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Secrets from Charlotte Mason on Scheduling for Peace – FABULOUS Blog Post
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That article was great and I really love looking at the PNEU schedule. I really like too the Typical Daily schedule here at SCM. This is what I’ve just spent the last….um….hour doing. 🙂 Don’t worry my kids were….exploring the outside 🙂 LOL
I took SCM’s typical daily schedule and plugged that into the PNEU schedule. I created the schedule from family time and 4-6th grade along with the PNEU Schedule II. Taking the time that SCM and PNEU schedules reflect for a subject and plugging that in our typical daily schedule should be around 4 hours a day. This time is including 20 minutes for morning chores even and not starting our day till 9am. Lunch we would spend an hour but also listen to public domain living books.
Here is the longest day example for us: (Taking Day 5 of SCM’s Typical Daily Schedule to the PNEU schedule. Remember this is up to 4th-6th grade.)
9am-10am Family School: Scripture Memory, Bible, Geography, Hymn Study
10am- 11am Student School: Math, Science
11am-11:20 Chores
11:20-11:50 P.E. and 10 min Free Time
11:50-12:50pm Lunch and Audio Living Book
12:50 – 1:20pm Family School: History
1:20- 2:10pm Student School: Grammar; Assigned Reading
This schedule I think will be nice too for keeping us on track:
Family School
Student School
Chores
P.E.
Lunch & Lit
Family School
Student School
I’ve also created Days 1-4 too with this schedule (yes I’m odd like that) But I think the routine mostly is what my family needs right now. Instead of mom sitting and staring….”Okay, um, what’s next?!?” Hope this helps you guys.
4my4kids
I really like what you are doing with your schedule! Can you share the other four days? What materials are you using?
I’m just curious as I’m working on my schedule for next year before I decide on the books/materials I need to buy. Usually I buy the materials and work my schedule around them but have decided to try doing the opposite this year.
Missy OH
Sure no problem.
Each day has the same layout as Day 5 above.
Day 1:
9am – 9:40am Family School: Scripture Memory (10min), Bible(20-30 min), Hymn Study (10 min)
(I do the Scripture Memory system here, one of the planned Bible studies at SCM, and one of the Hymn Study groups)
9:40-10:40am Student School: Math (30 min), Dictation (30 min)
10:40 – 11:00 am Chores
11am – 11:30 am PE and 10 min Free Time
11:30-12:30 pm Lunch with Audio Living Book
12:30- 1:10pm Family School: Poetry (10min), History (30 min)
(History will be additional reading that goes with the Bible course we are studying. We will also do some American History as well.)
1:10-1:50 pm Student School: Grammar (20min), Assigned Reading (30min)
(Assigned Reading will be any additional reading that my kids pick from a list of the bible/history, science living books list from SCM, or an area of interest)
Day 2:
9am-9:30am Family School: Scripture Memory (10min), Bible (20min)
9:30-10:20am Student School: Math (30 min), Typing (20min)
10:20 – 10:40am Chores
10:40-11:10am PE with 10 min Free Time
11:10-12:10 Lunch with Audio Living Book
12:10-12:50 Famiy School: Picture Study (10min), History (30min)
12:50-1:50 Student School: Science (30min), Assigned Reading
(Science is not formal science yet. We’re still using a list of living books.)
Day 3
9am-9:30am Family School: Scripture Memory (10min), Bible (20min)
9:30-10:30 Student School: Math (30min), Grammar (30min)
10:30-10:50am Chores
10:50-11:20am PE and 10 Min Free Time
11:20-12:20pm Lunch with Audio Living Book
12:20-1:00pm Family School: History (20min), Nature Study (20min or longer depends)
1:00-2:00pm Student School: Assigned Reading (30min), Foreign Language (30min)
Day 4:
9am-9:40am Family School: Scripture Memory (10min), Bible (20min), Drawing (10min)
9:40-10:30am Student School: Math (30min), Typing (20min)
10:30-10:50am Chores
10:50-11:20am PE with 10 Min Free time
11:20-12:20pm Lunch with Audio Living Book
12:20-1:00pm Famiy School: Music Study (10min) also played during chores, History (30min)
1:00-2:00pm Student School: Dictation (30min), Assigned Reading (30min)
For us times are not set in stone just something to shoot towards. I often catch myself thinking….this isn’t enough. But it’s nice to read post like the one that started this thread. Less is More. Less is more. (I have to keep telling myself that.) If my kids are able to spend quality time with quality reading (living books) they will get so much more out of this. (HAHA I just realized in my schedule above that Spelling isn’t listed 🙂 But then again, that is what dictation is all about.) I’m talking to myself this year: SELF: LESS IS MORE 🙂 QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.
