Read Charlottes books, Ourselves and Formation of Character, they are longwinded however I feel the tidbits of genius in them are invaluable. Another great book for training children in good habits for life is by Nicoleen Peck. Parenting a House United, teaches accountability and independence so they are ready to be a great adult. It has strategies for teaching life skills, for instance, she makes a list of skills – clean a toilet, mop kitchen, weed garden, cook a meal- and makes a note card for each and the process is the first time it’s done the mom does it and the child watches, second- the child does it with mom stepping in when needed, third mom watches and only talks no doing, fourth the mom is not there and the child does task alone and then gets mom to come see. If this is done well the task is signed off and the child graduates from this task and moves on the next one.
CM ideas for habits are to read the bible and parents are to watch the child and work on habits and she goes over common bad habits in her books. She also talks about having heroes, I liked this part, it’s not todays version of a hero whose a popular sports figure, it’s how to emulate someone you look up to and how to learn to be like them because they’re your hero you want to mirror their good traits in yourself.

One way to get started is to pick the books, good ones and more is not necessarily better, CM is a lifelong learning system, it’s like slow and steady wins the race approach. It’s a sure foundation to build upon. This knowledge will be added upon so stay focused on your goals, don’t get too much just because it all sounds so good.
So- the books are chosen and then we look at page count, difficulty and number of books in the subject and how many days a week it will be done. We divide pages by days in the set time frame and write it on a post it note in the front cover of the book, along with grade level. So my 9 year old, in fourth grade is using a 6th grade science book and we need to do a page a day for two years, this allows for 15 minute lessons and discussions. The sophomore book list has short books read in a week or two and they read longer books at a pace of 10 pages a week or whatever the goal is. CM highschool schedule is set up for each subject daily, she has citizenship, government and economics for example and we put one period for these three and they rotate days. So discuss with older students their capabilities and desires and how many hours they can commit to each week/day. Let them set up the schedule with you. This is me speaking, not CM, I like my kids to take ownership and responsibility for their learning and this creates accountability and they feel empowered and it’s a tailored fit.

If flows well once you are used to it and familiar with the methods, of course not all aspects of any curriculum fit each family, every family I know that home schools does it so differently, none of them use all the curriculum from one source, they always like pieces of things from many different companies/ideas. The narration and the timeline are two ways the “jerkiness” is removed from CM methods. The switch from one topic to the next is done smoothly, organized and prepared ahead of time, it keeps the kids interested and working efficiently. It eliminates the glassy eyed boredom by keeping a quick lively pace going. it’s actually compatible with how our brains work, long term memory is engaged in many sessions of less than 10 minutes to learn or practice something. Short term only holds onto about 7 items at a time in a subject so switching frequently keeps the interest up and prevents the heads from dropping onto the desk. It works, we have seven kids, ages 16 to 1, four boys and three girls and these methods are very stable and build a solid foundation. We have done the textbook, worksheet, drill method and it was not teaching them useable lifelong knowledge. We use our science textbook in a fashion compatible with CM, we read it and we discuss it and we draw our ‘notes’ and we don’t answer the questions at the end of the chapter, we review what we liked and learned from the text and it’s almost never what the questions reflect. Knowledge should be personal, meaningful and permanent and this technique accomplishes those purposes. My nine year old son is doing very well in science, not from a testing point of view but from a loving learning view point, he enjoys it and begs for the lesson to continue! Some days I say nope and with a smile shut the book and others I say sure we can do another page. This happens with history as well. Even math, my seven year old son often asks if he can do one more page. He also requested to do two reading/spelling lessons this week, “just to get more done” he said. I adore teaching my kids! Usually.