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feeling overwhelmed with CM
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I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed for several months by trying to keep up with Charlotte Mason methods. They seem so…teacher intensive. I expect that for my 1st grader, and anyway, his school day only takes about an hour plus 15-20 minutes of family stuff. But my 4th grader’s stuff is teacher-intensive too. I have cut things and reworked her schedule several times and I still feel like it is just too much (for me, not so much for her). I recently switched her from Get Smart Grammar to Easy Grammar 4 because she was getting bogged down with GSG, and Easy Grammar is so simple and short, that I find myself wishing all her subjects could be like this. It takes her no more than 15 minutes a day, she rarely needs any help, and if she has corrections to make, they only take her a couple of minutes with no intensive explanations/help on my part.
This is her typical day of 3-4 hours (plus family devotions and 1 family read-aloud a day):
independent Bible reading & Scripture memory work
Math Mammoth 4
Story of the World 4 + narration OR Child’s Geography + narration
Spelling Wisdom 1–3 days of copywork from it, dictation on day 4
Easy Grammar 4 + English Lessons Through Literature 3 days/week (we don’t use the grammar lessons or literature selections or copywork from ELTL)
assigned books, one book a day, 1-2 ch–this term they were The Incredible Journey, 21 Balloons, Letters from Rifka, and Number the Stars
God’s Design for Life–1 ch. + notebooking OR 4-H OR science/history quizzes OR Seterra map drills
ASL–one short video lesson most weeks plus a few minutes of practicing with me most daysFridays we don’t do the above but do English from the Roots Up flashcards, Burgess Bird Study, Truthquest or Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, and a drawing lesson (sometimes).
There is nothing in her list besides Bible reading, assigned reading, Seterra map drills, (and, mostly, Easy Grammar) that is really independent. Math she often needs extra explanations for and help with the corrections. SOTW and Child’s Geography I have her read the difficult words out loud because otherwise she guesses on pronunciation or skips them entirely. Then she has to narrate. (I often feel frustrated because I’m not sure if her narrations are good enough/thorough enough, and I feel like the guidelines on what to look for and how to help her progress are so very vague.) She often needs help with the notebooking for science. Always needs help with her once-a-week written narration from ELTL. Needs me to practice ASL with her. Needs me for dictation. Needs to quote memory work to me once a week (usually takes her 2-3 tries to have it down well enough). Needs help with 4-H. Needs me for her science/history quiz narrations (and they take a long time, though they are not every week). Plus she is super easily distracted and it requires a fair bit of reminding to keep her on track.
I know none of this is necessarily abnormal for a CM education, and it’s not really too much for her, but it feels overwhelming to me. I don’t see her being much more independent next year, and I’ll have a K’er to start and a new baby early September. I would really love to just find something like Easy Grammar for every subject next year. But that’s totally the opposite of CM, and I don’t want to lose any progress we’ve made this year with all (my) hard work on making her pronounce words properly, work on narration, work on written narration, trying to work on focus, etc.
So if you’ve made it through my entire novel (lol)…how do I make all this feel less overwhelming?
These are my personal thoughts 🙂
I think that pedagogy of Charlotte Mason is wonderful and beautiful, and creates in our mind the ideal picture of what we want homeschool to look like: the family all gathered together, reading their lessons together, enjoying nature together, doing lovely narrations and recitations. I think that it is a very rich approach to homeschooling, with a wide variety of experiences and exposures.
However 🙂
I also feel that it is very teacher intensive, and that I don’t think it is healthy to put the pressure on ourselves to feel as though we “must” use ONLY one teaching style or approach, or that we should feel “bad”, if we find ourselves needing to use something else. The point of homeschooling is to tailor the education primarily to your child’s needs, but also what you need. This means that you may be using a wide variety of resources in your homeschool.
