How We are Combining Classical with Some of Charlotte Mason

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In this post, I’m sharing how we are combining a Classical Education with some of Charlotte Mason’s principles. Plus, making it all Catholic & Traditional.

Catholic Classical Homeschool

Recently I shared how we moved from Charlotte Mason to a more Classical method in our homeschool. And I received many emails & comments about how we are making this work for our Catholic home.

So I decided to write up a simple and brief post to cover what we are doing for the remaining of the school year. I began to implement these changes at the end of term 1 of our current school year.

And as it is now close to the end of this school year, I will keep things pretty simple and will share much more detail of the curriculum choices I put together for the new upcoming school year.

At the beginning of this school year, I shared what we were using for our 2023/24 curriculum. However, a lot has changed that just did not make all of those choices work in our homeschool.

Putting Together a Curriculum Plan

When I first started to notice and experience difficulties with our curriculum, I decided to take a step back look at the big picture. I started to think more about what are the long term goals with our homeschool.

Since our chief ends in life are to know, love and serve God so that we can gain everlasting happiness in Heaven, I wanted to ensure that our curricula reflected and focused on this.

So, I took a step back and focused on what will help my children in their future vocations, no matter what God is calling them to do. And several of my children have expressed a desire towards a religious vocation so we do have a little bit of spiritual life focus added in.

And while they are still young, I want to make sure that I provide them with an education that will support whatever God calls them to do.

No matter what, the faith is the first and foremost part of the planning and goals.

In addition, I know that in the future, I want them to read and understand classical instructors like St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Early Church Fathers, The Ancients, and many more.

So to get to this level in our education, I knew I needed to lean more heavily on a Classical Catholic method.

Curriculum Changes

The biggest changes that we implemented in this year were to include Latin as a core subject. We completely switched up our math curriculum, changed our grammar lessons with an added focus on phonics. Geography, penmanship, and science were also changed.

In addition, I added a 15 minute block of daily independent spiritual reading for the students.

We are still doing Charlotte Mason’s method of narrations, artist & picture study, outdoor nature study (not formally, but have implemented new science lessons to make up for this), plus a wide range of good literature, and music.

And we also recently changed how we are doing memory work. This new method has really proven beneficial to our home.

Read about how we are practicing memorization in our homeschool & diy memory boxes here.

Classical Curriculum Choices

Here I’m going to share a brief breakdown of what we are using for each grade level and subject. We are using a lot of suggestions from Memoria Press this year as we transitioned into the Classical method.

Next year, we are combining quite a few things from Tan Books, Memoria Press, IEW, and a couple of other sources.

Common Subjects

These are the subjects that we are working on together as a family. I shared which things we are using for each of these subjects in more detail in this blog post. The only addition or change we made was to include extra enrichment time as mentioned below.

• Bible Study
• Habits
• Catholic Classical Enrichment
• Artist Study
• History – we really like studying the Founders of Freedom series together and having great discussion from our readings.
• Literature

2nd grade

My second grade student learned reading last year following the Charlotte Mason method. And it was really great for getting him to read independently fairly quick. However, since CM does not focus on phonics and grammar lessons are introduced later, I noticed some huge issues with this.

Catechism – we have been using and really enjoying Our Holy Faith Series for catechism and will continue on with these for our main catechism lessons.

Latin – Prima Latina from Memoria Press is working extremely well. He will be moving to Latina Christiana next year.

Math – we moved from The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series to Beauty and Truth Math this year and it just was not working for any of my children. We moved everyone to Rod & Staff Math and it has been working really well for all! We will continue with this program again next year.

Grammar – Intro to English Grammar and English Grammar Practice from Memoria Press. Next year, we will be using grammar from both Memoria Press & IEW.

We’ve also gone back to basics with phonics from Little Angel Reader. This is the program that I used with my first child before we moved to Charlotte Mason and it worked well for us.

Science – Patterns of Nature from Rod & Staff.

Spelling – he is currently using the workbook from St Jerome’s Press.

4th grade

Catechism – Using Our Holy Faith Series. My daughter is preparing for Confirmation and so we are also reading through The Soldier of Christ & specific Baltimore Catechism questions in preparation for this sacrament.

Latin – since this is our first year with formal Latin, I decided to start two of my students out with Prima Latina from Memoria Press. I did also purchase Latina Christiana, but held off initially. I think she would have done fine with it, but decided to start her with Prima as an introduction. My daughter is doing fantastic with this program and will be moving to First Form Latin next year.

Math – Rod and Staff Math – working really well for us!

Geography – States & Capitals set from Memoria Press.

Classical Studies – Greek Myths from Memoria Press. We’ve really been enjoying using this method of study along with workbook and flashcards. My daughter really enjoys this subject now.

The timeline program is amazing too!

Grammar – Grammar and Recitation II and Language Arts 4 from Memoria Press.

Spelling – We’ve been experimenting with the Memoria Press Spelling for the remaining of the school year. It is still to be determined if we will continue with this program next year or move over to IEW.

Science – The Book of Astronomy set from Memoria Press. Another favorite of my daughter’s this year. We struggled through Life and Her Children as recommended from CM. It was dry and pretty boring to be honest.

Special Needs

Simply Classical from Memoria Press has been amazing for helping my child with special needs. She has made more improvement in using this curriculum than in any other method or curriculum I’ve used with her.

This program is flexible for each student and customizable.

Preschool

My little preschooler is very interested in formal lessons. However since she is still so young, we still keep things very simple.

Here’s how we are doing reading lessons and teaching math in preschool.

She is also preparing for formal, but still pretty simple Kindergarten lessons next year.

I will be working on what putting together a post of what our curriculum is for the upcoming school year once I finalize the plans.