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What does a CM eduation cost?
- This topic has 8 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 8 months ago by
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I have children doing yrs 1, 2 and early years and I love the CM way of educating.
We use many free resources and spend very, very little to educate our children yet I feel they are getting a beautiful education. However, I was chatting with some non-CM homeschooling friends recently who use boxed curriculums and they shared that they were spending $500 and even over $1000 a year per student and suddenly I began to question if I was really giving my children a worthy education. We use the library a lot, we use free resources online from ambleside, we’ve bought some programs in the past that we can reuse for each child, truly we purchase little outside of school supplies (the only curriculum we buy is the math u see).
Anyway, I am curious what other CM-ers spend per student, Is anyone else spending very little? My children are so young, I feel like I may spend more when they are older, but for now it feels like simple and frugal works fine.
I think that you are fine. Don’t let the shiny package make you second-guess your choices.
I promise that your children will get a rich, varied, wholesome, delightful, and worthy education even if you do not buy a lot of curriculum or books right now!
I have an only child – ds5. We spend very little, using free resources as much as possible. Math is our largest purchase. I can’t imagine a better education could come in a box. Other purchases I make are books that can do double duty, such as Ancient Egypt and Her Neighbors, which we’ll use this coming year then pull out again in several years when we cycle through the history modules again. I think if I purchase those items now it’ll help keep the costs down in the years to come when we need to invest in science materials and books, and other upper years expenses. Books which are more age focused we find at the library.
Here are some older discussions re cost:
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/approximate-cost-for-a-year
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/how-much-does-it-cost
Not to over spiritualize or philosophize but Charlotte said the mind feeds upon ideas. Ideas can be free. She said the Holy Spirit is our Teacher. That is a gift of God. If this is true (and it is) it does not have to take a lot of money to give your children an education second to none. And remember that, not only is the Holy Spirit the teacher of your children, He is the teacher of you. Pray and ask Him to give you the means and the materials to teach them what He wants them to know.
Well said, Robin. Something I needed to hear today. Trying to do too much in my own strength recently and it is back-firing.
Regarding spending – If you are able to use the library for your materials, do not feel bad about that. You are saving money, saving space in your home, and (what I consider highly important) you are keeping good books in circulation. I have used the library to a great extent in our homeschool as well. Recently I requested several books I’m considering for next year. I will probably purchase them so that we can use them for an extended period of time, but I can preview them before I buy and keep them in circulation. Consider it part of your civic duty. 😉
I seem to spend a bit more each year…although I try to purchase resources that can be reused each year or for more than one year. I try to “invest” in books like McGuffey Readers, Laying Down the Rails, poetry anthologies, etc. that can be used throughout their education and not just for the current year. I don’t mind spending a bit on these since they will be well used by the time my children each use them (I have 5 children so they’ll get a lot of use!).
I’m sure we could spend way less and still give them a great education. Personally, I’ve found sometimes spending a bit of money can save me time (although this isn’t always the case so I have to be careful there). I’ve also had a difficulty finding many Christian books at our local library, so that has been an issue since that’s mostly what we use.
There are some wonderful resources out there for free (or very little). We have had as much success with these as with more expensive materials. If you are spending very little, I’m sure they are still getting a great education.
We spend the most on music, sports and extra curricular activities. For my oldest ds, we plan to spend between $4-500, that includes math, science, driver’s ed, co-op classes and various books (he’s in high school). He will do a sport this coming year and possibly music classes, but not all children are into those type of activities and that adds to the budget considerably
.Our middle ds will do music, sport and some extras, and we bought math (MUS) and various books already. So without the sport/music/extras, we’d probably spend about $200 on curriculum/books.
Our youngest may do a sport, music and extras, and for academics it may be $150.
We buy supplies (although we have a ton) at back to school sales like everyone else
.So that’s about $850. I know we spend more than that throughout the year, but public schooled students do “extras” too so we would’ve paid for those things anyway.
Similar to my3boys at our place, too. Almost all of our expenses for schooling are things like music classes, sports, horsemanship lessons, gymnastics,etc. I buy a lot of books used as I find them throughout the year and use the library. But, like my3boys, most of the expenses we have are for things that we would probably have done if they were in public school as well.
-Miranda
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