Name: CHEC Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-06-12T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-06-14T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Denver, CO

Tagged: questions, scm blog

This topic has 17 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 5 months ago by Jordan Smith.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)

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September 13, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Jordan Smith
Keymaster
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be starting a new blog series soon to answer your questions about high school the Charlotte Mason way. This will be like the series we did a few years ago answering your questions about narration.
If you have questions about CM high school, we want to hear them! Post your questions in this thread and we’ll collect them to be answered in upcoming blog posts.
And for more about the upcoming series, be sure to check out this week’s post.
September 13, 2017 at 2:38 pm
Tristan
Participant
How can we balance the CM principles and the requirements of our state? For example here in Ohio we have a list of required subjects for every year that we have to cover (language, reading, spelling writing, geography, history of the US, history of Ohio, national/state/local government, mathematics, science, health, physical education, fine arts including music, first aid, safety, fire prevention).
Also, how do we keep the richness of the CM feast and slow pace through books when we’re trying to meet credit hours in high school?
September 14, 2017 at 7:46 am
Melissa
Participant
SCM, I am excited about this new series. The old one has been very helpful.
Tristan, we are also in Ohio. I was stressed thinking that I needed to cover that entire list on a yearly basis but my portfolio assessment lady (who has been doing it for many years and is very familiar with Ohio homeschool laws) assured me that these items are to be covered over the span of their school years, not all at once every single year. We don’t need to touch on Ohio history every year, for instance. Covering it once is enough. Double-check, of course, but from my understanding, this is the case.
September 14, 2017 at 7:52 am
Tristan
Participant
Thanks Melissa! What we’ve done is be sure we do some sort of field trip or a single book about some of these every year. For example we read one short book about an event in Ohio history or US history in a year when we’re focused on Middle ages. Sigh. It’s not a perfect system. We’ve been doing testing most years but just did a portfolio for this last year and found an assessor who is pretty open to getting creative when meeting requirements, which is good. The assessor we used in our first few years of homeschooling was very inflexible (which is why we moved to testing eventually).
September 14, 2017 at 7:53 am
Melissa
Participant
P.S.
Tristan,
My portfolio advisor’s blog is schoolmarmohio.com which you may find helpful and you could contact her directly if you wish. Her name is Lisa.
Have a great day. 🙂
Melissa
September 14, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Claire
Participant
For college bound students –
1. How do you keep a rich variety of lessons when high school core coursework takes more and more time?
2. How do you express the rich feast of a CM education when applying to college?
September 14, 2017 at 9:30 pm
Grace
Participant
Do you continue the family studies in high school? Meaning poetry, picture study, etc. And what does that look like with high schoolers and elentary kids mixed together?
How do you teach high school level writing ( all forms)and research?
What does each subject look like at the high school level?
Do you use only living books or text books?
September 15, 2017 at 11:48 am
Julie Cunningham
Participant
@Melissa Do you live near your assessor? We live about 45 minutes north from there! I’d love to connect! @Tristan, where are you in OHIO?
September 15, 2017 at 2:06 pm
Tristan
Participant
Julie – about an hour east of Columbus.
September 15, 2017 at 7:24 pm
Tamara Bell
Moderator
I am very excited for this topic. My oldest is not yet to highschool (yr 7 this yr) but as we approach 9th grade, I am beginning to try to wrap my head around how to transfer a rich CM education to transcripts. How do we keep lessons fairly short so they aren’t schooling from 8-4 and are still getting the feast and lunch break?
September 15, 2017 at 8:46 pm
Shelby
Participant
How should I approach a struggling learner in math? I tried 45 minutes a day for a time, but then we just got further behind. I have also tried assigning a set amount of work each day, but then it can take up to two hours and that doesn’t leave enough time to cover the other various subjects. I have also taken time to sit there for each lesson, but this year I have three in school and a nursing infant so I don’t have the capacity to sit for a lesson every day. My student will be going to college and will probably be majoring in a scientific field, so math will be utilized.
September 29, 2017 at 12:09 am
Jamie
Participant
I am so excited to see this new series. I cannot wait to glean wisdom about this topic.
Tamara – I want to echo 100% what you said. Our oldest is also in 7th grade and as we approach these high school years… It all seems so new and foreign once again. How do we balance it all and still keep that rich CM feast that we loved all these years?
How do we balance our days having an older child when there are still preschoolers , elementary, and middle schoolers in the mix? What does earning a credit in a course truly look like? What list of things in a high school CM education do you truly NOT want to miss spreading before your child before they graduate?
October 16, 2017 at 11:29 am
Kayla Nichols
Participant
I just realized exactly what I would love to see from SCM. I would love to see you pick through the ADE podcast covering forms 4-6 and explain how SCM materials and guides meets Miss Mason’s goals as specified in that podcast. I realize I’m asking a lot here. 😉 But I bet I’m not the only one who would love to see it. Just thought it was worth a shot to suggest it.
(This was also posted as part of a conversation in the thread about Alveary subjects)
October 18, 2017 at 10:01 am
Amanda
Participant
I would love to see more details from SCM about how to help our high school students develop their writing skills for college. I need more guidance in how to help my kids polish their narrations and become proficient writers.
October 27, 2017 at 10:42 am
Melissa
Participant
It is frustrating to have read aloud and assigned wonderful books for years and to have a 15yo, 13yo and 11yo (all boys) who claim that they don’t like to read. They do not read for pleasure. Even on evenings when they have zero access to screens they would simply do other things or go to bed. They read a lot of good things during the day for “school” so I guess that it burns them out.
When I reflect on my own attitude towards reading, I was an English Lit major and after getting my degree there was a long stretch when I did not read for pleasure. I suppose I was burned out on so much assigned, challenging reading that I lost a passion for it. I can’t imagine that now as I have a whole pile of books going for my own enjoyment currently.
I posted these thoughts here because I would like to read something encouraging for a mom who loves CM’s methods but the high school-aged kids are not so much into it. They just want to get through it.
We also have 3 little girls (8, 6, almost 4) who DO get excited about learning, nature hikes, etc. I should mention that the boys were in school for a number of years before we started homeschooling whereas the girls don’t know anything of the “system.”
Some encouragement in helping with negative attitudes would be great. Yes, we have wonderful moments but for the most part I am not seeing the boys “delighting” in their learning.