CM With An Older Student

I think this series is a good starting place.   It goes through each subject of school.   I tend to pick one area or subject to research at a time, but a good starting book would be helpful as well…A CM Companion or a CM Education would be nice starting books.   The All Day Seminar would be a nice starting place as well.

Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education is great when you are reading to start choosing curriculum.   When I was switching over to CM methods, I’d plan one subject each evening…some subjects like history or science would take me a couple evenings.  Other subjects only took a few minutes to plan.  After a couple weeks, I’d be finished.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to do every subject right away.  It’s nice to ease into a full CM schedule, adding in a subject or two at a time.

Hi and welcome SimpleMom. 🙂

I have a 13 year old as well. The first place I started using CM methods in our homeschool was history. You could buy the curriculum available here at SCM or purchase another CM friendly curriculum. Have you looked through the free curriculum guide here at SCM? It walks you through the process and what you need for each age group.

I can tell you what my daughter is doing this year since our students are the same age.

For history, we are using Truthquest history. Truthquest is a curriculum that gives you lists of great living books for each time period and event in history in chronological order. She also intersperses the book lists with dialogue to tie it all together from a biblical worldview. We bought a few of the spine books and use the library to find books on individual topics.

For language arts we are using Simply Spelling for copywork, dictation, and spelling. We are using Easy Grammar for grammar. My daughter writes narrations and we have just begun working through a writing book called The Write Stuff Adventure. We also read poetry on a weekly basis and my daughter reads from a classic each day.

We are using Apologia middle school courses for science.

Math-U-See prealgebra is our math program.

We use SCM picture portfolios for picture study and we use a fairly informal approach for composer study. We choose a composer for each term and read a short bio about his life. Then we listen to his music for the remainder of that term.

For Bible we are using the SCM Romans study.

We are using SCM’s Visits to Europe for geography.

We use Duolingo for Spanish-it’s a free online program.

I think that about covers it. We also use a free online typing program but I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head.

Not all of these resources are strictly CM but I thought it might help to see how I apply CM methods in my homeschool on a daily, practical basis. I also have my daughter narrate orally for all subjects except literature which we discuss on a less formal basis.