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Designing a CM High School
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I offered up these thoughts/questions on another thread but thought it might be best to start a new thread for it. 🙂
If we want to offer that liberal education that CM offers, especially at the high school level, what is the criteria for picking and choosing how much time to spend on what? It seems in high school, there’s more pressure to make sure you’re covering certain things. So how do you balance covering what *needs* to be covered yet still enjoying all the extras like art, music, nature study, etc.? What about when you have to spend extra time on a subject your child struggles with – which takes more time each day?
Any thoughts?
My odest just started 9th grade this year. We make time for all the regular coursework each day. Our extras are spread throughout the week, so they don’t really add much time to the day. I think things like nature study, art, music, etc help break up her day and keep things interesting. It helps that my dd is very quick with her schoolwork. I also have tried to choose courses that can be done in a reasonable amount of time….which leaves room for all the other good stuff.
So when you say you choose courses that can be done in a reasonable amount of time, what type courses and what time frame have you choosen?
My oldest is ninth grade this year also. We school 5 days a week. If a day is missed, catch up must be done. We plan for 36 weeks, but will do more weeks if necessary.
Math: We use MathUSee and plan to work through one text per school year. Sometimes we are faster. Math is done daily. This gives us plenty of time to work through, even if there are slow spots.
Science: We use Apologia. With daily work, it is do-able in a year.
Language Arts: We have found the Jr. AG and AG programs useful and economical for time, as suggested in the curriculum guide. We follow the schedule given in the teacher’s guide with no problems. Written narrations function for LA as well, by improving the writing they’re already doing for other subjects. We just focus on one or two points at a time to improve. We haven’t had to do much work with spelling, for which I am grateful. We do use the Spelling Wisdom books, but the kids just read through and work on difficult words. I don’t do a lot of dictation, even though we probably should do it more often. When we do, it’s very good, so I’m not worried.
Foreign Language: Daily gets it done. Latin in the Christian Trivium is the choice for this year. We used Latin for Children previously and found it very do-able in a year’s time.
History: Daily reading & a few written narrations per week.
Music: Our children play piano and strings, and play at church sometimes, so we don’t really have to do a lot of scheduled “Music Study” or “Hymn Study” here. It’s just an integral part of life.
Art: Artistic Pursuits has served us well. It covers a variety of skills without taking forever to do them.
Nature Study: We are blessed to live in the country, so nature study is not difficult. I’m not sure if it would be so easy otherwise.
As I type this out, I am realizing that as long as the work is done daily, it gets completed with time left over. We used to be less diligent with our time and found it easy to get behind. Early start time is important for us. A late start in school and the day really drags out around here.
houseofchaos, I’ve heard Analytical Grammar is a good program. I am considering it for next year – spreading it out probably over 10th-12th grade. I noticed the SCM curriculum guide has it spread out over 8th, 9th, and 10th. So that’s why I was thinking I’d spread it out over 10th-12th.
Anyway, last year was our first year of trying to implement CM method’s more fully and our first year of trying AO as our core curriculum. I did end up tweaking the AO somewhere around 2nd term and ended up using TruthQuest for history for the time period we were studying. My daughter really did not like Birth of Britain which is what the history spine was for AO.
I think I probably just kind of jumped in with both feet with CM’s methods last year and so right now I’m really trying to take a look at each subject (going to go through various blog posts and articles here at SCM like Sonya’s subject by subject posts and her Basic Mainstays high school posts). If I could find some extra time, I’d really like to read more in CM’s original series starting with the volume that addresses the high school age. But I don’t have a lot of free time floating around right now with lesson planning, reading school material, and trying to keep up with our very spirited 4.5yo who is ready for kindergarten level activities (thanks goes to Christie for sharing her kindergarten schedule. It was very helpful!) So I’m planning a very laid back kindergarten schedule right now too.
