I never expected to end up with a classical homeschool curriculum for my kids. I certainly never expected that I would love it so much. But I do. I love talking about the Greeks and Romans and learning Latin and reading old books and I’m so in my homeschool happy place right now.

A few people have messaged or emailed me to ask why we’ve switched away from Charlotte Mason, and I feel sorry for those people because they always get an absolute novel of a response from me as I work out my own thoughts in the reply.

Just like the novel you’re going to get here.

Where We Started:  A Charlotte Mason/Classical Blend

We’ve used Wayfarers from BarefootMeandering.com for a few years now. It’s a wonderful curriculum and I’ve written several positive reviews about it here on this blog. The one issue I’ve had with the program is that it relies on a Charlotte Mason method of narration to demonstrate comprehension. For my non-homeschooling readers, that just means that my oldest daughter reads a chapter and then tells it back to me as best as she can. I mean, there’s more to it than that — there are full books written about the method — but that’s it in a nutshell.

I like narration in theory, but it wasn’t working all that well for us at home. And it’s not that my daughter needed practice narrations (save your emails) — she’s really good at it. Her narrations are long and detailed and I’m constantly amazed at the amount of information that she effortlessly absorbs.

It’s just that already back in Grade 4, I noticed that River was missing key details sometimes, like the name of the country where the novel takes place — a problem if, say, the book is specifically chosen to teach geography.

I began to wonder what other important details my daughter might be missing. I didn’t know because I wasn’t reading the books myself. I felt a bit uneasy, but we plugged away and finished our year, and then when it was time to pick Grade Five curriculum, we stuck with Wayfarers.

I like Wayfarers. It’s a blend of Charlotte Mason and Classical styles, with an optional dose of unit studies thrown in. Purists in CM Facebook groups sometimes turn their noses up at anything that blends philosophies, but I’ve never been great at following rules anyway. Charlotte Mason-ish has always been good enough for me.

Starting Grade Five

Our school year started off great. The first two days, I mean — when we had an indoor waterpark almost all to ourselves.

Here’s our first-day-of-school photo:

Then we got sick, and then we got sicker. Honestly, I’ve never been so sick in my entire life, and that illness lasted a solid six weeks. I actually coughed so violently that at one point I went in for x-rays to make sure that none of my ribs were cracked. Harbour was sick too, though her illness wasn’t as long or severe, and even poor Forest ended up with pneumonia on his third birthday. It was awful.

That’s all to say that I was feeling a bit frazzled by the time we made it to full school-mode sometime in mid-October. We chugged along awhile, but we were really behind and we were barely keeping up, let alone catching up. What’s more, my doubts about narration returned. I decided that we needed to jump ship and just try something totally different. 

My thought process went something like this:

We like Charlotte Mason’s focus on living books.
↓
Is there another curriculum that’s known for great books?
↓
Sonlight. Obviously. Do it already.

Quickest decision of my life.

I found someone selling a full Sonlight Core at a ridiculously good price about an hour and a half from home. I took that as a sign and I bought it. (Tip: if you’re selling a like-new Sonlight curriculum online, don’t let your teens price it for you.)

From Wayfarers to Sonlight

When I arrived home with my giant box of Sonlight, I immediately pulled out all of the books and spread them around me on the floor.

WOW.

Now I know why Sonlighters make such a big deal about “boxing day” — it really does feel like Christmas! Piles and piles of shiny books and a ginormous Instructor Guide with all the questions and answers that I could want!

We transitioned into the program easily. We had Core G – World History Year 1 of 2, which is designed to move students through Ancient History and Medieval Times in one year. That seemed a bit fast to me, and given that it was the beginning of December at this point, I decided that we would cover just half of the core for this year. Then we could finish the second half next year, or move back to Wayfarers if I was overwhelmed with regret. 

I wasn’t though. How can I describe Sonlight? It was marvellous. I assigned the readings, and then we worked through the questions in the book. I felt super organized. It was the most stress-free homeschooling we’d ever experienced. Switching to Sonlight was the best thing that I could have done for myself, especially after that rocky start to the year.

Which makes it all the more surprising that I resold the entire core last month already.

I know. I didn’t see that coming either.

Our problem is simply that River doesn’t love historical fiction, and that’s kind of Sonlight’s modus operandi. It’s not that she hated the books, but she didn’t love them. And there were a lot of them. Most of all, River missed the classics that were included in Wayfarers, like Nesbit’s The Book of Dragons or The Secret Garden. I tried to do both, scheduling them on top of the Sonlight books, but it just didn’t work. 