Just so you know it’s hard for me to not add things to our schedule. I was a public school kid, my mother-in-law and both my sister-in-laws work for public schools. So my kids often get compared to theirs. 🙁 So I often feel disqualified or that I’m missing something or that they won’t be prepared. However, I listened to Sonya Shafer tonight in her Discipleship Is audio and I remembered the whole reason I wanted to homeschool. To equip and prepare my children to glorify and honor Christ in everything! Not to make a certain grade, not how good they preform on standardized tests. How their hearts and character will reflect the gospel of Christ.
Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to share my heart.
This thread has been so helpful to me. Christie, I’m so glad you posted the link to the blog post.
4my4kids, thanks for spending all that time posting your schedule, and your thoughts at the end (so encouraging). I’ve been having trouble trying to set my upcoming 3rd and 5th graders’ schedule. I keep making their days as long as my high school kids. I’ve only dabbled w/ charlotte mason, but I want this coming year to be the year that I relax and say, “OK, it’s enough.”
I’m actually planning on doing NO grammar this year. My heart races a bit when I say that. 🙂 I’m grammared out. I have been drilling grammar for years and we are no closer to grasping it than when we started out. I’m also not doing spelling. Dictation will do fine.
I hope you don’t mind if I copy your schedule a bit? I’ll come back and share what I end up with.
Memory Work is simply things that you are memorizing. In a CM education that would be scripture, poetry, perhaps a speech, lines from Shakespeare.
The other thing that is CRUCIAL to understand is that you must begin to understand that the CM philosophy is a paradigm shift and how it all hangs together. Without that background understanding and underpinning you’re left with a good book list & a few hallmarks of a CM education, but will be missing the whole of it. To paraphrase Charlotte, since I’m on my phone, one cannot expect the amazing results she experienced with her students by only dabbling and picking and choosing what you like, but rather by embracing the principles and applying them fully. This isn’t to say other paradigms don’t work, but is simply to illustrate how Charlotte’s hangs together.
What an encouraging post! The quote that really spoke to me was from one of Charlotte’s teaching students:
“It did not seem possible to find a moment for everything, yet if no time was wasted there was plenty of it and no hurry.”
What a sweet concept.
I also downloaded the Teaching from Rest from the blog, and it has been a very encouraging read as well.
Thanks, Christie.
I apologize before I start because I can not seem to articulate what I’m thinking here in this post.
This is an interesting discussion. The schedules really popped me in to a different train of thought though. I am a big fan of a great atmosphere in my homeschooling. I’ll do whatever I feel necessary to make sure that “life is good” and I appreciate the margins and downtime in life. I’m a pretty mellow person! My children seldom realize how much they do each week and that is awesome in my mind. That means success on my part.
I have really been thinking about this rigour/simplicity/expectations/accountability thing recently because I am such a fan of CM and have never used anything else. I have always tried to listen to the wisdom on here from older CM moms and to read CM herself and others who have really studied her philosophy. I agree that it is a PHILOSOPHY and not a curriculum or method or system. It’s truly a way of life and learning. And I do not promote a picking and plucking approach at all.
I think what is missing is a real concrete distinction within CM and maybe even within SCM about the elementary years and the middle and high school years. These two areas look totally different. There are changes that happen. Adaptations and expectations and preparations that make the two look and feel totally different. To me at least.
There are so many families on the forum with younger ones. That voice is loudest. And that particular stage of education seems most represented in the SCM and other CM sites. There is a vast disconnect to the middle and high school years and that has left a rather muddy trail I think.
I noticed in the upcoming seminars there will be only an hour devoted to the upper years. I was saddened to see that because it is such an under represented CM area. There is such a need for more in the way of how to in the upper years, narration and composition expectations for upper years, college preparation for upper years … etc. The upper years of CM look nothing like the elementary years in my opinion. And I think it is easy to stray or get off track with CM in those upper years without the nice, tidy support so readily available in the younger years.
I don’t know if I’m saying anything that adds to the discussion. Obviously I’m still thinking … 🙂
I’m on my phone so this is brief. Claire, I hear what you’re saying and perhaps I’m misunderstanding. The point of the post and the full day immersion in CM high school that I just attended and other CMI SESSIONS is that while things look a bit different as the kids age it isn’t THAT different. Book selections are more difficult as is what we expect the kids to do, but the tendency is to tackle too many subjects too deeply all at once. The Living and Learning high school session is very good. I will try to distill more thoughts from my immersion session with Kerri Forney at the CMI and blog them soon. If anything, I’d say that the middle and high school years should maintain a simplicity and similarity to the younger years while increasing difficulty in material.
I wanted to add that concrete examples of what does change are very helpful. It seems there’s this idea that CM is great for elementary, but not older kids. Not true, but more examples of how it looks and works are so helpful!
Agreeing with Claire. There does not seem to be a lot of discussion for grades 7 and up on here. I know for us there is a jump at 5th grade when adding in written narration, adding their BOC, book of mottoes, typing (something CM did not do, but a must now). Later we add in grammar and latin and then science takes a step up (again maybe not in CM’s day, but a must for college now). As an example: In searching for information on nature study on this forum, I came upon “Nature Study for High School” with only one forum member responding and really not much resolution was reached on this thread.
