Secular Charlotte Mason

We haven't done any unit studies as yet, but as I was reading about them recently, they seemed to make a lot of sense.

Right now we are following CM as closely as possible, but DD (5) doesn't want to read anything that is not about horses, so I was thinking of trying to incorporate CM with a Unity Study about horses.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how this might work?

Hi Heather,

Unit studies and CM is something I've been thinking and reading about a lot lately.  Since your DD is only 5, I would indulge her in her love of horses and not read anything else for a while. Read living books about horses.  I'm sure there are plenty available.  Black Beauty comes to mind -- not sure of the reading level tho. At least this is theme with many titles.  

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What makes unit studies NOT CM are things like, making your child count 100 horses cut out of paper.  Or making her cut them out herself.  If she doesn't want to count them, then try counting to 100 while you push her on the swings.  This makes more sense to a child, I think.  Especially since counting to 100 takes forever and they get to be pushed longer.

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Another thing about unit studies is they can get too pre-packaged or include worksheets. I would stick with narration instead of following worksheet questions -- unless she loves them. Lapbooks seem fun but my son doesn't like them. He'd rather have a blank piece of paper to do with it what he wants.

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Go on field trips to see horses.

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This could also be a sign that your daughter isn't ready for formal lessons.  I'm getting various forms of resistance from my 5 yo. All the advice I'm getting from veteran homeschoolers is not to rush it.  Just work on good habits, have plenty of outside time, play and read to them what they are interested in...is what they tell me.

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I definitely think it is good to let a child follow their interests.  We SHOULD be helping them follow their interests.  There is time later for the "have to" and then after that there is still plenty of time to follow interests (with homeschooling anyway).  Ham is into building things right now.  I'm finding all I can to help him to do that within our budget...

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I just made a big decision to follow a modified form of FIAR for this coming year.  There are many suggestions in the manual.  We'll see how many Ham is open to doing or hearing about. We'll be doing this method "conversationally." So we'll see how it goes.

HTH

Cori

Heather,

Not sure how your post slipped my attention but you are speaking our language! KodyGirl has read precious little but horsey books the past year. I say go with it!  I've been stewing a horsey-girl page and a unit studies page in my mind. Since you have a need right now I will work on getting the rough draft completed by next week as I think it will help. My daughter, 8 yo, tends to read her books as mini-author studies (which there is a page for).  A great horse author to begin with is Marguerite Henry, of Misty fame. A slightly less PC old fashioned author that often appeals to younger children is CW Anderson (Billy & Blaze fame). There definitely is a way to do unit studies that are CM friendly, but none of those unit study guides will be overly helpful unless you focus only on their hands-on activities. Beautiful Feet does have a History of the Horse unit study.  It's been years since I looked at it but I remember the reading list being good. I don't remember if the activities were any good though. I'm going to borrow my friend's so I can give a review of it on the horsey/unit study page. 

Gina