I started looking around for something halfway between Wayfarers and Sonlight — something that didn’t rely solely on narration to show comprehension, and something that relies on a variety of reading selections rather than just historical fiction.

Something like Memoria Press.

From Sonlight to a Classical Homeschool Curriculum

I’ll be honest — I completely dismissed Memoria Press at first. It’s classical. We’re Charlotte Mason. Classical homeschool curriculums are rigid and inflexible. We’re laid back and awesome. Memoria Press has workbooks with questions that students have to answer. We do narra– oh right.

So I gave it another look.

I started reading through the Memoria Press website and I kinda just fell in love with it all. I looked through the Grade Five package to see what my daughter would have been reading this year if we had used their curriculum. I saw The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and Heidi and Lassie. River would have loved that. 

Then I clicked over to see what Harbour would cover in Grade One, and that’s when Memoria Press won me over.

Harbour is seven and she would be finishing up Grade One if she went to a traditional school. However, her reading skills are very basic, and her attention span, while improving, is still pretty limited.

I’ve already decided that she’ll do Grade One again, regardless of the curriculum that we choose. That’s the challenge — which curriculum!? Wayfarers would be way too much for her. Ditto Sonlight. Before finding Memoria Press, I had been leaning towards Five in a Row as a possibility, plus a strong phonics program.

When I browsed the Memoria Press website, I discovered Simply Classical, a modified classical homeschool curriculum that Memoria Press created specifically for children with learning disabilities. It’s a gentler form of the main curriculum, but it’s no less lovely. I downloaded a copy of the Simply Classical book by Cheryl Lowe and it inspired me to give Harbour an education filled with wonder and beauty, even though it might be at a slower pace and cover less. I don’t have to settle.

Given that everything looked so promising, I ordered a couple books to try out. I ordered First Start Reading A (FSR-A) and the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide, and I love them both. I also purchased the Simply Classical Level 1 (SC1) recitation schedule, and I’m surprised that I like that part of her school day. No, really. It’s nice to start off in the morning by reciting a prayer, a Bible verse, and then facts. Harbour can now list off her address and phone number, how many letters are in the alphabet, how many types and forms of letters there are, what the five vowels are, and right now we’re working on the seven continents. I don’t know who’s more proud when she recites her facts — me or her. It’s been so good for her confidence. 

I will write more about the reading program and the enrichment guide, I promise. (Update: I did! Click here!) Just know for now that they gave Harbour and me a fresh start with her school and I can’t wait to start Grade One in the fall.  

With the success of Harbour’s books, I decided to go ahead and order a book to try out with River. I bought the Famous Men of Rome books, which was perfect, really. We had begun our year with Wayfarers learning about Ancient Mesopotamia, we covered Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece with Sonlight, and we’d finish up doing Ancient Rome with Memoria Press.

I had no wild delusions of getting through everything by the end of June — this set is meant to be used over a whole year and I bought the books in April. However, I thought reading even part of it with River would give me a good idea of what a year of Memoria Press would look like.

River really resisted the book at first, but it wasn’t the book itself. She loves the Greek myths so much that she was personally offended that the Romans stole their stories and renamed their gods. It didn’t take long for the epic stories to draw her in though, and I know she’s thoroughly enjoying it. We’re doing the workbook out loud, given our short time frame, and her answers to the questions are long and animated. There’s also a lot of, “oh, but listen to this part too” and “mom, you have to hear this.” I can’t believe I ever thought these books were dry and boring.

I could never have imagined back in September that we’d be sold on a classical homeschool curriculum by the end of the year. It’s not the philosophy that won us over at first — it was the various high-quality curriculums that drew us in. Classical Academic Press introduced us to Latin, and now we use their Writing & Rhetoric series for composition. Latin is now through Visual Latin, and I’m pretty sure it’s River’s favourite subject, thanks to the teacher, Dwane Thomas. Memoria Press is our newest curriculum discovery, and it’s the one that’s officially pulled us over to the classical side. I wonder, though, if Wayfarers isn’t a bit responsible, nudging us down the classical path this whole time.

Want to know more about the books we’re using from Memoria Press for our classical homeschool curriculum? Click on over to my next post to see all the AMAZING books that Memoria Press sent us.