I personally enjoy the CM approach of nature study, history and science. I love the idea of reading and narrating and nature journals. But, quite honestly, when it comes down to Language Arts (including reading comprehension, spelling and grammar), I need a workbook approach. Partially because like you, our life is just too hectic for what the CM approach requires, I need my son to be able to work independently at times. But also because he enjoys working independently, and also he hates narrating. He really, truly hates it.
On the flip side, I would prefer a workbook approach for my son for math, but he finds all those problems overwhelming, so we are using Ray’s Arithmetic/Strayer Upton which can be done orally/on the white board/with manipulatives.
So at the end of the day – use what works best for your family. If you need to use workbooks for LA, there is NO shame in that. And your homeschool experience will be far better for using what creates the least amount of stress and frustration for all of you.
I’m not really seeing either what is teacher intensive or what takes 3-4 hrs. My high schoolers only have about 4 hrs work. My 5th grader has maybe 2 hrs work. Is she reading all her own books or do you have to read them aloud? I have 4 kids doing various things and when they need me they come find me. I will read dictation packages while I eat breakfast or listen to narrations while I do laundry. Maybe your lessons are too long?? One thing I might cut is I really don’t think you need much grammar at this age. That can come through copywork and they will learn it much quicker if you wait till they are older anyway. IMO CM is not at all teacher intensive.
I can very much relate. I really appreciate your openness in sharing this. Sometimes just writing down everything we are doing with my 6th grader allows me to see where I can change things up, but yes, it sometimes feels like CM is teacher-intensive because of the constant listening to narrations, memory work, etc.
I do love the advice to use what works for you at this time in your life. Each season is different and will come with different needs. CM is wonderful if it beings peace into your homeschooling and into your family. It’s not wonderful if it is a source of stress for you as mom and teacher.
I often find too that when I begin to think that school is overwhelming there is something else that is actually the underlying issue. Just something to think about and pray over.
I do hope that you find the balance that you need during this season of your life. I will pray for you as I send this!I started out this year using a timer. I planned out the maximum time I wanted to spend on each lesson, and timed it to give me an idea of what I could accomplish in that time. We are still timing our copywork, but I’ve gotten a good sense of how long we should spend on the other subjects. For subjects like science, geography, and history I allow 20 minutes. Math is 30 minutes, but my younger ones finish much earlier (and move onto something else). Many subjects are just 5 minutes like copywork, picture study, folk song, or Bible memory. By seeing how many minutes we had planned out, I had a good sense of whether or not our schedule was practical. Just make sure you allow plenty of time for interruptions too! We often finish up before the maximum time and just move on to the next subject, taking breaks as needed.
Another thing we’ve done is to only do certain subjects for a term. It can be overwhelming to fit it all in. I try to limit our extras or they can get very overwhelming. Maybe focus on nature study one term, art the next, and Shakespeare for the third term. Giving yourself permission to skip certain subjects can be very freeing! We do 2 “extras” each day. One shorter extra (like Folksong, poetry memory, or composer/picture study) and one more time consuming (art lesson, handicrafts, playing a board game, etc.).
You mentioned a new baby in September. We often cut down to the very basics during busy times (morning sickness, moving, new baby, etc.). My typical busy-time schedule is daily 3Rs and Bible. Science & history are done every other day (usually history 3x per week and science 2x per week). Finishing up with 1 extra (poetry, picture study, composer study, literature, etc.). We often did our composer study while cleaning up the kitchen, or I played a book on CD for our literature selection while nursing the baby.
Make good use of a timer and a written student schedule to follow. Get the audio book of SOTW for her to follow along in her book. Have her seek you out to give oral narration as you do such and such chore (laundry, cook, dishes). Do math and reading lessons by time, not by lesson or chapter (after 20 minutes put a bookmark there), use only one or two resources for language arts. This year, I have been happy with Queen Language Lessons. It is quick, independent, and includes variety. Consider cutting more out. Pray about what is best for this child, this year. Sometimes we hear this or that is really great and so we add it. And it may not be a good fit for this child right now, though it may be a wonderful educational resource. Personally, I would drop the science notebook and do just oral narrations. When she is better at writing, she can add it in again. Are you doing other CM components like poetry, picture study, hymns, nature study, composer study, etc.? These can be a welcomed relief from more academic work and can be done each once a week for 10-15 min. as a family. I would add these an drop the academics to more basics.
