For those of you who like to put together your own curriculum from a variety of options, here are some handy links and helpful information to assist you in creating your plans.

Consider creating a curriculum map (also known as a curriculum matrix) so that you can properly evaluate the sequence and coherence of instruction. Curriculum mapping provides visual diagrams or indexes of a curriculum. Analyzing a visual representation of the curriculum is a good way to quickly and easily identify potential gaps, redundancies.

• How to Create a Successful Interactive eLearning Strategy High quality content, polished design, and easy navigability are three important ingredients of any successful eLearning course. However, one of the most essential elements of an eLearning course design and development is often overlooked; and that is no other than interactivity.
• An early childhood curriculum web approach to planning allows you to put your students' interests in the heart of the lessons. The method gives you flexibility in branching out and exploring ideas.

CM Methods

The Subject-by-Subject blog post series will walk you through how to teach each school subject using Charlotte Mason methods.

Putting Together Your Plan

Creating Websiteseffective Curriculum Ideas Preschool

Download this form to help you organize your thoughts and put together your plan. It will guide you through the subjects listed below.

You might also find this article on planning helpful, or watch the video version below. Our Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education book and video will walk you through creating a custom plan for your family in five steps.

For help planning for a Charlotte Mason high school, see Your Questions Answered: High School.

Family History, Geography, Bible

The history studies are set up so you can teach your whole family together. There will be certain living history books that you read aloud to the whole family, then additional books, covering the same time period, to assign to the older students on their grade levels. The whole family can do oral narrations from the read-aloud book that they share, and the older students can do written narrations on their independent book assignments.

Start with any time period you like. If you are just starting out, you may want to start at the beginning of history with Genesis. If your children have already studied a time period, feel free to pick up from there and move forward in subsequent years. Also, keep in mind that if you are starting with high school students headed for college, they will most likely need to cover Early Modern and Modern history before graduating. Once you finish Modern Times, you can start over again with Genesis, using the older-level books.

Follow the links to see our book lists.
Genesis—Deuteronomy & Ancient Egypt
Joshua—Malachi & Ancient Greece
Matthew—Acts & Ancient Rome
Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation & Epistles
Early Modern & Epistles
Modern Times & Epistles, Revelation

Family Enrichment Studies

Enrichment studies are subjects like art, music, poetry, literature, and more. These subjects are part of what makes a Charlotte Mason education so enjoyable! Most of them take only 5–15 minutes to do, and you don’t do all of them every day. Sprinkle them throughout the week to spread a generous feast with wonderful variety and enrich your children’s lives!

Create your own plan from these suggestions.
Scripture Memory
Literature
Poetry
Picture Study
Handicrafts & Art
Hymn Study
Music Study
Shakespeare
Habits & Personal Development
Foreign Language

Here are four examples of how you could combine all of the enrichment subjects into a year of enjoyable studies. The first two examples are incorporated into our daily lesson plan guides: Enrichment Studies, Volume 1 and Volume 2. We are planning to create more enrichment guide books but they may not contain the exact recommendations listed below for Ideas 3 and 4.
Enrichment Year Ideas 1
Enrichment Year Ideas 2
Enrichment Year Ideas 3
Enrichment Year Ideas 4

Creating Websiteseffective Curriculum Ideas Examples

Individual Studies

Only a few subjects need to be taught individually: math, language arts, and upper level science. For those subjects, we have grade-level suggestions.

Math
Use whatever math curriculum you prefer. The book Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching will give you all the details on how Charlotte approached math. You can also see live demonstrations of her methods for elementary arithmetic on the 2-DVD set, Charlotte Mason’s Living Math: A Guided Journey.

Science
Grades 1–6: You can combine your students in grades 1–6 for science if you would like to. The grade-level suggestions give recommendations for living science courses that will help you do that. You might also like this list of hundreds of living science books for grades 1–6 that have been reviewed and are recommended by SCM.

Grades 7–12: We recommend that students in the upper grades use the conversational science textbooks listed in the grade-level suggestions. While living books might be more interesting, at this level of study it is difficult to find such books that present current, accurate information. We have also found that many living science books on the advanced science topics teach about the science rather than teaching the science itself. So we list one optional living science book per course as a supplemental read to the conversational textbook.

Language Arts
This video will give you an overview of how to approach language arts in a Charlotte Mason way over all the grades.
See the grade-level suggestions for recommended books and resources.

Sample Schedule

Here is an example of how you might set up your weekly schedule. Some subjects are done every day, but many are done only once or twice a week to add variety and keep things fresh.

You can also see detailed schedules on the bookstore pages that feature the open-and-go daily plans for each of our History Studies, Enrichment Studies, and Individual Studies.

More Free Resources

You will find additional free resources in the SCM bookstore, including a basic Book of Centuries, Scripture Memory verse cards, narration bookmarks, and more.

Read our Curriculum FAQ page for more helpful information.

This free Blank Weekly Schedule Chart download can help you plan your week.

And be sure to take advantage of the generous free samples provided for all our resources in the SCM Bookstore. You will find book lists, scheduling ideas, and other helpful tips in those samples.

The website Mason’s Living Languages provides links to stories, poems, games, and songs in several foreign languages to complement the Gouin series approach.