?Lesson Plans?????

Did you buy the “Planning Your CM Education” by Sonya?  That helps you to create your own lesson plan.  I know it all seems complicated when you’re new—my first couple years I really felt I needed a scripted plan.  But if you can take time to read and understand the CM Organizer you can create a plan for the year for yourself and feel confident that you are covered:) Sonya does a great job in teaching how to lay out a schedule, step-by-step. Even though it’s more work, I really appreciate the flexibility in creating a CM curriculum that fits our family.  With pre-made plans I was always tweaking/changing and never completely satisfied!!   Blessings, Gina

Planning your CM education and the curriculum guide were BOTH extremely helpful to me last year planning my 1st grade dd’s yearly lessons. It helped break it down into 5 easy steps and was STRESS FREE! 🙂

Tara

Here is what I use since I wasn’t able to get the book when I wanted it. It’s Sonya’s concentrated presentation of what is in the book. I’ve used it two years now and it works; it takes alot of time, but I’m always glad I do it. She sent this out on her newsletter blog a couple of years ago; if you scroll to the bottom, you can read the rest of the 5 part plan. I printed them out and follow all five parts. I’m sure the book has neat charts and stuff that I would like to have, but until then:

http://www.simplycharlottemason.com/2008/03/12/new-planning-series/

Rachel

LSCurley – Reading the curriculum guide and the sample schedules, I was able to plan out what works for us, and have been doing that for a little over a year without Sonya’s Planning your CM education.  That said – I’m still interested in the book and DVD to glean some more things that I haven’t picked up along the way.

I have a 2nd grader and a K’er, and the short lessons have been a life saver!  We accomplish so much in a day, and yet the kids don’t get burnt out.  In fact, this morning, my daughter asked me to get up so we could do some schoolwork.  (I’m having a hard time with this pregnancy – Thankfully, we can do a lot of schooling from my bed!)

The cost of HS’ing hasn’t been too bad at all.  We tend to use a lot of older books that are able to be used over and over again, like McGuffy’s readers for reading and dictation(my son is doing dictation because he’s reading and spelling on a 4th-6th grade level and is more than ready for it), Ray’s Arithmetic for math, Primary Language Lessons.  I think the most expensive thing I’ve gotten to date has been Truthquest for history, and that cost all of $20.  (We bought it used). 

@Iscurley:

I got through each subject in the curriculum guide and look for the books I’ll need for that grade, then I go to our library’s website and look up if they have the books available to check out (We have an awesome interlibrary loan throughout the entire state!). So what living books I cannot borrow, I buy and try to find them used or discounted from amazon, ebay, or rainbow resource. The most I spend our money on is the math curriculum from math u see. I borrow all literature (read aloud) books or have bought them at garage sales or library book sales. I always borrow classical musical cds from the library. I bought Power Glide Spanish used on amazon for $35!

So I say we don’t school heavily, just make our main focus on math and reading/writing daily and add the others in a day or two a week.

HTH!

Tara

Thanks to everyone for the great feedback! We’ve added a curriculum guide link to our quick links box and added some more information about helpful resources to the main guide page. We’re still tweaking to get the wording and positioning right but it’s hopefully a step in the right direction.