As much as I love CM, I am also a fan of John Taylor Gotto as is my husband. JTG's theories on life and education match up much better with my rightbrainer child than CM and better reflects the entrepreneural spirit I grew up around. One of my personal goals for my girls is to figure out a way of combining the two philosopies. 

This talk is long and somewhat rambly but there are such gems of thought it's well worth listening to all the way to the end. I do think Ms. Mason would agree with JTG about some things like having a relationship with your community and nature, relationships within what you are learning and experiencing and that well educated people are never bored.

I've noticed that whenever I listen to JTG within my kids' hearing my RB child usually starts looking through books or working on some project. I suspect that something he says strikes a subconcious cord within her. 

http://www.altruists.org/static/files/Mudsill%20Theory%20-%20Jamie%20Escalante%20and%20the%20Lancaster%20Amish%20(John%20Taylor%20Gatto).mp3

My husband recently started having our entire family use Google Calendar. I was highly resistant because it is online, but today I became a convert. 

I absolutely *love* how easy it is to move items around on the schedule and the format that it prints out in is great for my list oriented visual kids. I also like that I can list chores, schoolwork and outside activities all in one place and for repeating items I just enter it once and set it up to repeat. So easy for the kids to see what they are suppose to be doing when. My husband pointed out that I could use the calendar lists to keep a record of how many hours the kids are doing schoolwork for the few classes that we are counting Carnegie hours for. All I need to do is tuck the daily lists into each child's high school organizer and count up the hours at the end of the year. Think this, combined with One Note may be just the ticket for my middlest's high school years. Wonder if I should have my son switch completely over to this rather than use his paperbased planner for spring term. 

What methods do you use to communicate daily tasks/coursework to your kids; esp. your teens?

I've been thinking about this for quite a while now and even started a discussion on the topic over on the SecularCM yahoo group. At the time the general consensus was that it is best to not have secular CM yahoo groups for each of the three stages since that would divide an already small population of homeschoolers.

After doing high school for the last 2 years I am rethinking this because I do think there is a need for a specifically secular CM high school group. The issues we run into are so very different than the issues we ran into with our younger kids.  I am on CM high school groups like House of Education but their approach is based on Ambleside Online and it just isn't providing me with the resources, ideas and support that I need as a secular CMer. I tried starting conversations on my forum specifically for HS but we just don't have enough activity on the forum to make it worthwhile. I know there are bloggers who write about this topic, but honestly, I tend to follow blogs only of people I know in person or are online "penpals" with so that isn't the best option for me.

Even though I know this is not true, I sometimes feel like I am the only one trying to incorporate more secular CM into the high school years. Even researching Ms. Mason herself is not providing me with the support I need since she tended to write more for the younger years and what she did write about HS seems geared more for her schools than for her governesses which is harder to translate into a homeschool setting.

So, my question for you all is:

Do you see a need for a high school specific yahoo group for secular CMers? I would love to hear your comments here, on the Secular Charlotte Mason page or via email. 

Even though he is a reader, Drakon is finding that video based learning is working much better for him than textbook learning. Partly because it is faster to watch a video lecture than to read chapters in a textbook and partly because he is a visual learner. High Schoolers, I am finding, really do need to find ways to be more efficient with their time as they have so much more to do than they did in the earlier years. Thank goodness for technology at this educational level!

Drakon and I both love The Teaching Company lectures but they can be quite cost prohibitive.  That is where Learner.org comes in. This website has a wide variety of lectures and videos organized into courses. I discovered it while looking for a geography course via Haogiesgifted.com . Several of their courses link to Learner.org. Some of them are "talking heads" type lectures as my 10 yo calls them. Most are a bit flashier with videos and interactive slide shows and so on. Many of these videos look like they were originally made for PBS. Like anything, some courses are better than others. Drakon and I are currently comparing the Learner.org lecture on Gilgamesh to the Teaching Company lecture on Gilgamesh. So, far it does seem that the Learner.org course is a bit lighter than TTC course. In a nutshell we recommend TTC if you want an indepth and detail oriented course or your child has a high tolerance for lecture based learning.  We recommend Learner.org if you want something a bit lighter and faster to get through, your child does not like TTC "talking heads" or if you just plain old can't afford TTC.  I have decided that I will use TTC History of World Lit. course for Drakon since he prefers indepth learning but will use the Invitation to World Lit. course from Learners.org for my girls who prefer less indepth learning. 

Invitation to World Literature javascript:mox();

Learner.org homepage javascript:mox();

Drakon has decided that Trisms is not a good fit for him. I have to agree that it is only an ok fit and I am having to supplement a fair amount. So we are making a change that I think is a perfect match for Drakon's interests and learning preferences. He is going to keep using the same spines for world history (Roberts, Harman) since I had let him chose his own spines in place of the ones recommended in Trisms. He will keep doing Story of Art with the family, which is the girls' history spine. The main difference is that he wants to go with more of a pure literature based history so we are adding in History of World Literature from the Teaching Company. We will also be drawing readings from this list javascript:mox(); . Also from the Teaching Company, we will be adding in the Great Religions series as needed. As you can see my son really likes the Teaching Company lectures. Learning to take notes to these will be good practice for college. 

javascript:mox(); Roberts

javascript:mox(); Harman

 javascript:mox(); Story of Art

javascript:mox(); History of World Literature (I ended up getting the set as it was considerably cheaper than just the one course)

javascript:mox(); Great World Religions series ( I wanted the series but only Judaism and Buddhism were on sale)

And that is the new plan for High School World History

I love the practical, common sense approach with the Charlotte Mason method.  No unnecessary frills.  The article appeals to this common sense approach.  

http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-110657-6644-3-how-one-college-student-beat-tuition-costs?ywaad=ad0035

If you are in the throws of planning high school and trying to figure out how grades, transcripts and reading lists all fit into the picture you may want to check out The Home Scholar. The link below is for her free one hour webinar. I find her suggestions to be quite practical and she holds your hand as little or as much as you need/can afford. 

She is not secular in her beliefs but I have spoken with her in person and never had a problem as she doesn't seem to infuse her high school website/information with religion (it appears she does have some other blogs or websites that are Christian but those are easy to avoidl). She is also on Facebook if that is your preferred media. 

javascript:mox();

PS Please let me know if the link doesn't work.