Introducing WTM Methods Gradually

Introducing WTM Methods Gradually

Many of you using WTM for classical education are experienced home schoolers with a wealth of wisdom to share! From our letters, we’ve selected this for you to read and consider.

Pam McDonald has been homeschooling for over sixteen years. She has two home-high school graduates aged 24 and 22 , two rhetoric scholars (16, 14), two logic stage scholars (12, 10), one grammar stage scholar (7), a preschooler (4) and “a toddler-aka-housewrecker (16mos).” She writes:

For those of you who are overwhelmed: may I add my small experience with WTM? I too was overwhelmed at all the great possible courses suggested by WTM and wanted to jump headlong into all of them all at once. Having home schooled for many years and having jumped in with both feet too fast too many times (only to have it all fail) I decided to change just one thing at a time. Not only is it cheaper, but it gives everyone a chance to get used to the new stuff a little at a time.

I started with history as it was the most important to me for my family. We already had been doing primary sources along with all the great resources listed in Sonlight, Greenleaf Press, Beautiful Feet Press, etc, so we didn’t need to even change all that much; in fact we only needed to buy notebooks, but I wanted my family to be able to chronicle and classify what we were studying in the manner that is described in WTM using the notebooks. It seems to me part of the brilliance of the notebook method is that the children learn to identify and classify important information for themselves.

I set up one notebook for history as per instructions in WTM for each of my children, pre-k, grammar, logic and rhetoric. Then I spent the next few weeks helping each child understand what to document and where to file it in the notebook. I then added nothing else new for 2 months, until I was sure that the new ways were firm and would stick. Only after we were comfortable with history did we change our science. Since we were already used to the notebook method by then, it only took about a month to have the new science method down pat so we were able to add Spelling Workout shortly after that.

This year I have a student who moved up from the grammar to the logic stage. I have been slowly introducing her to the new methods (from summaries to outlines, plus timelines and reports) a little at a time also.

For what it’s worth, my grammar stage children have only one 2″ notebook combining all the subjects. I made the divisions the same as in WTM, color coding each subject. It seemed so much easier to keep track of one notebook rather than 3 or 5. I also have the child’s assignment sheets and check off sheets at the front of their notebooks, a pencil pouch with paraphernalia, their financial records and their Bible study notes. At the end of the year I removed all of the composition and grammar writing assignments, but left the history and science assignments so they can accumulate 4 years’ worth. As their notebooks get too large to handle I will store the history pages in a history notebook and ditto with the science.

My logic and rhetoric stage students have 4 notebooks: history, science, Latin and general which includes Bible, math, finances, and language arts. The tabs are generally just as outlined in WTM.

My preschoolers and toddlers have always had notebooks too. I have to keep them occupied and they want ‘big’ school stuff too. I load their notebooks with lots of blank white and colored paper, copies to color, pages with their names on it to copy or color on, etc. They do all their scribbling (”copywork”), coloring (”illustrating” their narrations), sketching, cutting and pasting right into this notebook which saves me oodles of time and hassle everyday. I have to clean out their notebooks and re-load them every month or so. I like to include paper with a lot of large writing on it (rough drafts, junk mail, magazine pictures) so they can circle or blank out the letters and numbers and words they recognize. Makes me feel good about throwing away all those emails I printed off and don’t want to keep!

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