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/nature-study-for-high-school
But I also see how we must be careful what is added in. I especially liked the quote on that post by Christy about adding in “tango” lessons. For me, I could see how Spanish and ASL has been “tango” for my son. My daughter was the one who requested to learn these and since I try to combine subjects, I have him tag along with these. But really he has not learned as much as she has and he could be using his time better to learn and explore his own passions…or to sit in solitude.
Oh, do share Christie. I so wanted to be at that conference too but it didn’t work in to our schedules here.
I see your points. I agree on keeping the simplicity. I tried to make that clear. I probably did draw too much of a distinction between the years.
Maybe it is the support factor for the homeschooling mom that I’m interested in seeing and hearing more in our CM community. Things like evaluating work at the middle and upper levels, or intesifying expectations.
What do you make of the recent Science posts? Those are what got me really thinking about this whole difference in the ages and stages of CM. I think there would be other subjects that would do that same. I understood the concern that if you were not being a diligent evaluator of your child’s work at the elementary level how much of a shock middle and high school would be to them and you. That made sense to me. That’s a difference.
I can’t help but see and hear a RIGOUR vs SIMPLICITY tone in the forum posts lately. i’m really wondering how they meld and maybe that’s what I’d love to hear and understand and recieve more support on as I CM along.
Missy, please don’t misunderstand. I, too, have learned as I’ve gone along, too, but the more I learn the more I realize how it all hangs together. We all have to choose what to implement as we learn, of course, but I think knowing the philosophy and principles help keep us from going and snagging bits from many philosophies and sometimes to our detriment. I am not knocking learning as we go, but am knocking trying to take one or two hallmarks of ‘doing CM’ and thinking that alone equals a true CM education without continuing to learn and grow ourselves. It isn’t an open and go fix.
I, too, think more discussion of upper years would be beneficial. I especially like Missingtheshire and Bookworm posts here.
I think one reason the older years are not as discussed is they are not as represented. I know in my area of the globe, even as specific as my county, the main homeschool group has about 150 families. Of those, few homeschool middle and high school ages, most send their children into public school because they do not think they are able to teach their older children well or the child is participating in sports and other extracurriculars. Of the small group actually homeschooling 7th-12th graders, few are Charlotte Mason style. In my particular area most are classical using Classical Conversations.
I do not think simplicity and rigor are opposite ends of a spectrum at all! I think that to truly be able to have time for rigor (deep exploration with high expectations) you need to have simplicity so the student can focus their efforts in the academics and find a breath of fresh air in the other things (artist/composer/etc). Trying to do too much at once by stuffing the student’s day with endless books for endless topics (the opposite of simplicity) means the student cannot focus well and truly form relationships at this level, examining the things they learn critically and forming their own opinions about the things they are studying. They just don’t have time.
Does that make sense or am I totally off track?
And I would LOVE more discussion for these older years!
I agree with missceegee, if we pick and choose from the methods only those things that appeal to us we cannot expect to have the same results that we could have by following more closely to Charlotte’s methods. (This coming from someone who is not following all of Charlotte’s methods yet. I’m still learning and growing my homeschool even after 10 years, some of which were spent in a unit study path. I still love unit studies…gasp.)
I agree with Claire. There isn’t a lot out about high school and when it is, it seems rigorous is the word of the day. I am having a hard time figuring out how the rigor that has been discussed a lot lately could possibly be simple. SCM seems to be the “simplest” to implement of the Charlotte mason sites. When I look at AO for the upper years, I don’t see how it could possibly be implemented in a way which corresponds to the article. I would love to see more discussion on the upper years and how we really can implement a rigorous yet simple charlotte mason style education. Maybe I’m just not understanding her methods enough, which is why I would love more discussion from moms who have been doing this for years and have kids in high school or have graduated.
This is a great discussion, and I’m glad it is revealing some specific ways we can encourage each other. I’ll jump in and add a couple of thoughts, if I may.
In my mind middle school and high school are just continuations of what we have been doing all along. CM methods are simple and effective at all ages. The methods stay the same; we just use them in more challenging ways. For example, read and narrate. We give the older students more difficult books and ask for higher level narrations that require critical thinking, like compare and contrast or give your opinion and support it or trace the cause of such and such and list its effects. The possibilities are endless, but it’s still read and narrate.
The rigor, or challenge, comes in the content not necessarily so much in a change to the schedule. Of course, the older students’ independent assignments may take longer than the younger ones’ do, but we still want to keep the nice variety throughout the week and include the art, music, nature, poetry, singing, Scripture memory, handicrafts, and such that make up the broad curriculum that is CM.
The methods are simple, but that doesn’t mean they are easy.
The content can be challenging, but that doesn’t mean it must take all day.
Does that make sense?
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