Our Charlotte Mason Middle School Curriculum
2014-15
{This post may contain affiliate links.}Lorelai's curriculum has come to me quite easily this year. I won a homeschool giveaway worth $700 (Whaaat? I know, right?) Also, I purchased the Charlotte Mason bundle on the Build Your Bundle sale. I'm feeling pretty good about this. So what do we have lined up?
History
For the first 9 weeks we will be living in the old west using these weekly unit studies: Westward Ho! Part 1 and Part 2 - I won this in a giveaway and they just look like a lot of fun. That's how I want to kick off our next term - with fun!At some point, we'll be using Experience Music Through History, which I also won. There are history lessons there, but each book comes with a folk music CD and I'm excited about that. I want my kids to know those old songs I grew up with and this is a great way to introduce them to Lorelai.
I'm hoping to get her started in one of the curriculum programs at Train Up Your Child Publishing. They offer unit studies and daily lesson plans for middle school kids. I've been looking into them a lot lately, but have yet to decide which one I'll go with.
We loved Art in History last year, so we're going to get a few more of this awesome little projects.
Geography
Literature
These are a few of the books we plan to read this year.Free Reading
- Blue Willow
- Sarah, Plain and Tall (we want to read the entire series)
Notebooking
We will continue to use notebooking pages for her written narrations of history, literature and in her language arts.
Science and Nature Study
We are using Supercharged Science. For nature study we'll use our usual resources:
- Handbook of Nature Study
- The Young Naturalist's Guide to Florida
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- NaturExplorers Unit Studies
Math
Lorelai has no trouble with math. She picks up on new concepts with almost no explanation from me. She does great with Khan Academy, so we'll continue using that along with living math skills.Language Arts
At this age, we will continue with oral and written narrations. We will work on expository writing and include poetry, letters and story forms of writing. I considered using Analytical Grammar, but Alexis and I found it to be somewhat dry and slow-paced when she was this age.Any suggestions for an 11-year-old?
Foreign Language
We've studied ASL and Spanish. Now Lorelai has opted to study German, the language of her father's family, this year. We are trying Middlebury Interactive for a few months. I'll let you know how it goes.Art and Music
We've always used picture studies and artist studies. We will continue that as well as music and composer studies.- For art and music appreciation, we will be using the the plans for the Logic stage from Harmony Fine Arts.
- For learning music, we'll be using SQUILT.
- For learning art, we will continue with Art for All Ages.
Poetry
We will be studying the poetry ofI will also be looking for some good biographies about these poets. Just as with artists and composers, we also want to get to know the poets beyond their works. We want to get to know them as people.
Shakespeare
We will be studying The Taming of the Shrew this year.Scripture Memory
I honestly haven't decided on the scriptures yet, but this is the system we use for scripture memory.
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Hi! I don't know if you have figured out language arts yet, but we have been using this https://www.commonsensepress.com/green.htm and it's been ok. Not exciting, but my daughter (and 3rd grade son) are doing well with it. I just found your blog recently and thought I'd mention it!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I will look into it.
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