Help! How do I get back to CM schooling. We are way in over our head

Hi Erin,

I will attempt to offer some suggestions. I have a 7th grader, two 5th graders, and a 5 yr old. The best thing is to first ask your husband what he thinks are the “must do’s” on your list. I was surprised to find that my husband wanted us to keep Latin going.

Then pray, pray, pray. You need to streamline or you’re going to drown in all you have going.

For Bible, we read through the Vos’ Story Bible and the kids read a Psalm each day. They do a little journaling on that Psalm. We read through whatever passage we are memorizing and we sing our hymn of the month together.

The older kids then work independently on Language Lessons by Sandi Queen (grammar) and they do copywork one day using Spelling Wisdom and the next day they will do that same assignment as dictation. That’s all the language arts.

They each read from a different subject each day (mon–missionary story, tues–nature, wed–historical fiction, thurs–literature).

They do math (Teaching Textbooks).

My 7th grader works on science on her own (Exploring Planet Earth) or you could use the Apologia.

Then I read aloud from history every day (we use living books and TruthQuest History).

I also read aloud from our daily subject (mon–missionary story, tues–nature, etc…). I cover science through the nature related books and our weekly nature walks with nature journaling (that we don’t always get to).

For Geography I just look up the places that we come across in our reading. I couldn’t keep up with a separate curriculum for that.

While the olders are doing their independent work, I do Reading Made Easy with my 5 yr old and read lots of books to her. Then we join the others for history (she goes off on her own to play) and we have our other read aloud time after lunch.

We also are going to pick our Latin (Latina Christiana) back up and do that once a week.

You have too much of a good thing going. I have alot of the same curriculums on my shelf. I would hear someone raving about this or that and think, “Yes, that’s exactly what we need!” or “That would be great to study!” but on top of everything else, it became too much.

I save fine arts and nature for Fridays. We are reading about Chopin for the next few weeks, I print out a “picture” of Van Gogh’s art for them to study, we listen to classical music, and we do our nature study. I don’t do any other school! It’s a day we all look forward to and we use it to catch up on anything we’ve gotten behind on during the week.

I forgot to mention that we also study one poet every few weeks. I got behind so we will end up doing probably two poets this year instead of three. The point is to get the children very acquainted with the poet, maybe memorize their favorite poem of the poet, and to develop a love for poetry. So, before history time, we read one poem a day. I want them to absorb and savor it.

I’m also hoping to use the summer for my daughter to work more intently on writing using Writing Strands. It just became too much on top of everything else, so I’m going to save it for the summer when we’re off school.

Pray and evaluate what you can handle teaching with a good attitude. If Mama ain’t happy, you know the rest. For us, this amount is just enough to leave us some time in the afternoon for crafts or playing. I really wanted that. There needs to be alot of breathing room in your routine to allow for the inevitable interruptions.

I hope this helps in some way!

Blessings,

Betty