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Hello! New with questions…
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Hello, everyone! I have been “stalking” this forum for several months now. I am not new to homeschooling; I have been homeschooling 8 years. I am, however, pretty new to the CM homeschool method. I used a lot of components from CM without know it during the first several years of our homeschool. As my children grew older, I felt the need for a more “concrete” curriculum {silly, I know}, and we have tried everything and then some. Nothing really “fit” our family and was quickly replaced with something else. Anyway, I am trying not to write a book here! I am slowly moving back in to the CM lifestyle, but I would like advice. I have a 13, 10, 8, 5 and 3 year old. I want to do as much family-integrated learning as possible. We are currently using {and LOVING} BiblioPlan: Ancients for history and geography. We will be using Christian Kids Explore Biology as soon as it comes in the mail. I’m not sure if these are really CM-friendly curricula. I know BiblioPlan is used by some CMers, but I’m not sure about CKE. I know there are many ways to make any curricula CM friendly, and I don’t mind tweaking. Okay, now for my question! 🙂 Is there a way to combine all of my kids for grammar and/or math, without holding anyone back or going over anyone’s head? The dream of mine is for our entire homeschool day to be done together, but I am not sure if this is a reality. I do work one-on-one with my 5 year old, as he is learning phonics right now, and I will continue to work with him until he is a confidant reader. So…any advice? Am I over-reaching?
Well, I don’t think there’s any way to combine everyone for math — there’s too much going on there. You could combine kids for things like flashcards or facts review. Or something like that.
For grammar, next year I’m planning to use IEW’s Fix-it Grammar – and right now my plan is that my then-7th grader will use book 2 and my then-2nd, then-3rd, and then-5th graders will work together in book 1. (My then-5th grader has dyslexia, so she’s not done any grammar work so far.)
I don’t know of any other Grammar curriculum that you can combine a wide-spread of grades……but I haven’t looked for it, either!
Welcome! My DC are of similar ages (13, 11, 9, 6, and 2).
We just started CKE (earth & space) in January. Everyone is really enjoying it so far. I think it’s considered more classical than CM, but I’m finding it to be CM friendly. We are only doing some of the memory work, basically whatever I think may be useful. I split the lesson over 3 days instead of two (one day for reading a living book from the resources listed in the back, one day for reading the lesson, and one day for the experiments). If the lessons are fairly short, we sometimes add another reading from the suggested library books. And of course we add in some narration.
I agree with Karen about math & English. We combine some things like math drills or flashcards (each working on their own type of facts). I also just picked up a book called Bedtime Math that has a short story, followed by 3 different math questions, one for each age group. We’ve been doing these before their math lesson and they only take a few minutes. However, I don’t see how you can combine your DC in the long run. I did manage to combine two of my DC when they were both learning multiplication facts. I split them back up when it was time for multiple digit multiplication so they could go at their own paces. We use MUS, so I generally spend very little time actually teaching. They watch the videos and come to me when they need help. I think it’s very friendly for larger families.
For language arts, we usually do copywork at the same time (each child with their own passage going at their own rate). They also study their Spelling Wisdom passage at the same time, and my younger DC work on phonics at this time. Two of my DC often diagram sentences together. They take turns, watching and learning from the other child’s sentences. We’ve used a couple writing programs as a group: Write On and Igniting Your Writing. Both are geared toward upper elementary/middle school grades.
Have you looking into Winston Grammar or Our Mother Tongue? Both can be used for grades 4 and up. There are probably other options in addition to these two.
Basically, I’ve found it fairly easy to combine two DC with some 3Rs subjects, but 3 or more gets to be a stretch (for the age gaps I have anyway).
We love family subjects. However, my thoughts on math and grammar are as follows:
Grammar can be dropped as a subject. If you insist on studying it formally then it can be done independently in high school. In place of formal grammar have your children doing copywork/transcription/dictation (different stages of the same thing based on their age ability). They will not be doing the same passages, but can certainly sit to do it at the same time. A simple example with my own family: The 6 year old copies a line from a poem each day. The 8 year old copies 2 lines of a poem each day. The 10 year old copies a stanza from a hymn she enjoyed at church. The 11 year old copies a favorite passage from a book. The 14 year old copies part of the Constitution each day. We set a timer and everyone works until it rings 5 minutes later. If they haven’t finished their poem/passage/hymn that day it’s no big deal, they just pick up where they left off the next day. I don’t assign ‘one line per day’, I let them do their best effort and if that is 3 words or three lines or a paragraph in the 5 minutes it’s fine. The older ones may be doing dictation, but we still begin each passage as copywork, and on a different day they write it as I dictate. We talk about grammar as it comes up. If the 8 year old was copying and left out a comma or quotation mark we talk about why it needs to be put in. Simply Charlotte Mason has a product called Spelling Wisdom that you can use beginning around 4th grade/age 10, if you wish. Sometimes we use it, other times we use material we find in our reading.
Math really does need done based on ability, which often means individually. What math do you use currently? We use Math U See and with 9 kids, 5 school age, I only have two in the same level/lesson. Everyone else is in their own level. MUS has one new lesson about every week, the rest of the week they are practicing what they learned. This means I can ‘teach’ once a week and the rest of the week they can do math at the same time because nobody needs me to teach them. I am just there to help when questions pop up.
I feel the need to note, by the way, that those examples of what to copy from are NOT what we are currently copying, just possibilities based on the kids ages right now. 😉
Thank you for the encouragement, ladies. I do understand why math cannot be done as a combined subject; I was just wishfully thinking maybe someone else had done it successfully.
Tristan – right now, we are all over the board for math. My 7th grader is using Principals of Mathematics by Katherine Loop. I feel it is a living math, although there is a workbook to use. My 5th grader is using Life of Fred right now; he is very good at math and flying through the Fractions book. My 2nd grader has been using Singapore 2B, but we are also using Times Tales to learn her multiplication/division facts. My Kindergartner is using Math U See Primer, and flying through it. He could really use Alpha if I wanted to challenge him; however, I feel like K should be very gentle and easy. I don’t know what type of math is CM…any suggestions?
That’s a great idea to drop formal grammar and use copy-work and dictation {especially with a time – wonderful idea}. We could pull our passages from our BiblioPlan history program. I have always felt that formal grammar was not necessary, but I have always felt like we “had to” do it. So if you could reassure me that formal grammar is not important before high school, I would appreciate it.
What a wonderful group of ladies! I look forward to getting to know you all through this board. 🙂
Welcome to the forum meganrussell!
On the main Simply Charlotte Mason site there is a section called Learning Library. The Learning Library is a collection of videos and blog posts to help you understand how to use Charlotte Mason’s methods in a homeschool setting. There is a blog series on how Charlotte taught math in her schools that may be helpful for choosing a math curriculum. There are also videos on math, language arts, and grammar in the video section of the Learning Library.
I hope those blog posts and videos help answer at least some of your questions.
LOL, isn’t it amazing the things we think we “should” be teaching, like grammar to young children. Grammar is very abstract and kids are very concrete thinkers until their teens. That is why grammar curricula like Easy Grammar repeat over and over and over each year. The kids can’t really master it until they mature. Why not skip all that time-wasting until they are old enough to understand it well?
Obviously, to each their own! I actually teach the terms noun and verb to my 1st graders (nouns are names for people, places, things, and some ideas and verbs are things you do). Why? Because in our state we take standardized tests yearly and they need to know the terms to understand the questions in that section of the test. But that is it. Some people really feel like grammar beginning very early is best. That’s great for them. I’m always of the opinion that what is important to one family may not be important to another family – and that is okay! Do more of what matters to you.
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