On Designing Your Own Charlotte Mason Curriculum

I have been tossing the idea around for a few days to write a short series on designing your own Charlotte Mason (CM) homeschooling curriculum. I've encountered many mothers recently who are either brand new to homeschooling or wish to transfer from the curriculum they have been using. What I'm thinking about today is how home education is still very much a grassroots thing. The development of my homeschooling philosophy and the methods I use have evolved organically over the years. I would be hard-pressed to come up with a how-to on this beyond posting the curriculum outline that I submit to our school superintendent each year and occasionally writing an update. Each family is unique, but I'll try to give you a general guide for getting started.

I don't even remember when I first learned about CM, but I probably stumbled upon it while researching homeschooling online. I remember asking around the co-op we used to belong to if anyone was using CM, and there was only one mother who seemed to know anything about it. She lent me Karen Andreola's A Charlotte Mason Companion. I think my daughter was five at the time, so it has been six years that CM has been a part of our homeschooling journey.

Everyone else at the co-op used a boxed curriculum package, and Sonlight was a popular one. I checked into the cost of that program, which was several hundred dollars. Other companies were similarly expensive. I had my Montessori teaching background to rely upon, so I plunged ahead from the start with designing my own plans. I sought the advice of seasoned homeschoolers for book suggestions and to talk through navigating this countercultural maze.

So the first suggestion I can give is to seek out other homeschooling families in person. I met the first one where I currently live while shopping. I saw a mother with three kids out and about during school hours, so I walked right up and asked her if she homeschooled. I got her phone number, and we are still friends to this day. Facebook groups are a great resource, but I want to really emphasize seeking out home educators in your local area. The next thing anyone should do is to find out what your state's regulations are. You can search these at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association website (hslda.org).

Since converting to Catholicism, I have found my job as a homeschooling mother to be much easier. This is because the Church has clear teachings, such as that parents are to be the primary educators of their children. This in itself is empowering, to understand that ours is a God-given vocation. Also, faith formation must be the foundation of your children's education. When you design your curriculum with this focus, you can rely on the Holy Spirit to guide you. The academics are important, but they are always secondary. Your home is a domestic church.

A solid homeschool can be built with a very simple, basic curriculum. As you discern your child's unique temperament, learning style, and interests, you can make adjustments as needed and find what works best for your family. Always remember that you know your kids better than anyone and care most about their welfare, so you are by far the most qualified to teach them, regardless of your own educational background. 
The basics that you need, in my opinion, are the following:

- A Catholic version of the Holy Bible
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church
- A children's catechism (we use the Baltimore Catechism)
- High quality literature and music, which can be borrowed from the library
- A comprehensive math text/workbook and manipulatives (glass stones or similar for counting, an  abacus, a ruler, measuring cups, a set of number cards and math symbols, a fractions set, and a clock with moveable hands will suffice)
- Catholic readers, such as the Faith and Freedom series from Ginn or American Cardinal Readers from Neumann Press
- Alphabet cards and/or tiles and shaving cream for tracing letters if you are at that stage
- basic arts and crafts supplies, pencils, and paper
- a guide to the saints and liturgical year (I like The Year and Our Children by Mary Reed Newland and The Loyola Treasury of Saints)
- Rosaries
- The great outdoors
- A sketchbook for use as a nature notebook
- Art books or prints for picture studies

I have already suggested beginning to approach Charlotte Mason using Andreola's book. Next go to CM's Original Homeschooling Series, volumes 1 and 6, which you can read at Ambleside Online or purchase used copies. Use Elizabeth Foss' online Catholic 4Real Learning Book List (charlottemason.tripod.com), and you are ready to go! You don't have to spend a lot of money, and it doesn't have to be complicated. Just trust the process.

What Is Natural?

Today many people, disillusioned with the American Dream and the frenetic pace of modern life, are making intentional efforts to live more simply and naturally. Some of these people are homeschoolers. So many people are unhappy, going through the motions of what "normal" people are supposed to do, how they were conditioned to think they should live and what they were told they should want from life. If they finally reach a particular goal, or find the right career or the right mate, they will be happy. And then they still aren't. So they set their sights on acquiring the next possession, pair of shoes, degree, or wife that will be the right fit, the missing piece. And they get it, and their life is still devoid of meaning. The restlessness never goes away.

Maybe my own restlessness led me to study unschooling. Maybe I was thinking that there should be more, somehow, to our days. Sometimes Beezy would ask to do school, impatient to get started. Sometimes she wanted to do more than I had planned. But sometimes she wanted to do something different, something that didn't seem to me to be as high a priority; so I would say we had to focus so we could get school over with (now that's telling, isn't it?), and then she could do what she wanted. I came to feel that our lives revolved around our school time, even though it was a comparatively short time during the day.

Then last Valentine's Day, I let making valentines and baking shortcake be the priority. We had so much fun, and that day is still a shiny one in my mind. Why couldn't every day be so joyful? Of course, not every day is a holiday. Or is it? Holiday. The combining of two original words: "holy" and "day". Holy Day. 

Yesterday Beezy had a "true or false" quiz in her 4-H project book. She caught on to the idea, but I could tell that while she knew the information, the phrasing of the statements was confusing. It didn't immediately occur to me that she had never taken a test, so this was a new experience. Then I had a distant recollection of feeling confused myself as a child taking such tests. Remember multiple choice questions? You might have known the answer if you hadn't been confused by sorting through all the choices. I don't think tests really show what a child knows, how well she knows it, or how well she thinks through a question. In college, I always preferred essay tests. I could usually be sure of having something to write. I could show what I knew, rather than be exposed for what I didn't know. A true or false test shows relatively nothing about what Beezy knows about dogs.

I really hope that homeschool curriculum tests aren't like this. If they are, I can understand why unschoolers are reviled by school-at-home methods. That being said, there are 100 ways to skin a cat, right? (Isn't that the weirdest saying?) Homeschooling, no matter the method or curriculum used (or not used), is a lifestyle. It gives families greater freedom to be who they naturally are, to become the people God created them to be. If we don't get bogged down by arbitrary requirements and someone else's schedule, or even by our own. What if every day could be a holy day?