7blessings, I certainly can’t promise you anything. But I can share my kids’ history. We’ve homeschooled all along except for a couple of months when my oldest was five and I caved in to pressure and put him in kindergarten for a couple months. I began using Sonlight and classical methods with him and by third grade was using mostly CM methods. My two younger students have always done CM methods.
In my experience (we have to test every year, as well) my students test very well. The only exception for us has been for some language arts issues in the early years–for example, punctuation and spelling and a few other things, before fourth grade. They sometimes had “middling” scores in those things. Not terrible, just not great, either. But something happens at about fifth grade or so. Something just “clicks” I don’t know if it is that the copywork is beginning to click, or that we’ve been doing dictation for a year or so by then, or that we’ve begun some simple grammar, or just brain maturity and exposure to many, many living books by then. But something clicks, and they are fine after that.
I think that CM methods prepare the students VERY well for the portions of standardized testing that involve reading a selection and then getting something out of it–my kids are whizbang at that stuff. Narration has done great things!
My kids haven’t yet taken college boards, but at least the ACT is pretty similar IMO to the usual standardized tests taken before. I didn’t think myself that it was drastically different.
One thing I’ve learned is to not panic and to trust the CM methods. I’ve sometimes had a tizzy over writing, for example. All my friends’ kids were writing nice dumb little essays long before I was getting anything meaningful out of my son, and I occasionally panicked and bought some fix-all curriculum, then remembered what I was trying to do and soldiered on. And it worked. It all came together. Whipping up a CM education isn’t really like making a dump casserole–throw all the ingredients in and heat and voila, you have a finished product. It’s more like making soup. 🙂 (hmm, I must be hungry) You start with the finest–make your own broth, it seems like a little work and a shortcut must be better. But you remember it’s not. Then you begin adding ingredients, but it isn’t a finished soup yet. You keep tasting and adding ingredients, and then the flavors start blending and all of a sudden you realize you have soup. 🙂 It might have taken a bit longer to all come together than if you’d opened a can, but the final product is so much better you don’t care. 🙂
Maybe I’d better go have a snack. LOL
Michelle D