Bible and Scripture Memory
Language Arts with only one or two resources
You can alternate history/geography and science each day and she can read her own book, following an audio book if necessary.
20-30 min. Math lesson
I second the advice to get a timer. I used to think that school took us all day to do….. and then, for a couple of days I timed everything we did. I didn’t let my daughters know – I just secretly timed it and jotted down how long it took.
Then last year, while planning out what we were going to do each day, I used that info to determine what got done each day.
The interesting thing that I found was that school doesn’t take us very long at all – 1.5 to 2 hours together (History/Geography, Science, Bible, and then one or two of our “feast” subjects like Composer or Artist Study, board game, Literature Read Aloud, flashcards, etc.).
That’s it! I was floored when I saw how not-long school was really adding up to be. So, what was making me feel like it took so long?
When I timed everything, I also noted what was going on in between subjects. I was running to do laundry, or to answer the phone or to make a phone call or to check email or to do something for my husband (he’s a farmer and pops in the house when he needs a snack or a helping hand, or needs me to answer a book-keeping/secretarial question). So I was losing time, not doing school, but inbetween doing school!
Now that I know that, I can guard against it. It takes all my will-power to ignore the laundry until school is over – but I force myself. Because really, laundry can wait 2 hours. Jt won’t kill me or the laundry!
While the girls are eating snack, we do our Literature Read Aloud, or history, or geography, or other read aloud-type subject. By doing this, family subjects don’t take all that long. And I would encourage you to dl as much as you can as a family.
Now. Individual work. There’s the problem at our house. I have one daughter with dyslexia. So that eats up her time and some of mine. We use the Barton Reading and Spelling program – and for 1/2 hour each day we are not interrupted. And then I also help her with her math, making sure she’s reading everything correctly and understanding it.
My oldest girl is in 6th grade, and she dawdles something fierce! On her checklist, I put the approx. Time it should take to do each subject. And it adds up to about 1.75 to 2 hours each day. (Which would give her a school day of 4 hours. We live in PA, so I must count days, and follow what the law says she should be learning.) It takes this daughter about 5 hours to do her individual work. And since she’s the oldest, my husband occasionally calls on her through the day to help him outside…….so we have a lot of work to do with her dawdling.
My other two girls are only in 2nd and 1st grades, so they don’t have much individual work, just math and reading, basically.
I hope this book-of-a-post helps you, or gives you some ideas. And, yes, during busy times, we scale back greatly. Like skipping lots of history and science and concentrating on math, reading, and read alouds.
We do poetry and picture study with ELTL. We only sing hymns at church so I don’t do anything there. Nature study doesn’t happen. I play classical music occasionally and that’s the extent of our composer studies.
DH wants her to have some written work for science and history, plus some form of tests. I already cut science from 3 days to 1.
It really does take her 3-4 hours to do her work. She reads her own books. I have tried using a timer. She mostly works in a room by herself because she is easily distracted by noise, but very often I’ll tell her to set the timer for x minutes and 40 minutes later she’ll come out and say she forgot to set it…or ask how long she was supposed to set it for. Or even if it does get set, she may get little done because she got distracted thinking about something entirely unrelated. I can keep her on track a little better if she works at the kitchen table, but then her 3 younger brothers’ noise distracts her a lot.
