Trying to pin down that CM Schedule.....or not?

            Before going to work today, I sat down at my computer to try to come up with a basic schedule for fifth grade.  S has been homeschooling since first grade, but we’ve never used a schedule.  She reads, does her cursive, she may have a grammar lesson or math lesson, but it can happen on any given day and any given time.   We have been able to accomplish most of what is in a Charlotte Mason curriculum each year without ever having a set schedule.  That isn’t to say that we never have set obligations – she did ballet and computer classes, so we worked within that frame.

I had been giving a lot of serious consideration to really embracing the whole philosophy and methods of a CM education.  The foundation really is the schedule itself.  But after I wrote out a chart based on one that I found at Simply Charlotte Mason https://simplycharlottemason.com/planning/curriculum-guide/, I felt agitated and overwhelmed.  I say that the schedule itself is the foundation of a CM education because of the long list of readings.  Lessons are short, but there a lot of lessons.  I worry about jumping from book to book as - ideally - we would be having quite a few books going at the same time.  On the one hand, the argument is made that a child who learns this way learns to really focus on the readings and learns to compartmentalize and separate the information as needed – so that, for example, an incident in the life of Ben Franklin wouldn’t be confused with an incident in the life of Isaac Newton. On the other hand, it does seem to be a bit much and even a bit choppy.  Some readings are only done once a week.  Can a child really retain much detail from only a weekly reading?   A piece of me does want to give this a go to see if it could work and to see if my fears are unfounded. 

Our CM homeschool has always been a very relaxed one.  As I’ve said, we have no set schedule or rhythm.  And this way has worked beautifully for all of us.  But being too comfortable can sometimes mean a lack of progress.  We progress because we challenge ourselves.   

I am thinking of rotating out books instead of having too many going at once.  For example, a day might look something like this for a couple of weeks:

Daily

Plutarch (Copywork)

Dictation

Math

Grammar

Latin  

Art/Poet/Music

Handicraft

Next rotation might be:

Daily

Ben Franklin by D’Aulaire’s (Copywork)

Dictation

Math

Grammar

Latin  

Art/Poet/Music

Handicraft

    I think this way would lead to less burn-out, but again I don’t want to do a disservice to my daughter by not teaching her how to handle multiple readings. 

A more traditional CM approach would look more like the following which I created based on the schedule suggested by Simply Charlotte Mason:

Monday               Tuesday           Wednesday   Thursday   Friday

Ben Franklin          Ben Franklin      Poetry             Plutarch        Plutarch

Artist Study            Music Study     Geography       Folk Song     Nature Study

Latin                         Habits?             Handicraft        Shakes          Habits

My Side OTM         My Side             My Side            Latin              My Side

Math                       Math                   Math                My Side         Math

Isaac Newton         IN                        IN                      Math             IN

Grammar                GMR                   GMR                 IN                   GMR

   What would you choose?