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We’ve been with The CMEC (The Charlotte Mason Educational Center) for five years now and I tried combining a little bit with TCT (The Children’s Tradition) for the last two.
But, that is no longer working for us.
As many of us homeschool moms are sitting down to plan out the year ahead, I thought it would be a good time to give you an update on what we are using this year.
When a Good Thing Isn’t the Right Thing: Our Journey with CMEC & TCT
I’ve written in the past about some of my struggles with a Charlotte Mason education and our transition towards the poetic mode of education. I tried combining The CMEC with TCT for the past two years, but that no longer serves our family well. And we are moving on from TCT going forward.
There is nothing wrong with TCT, in fact, it is really quite lovely. But it just was not the right fit for my particular family dynamic. And I’ll explain more of that in just a bit.
The Children’s Tradition was what I needed during the time of my struggle as a mother-teacher. The philosophy portion of the curriculum really helped me to grow and learn more about poetic education. And I am really grateful for this.
It set me up to continue diving into the classical education philosophy. Which also led me to read and re-read through some of Charlotte Mason’s volumes. This in turn helped me to realize just how poetic the CM method really is.
And it helped me to fall in love with Charlotte Mason all over again.
Why We Chose to Leave TCT
TCT is a lovely curriculum, and I’ve written a couple of review posts about it.
You can find them here:
But it was no longer working for our family.
And this is not going to be a full review post, I’m only going to share a few of the issues that we ran into with the curriculum…and I guess a few of the concerns that came up during the course of our year.
At the beginning of last school year, I realized that I needed to simplify. Due to some unforeseen health issues, a surgery, and recovery for myself, I needed to make some changes.
In addition to this, I did not really love all of John Senior’s book recommendations. And neither did my children. If you’re unfamiliar, TCT uses John Senior’s 1000 Good Book list for the bulk of the curriculum.
And while there is no perfect book list out there, I know that CM is tried and true. Again, I don’t love all of her curriculum recommendations. But I haven’t run into any significant concerns using it and some of these things can be adjusted easily.
We’ve discovered some of the books on Senior’s list to be highly inappropriate for children (adults too, for that matter). I’m not going to dive too deep into this, as I’ve already mentioned in previous posts.
Another thing that I think TCT is lacking is around a solid program for grammar, the sciences, history, and geography. TCT does not use subjects, but focuses on trying to pull these ideas from a variety of readings.
I understand the fear of making it analytical, however, I really think that these can be taught poetically. And The CMEC does shine in these areas.
I believe that the pacing of TCT for the older years was just not right for my family as well. My independent (voracious) readers really struggled with keeping up with what was scheduled.
Our 5-Year Experience with CMEC (Charlotte Mason Educational Center)
I love how true to the PNEU (Parents’ National Educational Union) and Mason’s methods and philosophy The CMEC is. It is probably the closest to being authentic that I’ve found. I’m sure there are others out there, but this is just based on what I’ve used and researched.
As far as the curriculum goes, I love the guides and effort that the team at The CMEC puts in! The guides are incredible and super helpful for structuring out lessons. This is vastly different from TCT.
In addition to the various form guides and helps with scheduling out the terms, I love CM’s approach to Shakespeare, Plutarch, Geography, and History timelines. This is something that I did not consider dropping with TCT.
With The CMEC, there is a lot of guidance on following Mason’s method of a lesson, pre-reading, and prepping lessons with seed thoughts (aka captain ideas), pacing out the term, and more. But, this does not mean that it is made for the mother either. The mother must work to create the proper plan and course for her family — which I really love that flexibility for planning.
They really help the mother-teacher to grow and learn to be the best guide, philosopher, and friend to her students. I also love the ease of combining multiple children across forms and in our subjects.
As I’ve mentioned before, I really love all of the help and focus on mother-teacher training through the Mother’s Education Course. This really has been so helpful for me over the years!
There are so many courses, retreats, form meetings, curriculum launch videos, and more! I’ve written about our initial review of The CMEC back when we started five years ago!
I know that in the past, I’ve considered moving from The CMEC as I was struggling personally. But, I’m so glad that I didn’t and continued with them to grow as the best mother-teacher for my family.