Also, the timer doesn’t help with some things. If she doesn’t think of something to write for science notebooking…doesn’t matter if the timer’s gone off, something still needs to be written. Same thing for written narration. She’ll spend the whole time trying to figure out how to shorten her narration so she doesn’t have to write so much instead of just writing down what comes to mind. And she needs to finish her math level in a year. DH says she needs to, and really I see no reason why she should take 2 years to get through a math level that she understands fine just because she’s pokey about doing her work. It typically takes her 40 minutes or so for math, so that’s still within the 30-40 minutes for lessons for 4th-6th grade. Everything else *should* take 20 minutes or less.
I have some concentration problems and cannot do something else and listen to narrations (not if I actually want to comprehend the narration anyway). I can give dictation and do something else, but not narrations. This is a factor in all the other times she needs help too, because I have difficulty splitting my focus well enough to effectively help her and still be aware of what my younger ones are doing…and they need a lot of supervision. So it’s not just her, it’s also my own difficulties and trying to manage the younger ones that contributes to the sense of being overwhelmed.
It sounds like she needs to be supervised, yet have the other children distracted with something else. I have a DD that tends to dawdle as well. I usually have her somewhere I can see her or her work isn’t getting done. Lately I’ve been having her work in the living room while my younger ones play in the basement. At this time I’m making lunch in the kitchen, so I can keep an eye on her. Other times we all stay in the basement, but I keep the younger ones occupied and quiet. Puzzles, independent reading, or folding laundry are fairly quiet things for the other children to work on.
This is the time of year when many homeschool moms begin to feel overwhelmed with homeschooling. After 13 years of homeschooling I still feel like everything is too much in February.
We’ve stopped our regular homeschool schedule for now. I asked my daughter what she would really like to learn about and she said World Wars 1 and 2 and the Vietnam war because she doesn’t know that much about them. So, we looked on our bookshelves and went to the library and chose several books dealing with these wars and what happened in between them. She’s reading those and narrating along with reading living books on science subjects she’s interested in. I’m having her write a one page narration every day as well.
We are still doing math, Bible and piano but that’s it for now. We just needed a break and are really enjoying a scaled back, more relaxed schedule.
Just thought I’d share in case it might help. The issue may not be Charlotte Mason’s methods-just the February homeschool blues. 🙂
I will say that most children who dawdle are those who are sent off to do their school on their own. It’s too easy to get overwhelmed when you are alone with this list of work to do. It seems like you’ll never get it done so you might as well daydream a bit, doodle a bit, etc.-especially when in one’s bedroom where all of your favorite things are. Kids need lots of interaction and accountability to stay on track.
Would noise cancelling head phones help your daughter not be distracted by siblings and be able to work more in the same room?
My oldest can get his work done quickly (or within a decent time) if he concentrates. The problem is he gets overwhelmed easily, distracted by siblings, or his mind wanders so it is a problem here too. One thing that has helped is when we have broken his work up into smaller amounts. It could be just do this page of math and then do a different (in his mind “easier”) subject and then do the next page of math, etc. If it is only three problems of math that they can focus on start there. It will take more from you at first, which isn’t exactly helping what you are trying to get away from, but it may help to see how to get the work done in a more timely manner which will bring you the end result hopefully sooner than later.
I think what you have listed you definitely need to feel GREAT about everything you all have been accomplishing!!
Good thoughts here. Thank you for posting and everyone for replying. Interesting to see how some can get overwhelmed and others thrive with the SAME thing. But it’s hard to tell exactly what people are doing. I was convicted about doing ALL of CM and not adding too much to it. But then again I do AO, but I love many things about SCM (therefore I’m here). So this year I tried not to be very ecletic 🙂 Yet I love 2Corin57’s advice. This is most helpful to me.
My 11yo, dawdler-daughter just told me that she learned how to not draw all over her math lesson. See, she’d lose concentration and just start scribbling and drawing in her math book. What she learned (all on her own) was that she needed to put it aside for a bit and then come back to it. Imagine that! And she figured it out on her own……now to figure out how to get my other daughters to figure it out at an earlier age!!
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