Why CM ?

With my older kids I always considered us to be ecletic homeschoolers with a strong CM influence. We used many different styles and were willing to drop and change resources and game plans yearly. I prefered living books over textbooks and narration over tests but if they wanted to use a textbook and take tests I allowed it. My oldest son quickly learned that textbooks were the easy way to quickly earn a highschool credit and he knocked them out quite rapidly when he started the highschool years.

They are nearing the end to our adventure together. I get an opportunity to look and evaluate the older 2 kids' education before embarking on the younger 2. As I look at our choices that had the biggest impact it is clearly the CM imfluences. They made the most improvement in their writing skills the years we relied the most heavily on a CM styled LA program and less in the years we used a traditional writing program. They retained far more history when using a CM styled history program then using a textbook.

Most telling is when they find a subject they want to learn more about. They will employ a CM styled approach to learning it. They don't seek out textbooks to learn a subject of interest. They find real books and real resources. They tell me or anyone who will listen all about it ( oral narration) and they write about the subject ( written narration). CM really did influence them on how to become independent in their learning and gave them the basic framework to learn any subject.

Round 2 of homeschooling will be a CM style with an eclectic influence.