Hi, Terry:
I heartily agree with Suzukimom’s suggestions, and I particularly wanted to address the issue she raised in her post about whether you have money for the resources a CM education would require. I began using CM methods last year, and our budget was so tight that my piggy bank threatened to sue me for neglect, LOL. We are blessed to live in a metropolitan area of the U.S. where we have access to a couple of excellent suburban libraries and a county library system that does interlibrary loans among several libraries statewide. That being said, we have been able to borrow from friends or libraries 75-80% of what we wanted to use for the year, including some items that we read free online or downloaded for free to Kindle for PC.
Once you figure out what you will need for the upcoming year, I would suggest that most of your available funds be allocated toward what your 15yo needs (if possible) because you can assume that your younger ones will be using them down the road at some point. I have to say, the planning and acquiring of materials took more than 2 weeks for me last year, but perhaps you would be able to begin at least some subjects that soon. I tend to throw myself into planning, so it takes longer for me to be ready to begin than for some people. I’ll tell you what I did to prepare myself to teach a CM education, but don’t be overwhelmed–I always do A LOT of planning up front.
In terms of general planning, what I did was read a lot of the material on this site. If you go to the SCM homepage, under the box of Quick Links you’ll see The Basics and Planning. I simply went down the list, clicking on each link there and reading along. It didn’t take too long; those are brief outlines actually. “Planning Your CM Education” goes into much more depth about this stuff. I also read through as much of Charlotte Mason’s writings as I had time during the summer. I have to admit I didn’t get very far, but–well, it was summer, after all!
In terms of actual curriculum planning, I visited Ambleside Online’s site to see what their booklists looked like for each year, and shortly after that, I discovered Simply Charlotte Mason and the curriculum guide here. I like some of the book suggestions on SCM’s guide a bit more, and I like the way the history modules are laid out, especially since we are in the U.S. (One other thing that drew me into the SCM curriculum guide is that I’m a rather visual person, and the way the guide is laid out as a chart with links to click for each subject is very valuable to me. Also, the titles of the books are clickable links to the SCM Bookfinder. If you need the ISBN for a resource or want to see the table of contents, this is a great help.
Once I selected the books I wanted from the suggested lists (or asked–usually on this forum–for help finding a suitable alternative), I checked availability through our local libraries or looked at sources for possible purchase. I use an online organizer, so I put in the information needed, and….we were ready to go. It was a little time-consuming for the first year’s planning, but not difficult.
If you need any help with booklists, choices of materials, or even suggestions on how to implement CM methods, this is a good place to ask. Everyone from newbies to seasoned veterans will be happy to share what has worked for their family so you can decide what is right for yours.
