Secular Charlotte Mason

Hi!  I'm new here, and new to homeschooling as well.  We'll embark upon this journey soon... and I'm hoping to combine Oak Meadow and SecularCM for my 5 1/2 year old son.  However, I haven't found much information on how to do this.  I am hopeful that someone here has already tried it, and has some advice! 

Thanks,

~Jenai

Hi Jenai,

Sorry I didn't see your question earlier. I have to admit that we ended up not using Oak Meadow; mostly because we are too use to doing our own thing. When I looked at it (kindergarten and 7th grade levels) I thought it would be pretty easy to adapt to CM since it is already literature based. The key difference I noticed is that the history is more of an overview than the indepth narrow focus that CM advocates. I would have handled that by going more indepth on the history topics my kids found interesting and skimming what they didn't find as interesting. Please post how you find the CM/Oak Meadow journey as I actually get asked this question fairly often. 

Gina

Hi there, ~

I just saw this posted as a question on the facebook and wanted to head over since we use Oak Meadow for OM6 and OM5.

I have not used it for the younger grades and I know it is  much more Waldorf based but I really agree it could be used with CM Methods.

I use Oak Meadow and we use some CM Methods with their program, mostly oral and written narration.

I agree with Gina, it is an overview in the areas of history and science, but I liked them better than your regular textbooks which is only splashes of information here and there...  we use it as a spine and then dive into living books ( which is another way to use the CM Method with OM) along with hands on activities I either find on the web or purchase along with videos also.

We don't follow all the OM subjects/syllabi only the History Syllabi since we are happy working as we do with other subjects our own way.

Hope this helps a bit more~

Tracey

Thanks for the replies, and I apologize for not seeing them sooner. 

Tracey, it sounds as though you're combining CM and OM in the way I imagined it would work.  Also, I'm glad to hear that you're combining these methods in later grades.  I hope to prevent drastic curriculum changes if I can avoid it!  As for the overview versions of history... Both hubby and I are historians, so we'll be going in-depth by default.  As for the science, we're supplementing that as well because Sean is a nature science fanatic.

Gina, our wild ride begins just over a week from now.  I'll be sure to keep everyone updated on our experiences combining these two methods. My current impression is that I'll be struggling not to oversupplement.  Since we're only dealing with K/1st grade, I don't want to overwork the kiddo whilst trying to meld teaching methods. 

Thanks again!

~Jenai