Mrs. K, Barb, the harmony art mom, has written many times about high school the CM way. If you have time to peruse her blog, I’m sure that you will find lots of help and guidance there. I find her posts very informative and practical.
http://www.harmonyartmom.blogspot.com/p/blog-categories.html
My dd uses Apologia for science, Teaching textbooks for math, Module 1 plus extra books I am adding to cover ancient greece/rome for history. We are using Lightening Lit, Teaching the Essay, and Spelling Wisdom for english. Rosetta Stone for spanish. I consider these courses things that my daughter can accomlish each day and not feel like she is forever behind. We have used other curriculums that have left us schooling unitl 6pm and still barely finishing. I know many of my friends have their children doing very rigorous prep at the high school level..but honestly, my goal for schooling is much different than theirs. My daughter can be done with her schooling by 2-3:00 each day if she uses her time wisely.
On the subjects she struggles with, we still work within the set schedule I have. She has had a difficult time with writing…so we work through it each day together during our 8;30-9:00 writing slot. When we hit 9:00, we move on to the next thing and just pick up where we left off the next day. My goal for this subject is just to be consistently moving forward…even if we are not on “schedule”. On the subjects she understands, I expect her to keep up though. 🙂
pslively,
I absolutely LOVE Barb’s (harmonyartmom) blog! I’m sure there is still quite a bit more I can be reading there. Thanks for reminding me to check her blog for posts on implementing CM. I have read a number of her posts and she has some posts that have been very inspiring for me. She has a post on how to use Apologia’s text in a CM style. She also has a child who is a visual-spatial learner. We recently discovered our 15yo is a visual-spatial learner and I found that Barb had a post on that.
pinkchopsticks, I like the idea of sticking to a time frame and then just picking up where you leave off the next day. And I have done that for Grammar. I have thought a lot recently about using the SCM planner. But I guess I’m afraid that by only working with the timeframe approach, some things may not get accomplished in the year’s time frame that needs to be accomplished. We take whatever material we are using and divide it up over 3 terms. Then that tells us how much we need to do each week. But I am finding that there are some things that would work better with just reading what we can read, then picking up where we left off the next time. There’s one book we are reading together that, even though I had it divided up over a number of weeks, we weren’t able to get all the reading in on several of the weeks because the reading is meaty and heavier and because we do a lot of discussion. So we can really only cover a small portion each time.
Anyway, I’m rambling… 🙂
If you go by time frames, what do you do if you find yourself behind? In high school, there’s only so much time to cover subjects. Know what I mean?
Well…one of the subject she is behind in is essay writing, so I don’t feel alot of time crunch there. I figure that we will get it done in a reasonable amount of time and it doesn’t throw off the schedule too much.
She is not where I would like in math either, but I felt like there was no point in pushing ahead if she didn’t understand the concepts. We just keep chipping away at it. I do make my kids do math and reading over the summer, so that helps out some. She was actually half way through MUS Prealgebra at the start of the school year. I was hoping to finish that quickly and move on to algebra. Instead, I ended up switching programs and she started back at at the beginning of prealgebra in Teaching Textbooks. It ended up being a really good thing for her…her understanding of concepts has improved. However, it did throw off my timeline of math courses.
I tend to want to make sure the kids have concepts mastered before moving on. Sometimes that is a good thing, and sometimes not so much. I am still need to find a happy balance…I think my perfectionism slows them down. 🙂
Pinkchopsticks,
My sophomore daugher choose to restart TT prealgebra because she just wasn’t getting. I am glad that we aren’t the only ones “behind.” I figure if the concepts aren’t there the upper levels will just be a waste of time.
I have decided to just be happy if I can get her through geometry and algebra.
Oh, the comment on essay writing reminded me–TOMORROW EpiKardia’s research paper writing program ($40 normally) is going to be FREE on homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com
Great Freebie…..thanks, Bookworm! Glad I popped in here. That’s on my list for a few years down the road:)
Ohh, you’re right, it is Thurs, I was so excited I was jumping the gun. LOL Tomorrow is some kind of poetry resource.
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