be much more likely to work for thirty or forty minutes and then switch to something else and then go BACK to it later if necessary.
I don’t typically count music practice and extracurricular activities as “school” time. My older high school students take about 5 hours a day to do their school, and we do a wide variety of subjects. Attention, diligence, and depth of understanding are more important to us than how long a book takes; that’s what we allow as a variable.
While she’s working on her attention, I’d consider getting her audio books of the subjects she has the most trouble with. She ought eventually to be able to draw her learning from reading a book, but this can take time to develop (and it may be she always handles tough-for-her material best through her preferred learning modality.)
You need to enlist HER to this task. She’s old enough to have some say in her day and be able to monitor her attention. When she can no longer keep her attention on something, she needs to move to a different activity and come back later, if necessary. With small children, I monitor them for signs of losing attention; a high school student, however, can be taught to monitor herself.
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