Homeschooling with Catholic Schoolhouse
“Empowering families to share Catholic culture. At Catholic Schoolhouse, we bring families together, allowing them to share and experience immersion in a loving Catholic Community–a community that strives to grow in virtue and holiness. Together, we encounter the true, good, and beautiful while forming tomorrow’s Catholic adults to be light in the world.”
What is Catholic Schoolhouse? How does it work? Will it fit our family?
Today I want to share all about the homeschooling “program” that we use for homeschooling our children in a Classical, Catholic education model.
We have tried homeschooling on our own, homeschooling with a wonderful hybrid and homeschooling with Catholic Schoolhouse. I have learned that I enjoy getting out one day a week for lessons and socializing, but at this season in life, I didn’t want an overly structured program and I also didn’t want to spend a ton of money. Catholic Schoolhouse has met all of our needs and I’m excited to share with you how it works. Quite honestly from the moment we started, it truly felt like all of my visions about what I believe homeschooling to look like came true!
What is Catholic Schoolhouse? It’s a Catholic homeschool program that meets weekly as a co-op with the classical approach, meeting in chapters all across the nation. However, you can purchase the materials to do it at home without an official co-op. There are nearly 100 chapters across the country with new ones coming.
Is it structured or elective based? Catholic Schoolhouse is more structured than other elective style co-ops. The day is structured to flow through the various subjects and to touch on every subject: chorus, religion, art, math, science, Latin, history, language arts, geography and historical timelines. The day usually ends with lunch and play time.
We love the freedom to choose our curriculums and build around Catholic Schoolhouse.
What makes it Catholic? Oh boy, this is so fun! Each three weeks the children will focus on a new saint to learn the life and history of the saints. These saints will fit in beautifully with our history timeline for the year, having their own history card in the mix. In addition, we focus on virtues as well. The religion aspect of the memory work has been beautiful for our children and it teaches so many things, often utilizing the Saint Joseph’s Baltimore Catechism. My children have learned Psalm 23, the precepts of the church, the 5 forms of prayer, why God created us and SO MUCH MORE. Some of my children actually thrive with the memory songs and otherwise, would struggle to just learn the facts by reading and reciting. The children also focus on Latin and have learned the Glory Be prayer and table blessing all in Latin this year, along with the Hosanna in the highest in Latin.
Is it a full curriculum? Catholic Schoolhouse is not a full curriculum but can be the spine of your curriculum if you’d like for it to be. Catholic Schoolhouse focuses on memory work in all of the subjects and timeline dates - you can take this and incorporate it as deeply as you want. There are families who utilize CSH just for fun and social purposes and don’t focus on the memory work much at home. There are other families (like us) who build their studies around it. I find many that I talk to often build their enrichment studies such as science, history and art around CSH, but stick to their usual curriculum choices in other subjects. Don’t feel you have to change what is working for your homeschool just to be a part of CSH.
What does a co-op day look like? Our day begins with chorus and then moves to two hours of structured classroom instruction. In addition to this, the kids will also have 30 minutes of a hands on science experiment and 30 minutes of an integrated art lesson - so the class day lasts 3.5 hours. Our children have embroidered, made pottery and painted just to name a few for art. In science they have made tornadoes in a bottle, brain hats, electricity and dissected a few things. I also like that each quarter has a take home science activity for the kids to work on. So far we have done bug collections, weather charts and now life sized human body diagrams as a family.
What are the tours for the program? There are three tours for the program and every three years the cycle starts over again. This is fascinating because by the time your child repeats a tour, they will be older but will likely remember some of the memory work and songs, but the activities and lessons they do will continue to grow with them. For example, my first grader is experiencing tour 1 this year, which is American History. He will come back to this tour in the fourth grade and will remember many of these facts, dates and songs but will be able to grasp them with a greater understanding. The learning keeps building! It also provides quite a savings in the materials because once you have the tour materials, you can keep reusing them.
Here we utilized the free worksheets that you get access to in order to review our historical timeline dates and cards. This was a fun activity for the kids. Here you can also see a glimpse of the tour guide.
Speaking of savings, is it expensive? No, here is something that I love about Catholic Schoolhouse, it is very affordable! For our family of four this upcoming school year, we will be paying right under $900 for all of our children to participate and have the materials they need for Catholic Schoolhouse (this doesn’t include our other curriculum). Another fun cost savings part of Catholic Schoolhouse is that you access to tons and tons of online worksheets, games, ideas, videos and book recommendations to all of our lessons!
What do the moms do at co-op? At a Catholic Schoolhouse chapter, you have moms who direct, coordinate and teach the classes. There will be class leaders (teachers) and parent helpers. When you register for a chapter, you can add to your registration which you feel more comfortable with (teaching or just helping). And there is a nursery for little babies who aren’t ready for the classroom and some moms have even taught with their babies on their hips! It is very pro-life and family oriented.
Is there an upper level program? Yes! While not every chapter across the nation may have the dialectic and rhetoric program (starts around 7th grade) our chapter will have a high school program. I have spent quite a few days with them and have to say, I was very impressed with the structure and style. While the upper schoolers aren’t singing the memory work songs, their timeline is similar; their IEW writing matches up with the history studies, as does their speeches and presentations. Some things they focus on is Latin, literature with discussions and take home assignments, geography, church history, Catholic culture and virtue, science labs, fine arts projects, socratic seminar and more.
Are there any other fun things about it? Yes, yes, yes! Catholic Schoolhouse meets three weeks out of the month (one day per week) with the fourth week being used as a week to catchup on materials and often attend a field trip as a chapter. For instance, we had an arctic blast this week and didn’t focus much on our memory work because the kids stayed outside playing with icicles. Thankfully next week is a catch-up week so we will review and work on all of the memory work and attend a fun field trip with our chapter. Many chapters also add on fun events and our chapter will include a yearbook, parent’s nights, Saint Nicholas Market, All Saints Day party, Valentine’s party, pizza days, park days and more. We will also likely be adding on an IEW writing class for our 4-6 grade students. Chapters have a lot of freedom to plan fun events for their students and families to build a strong community.
There’s so much I could say about homeschooling with Catholic Schoolhouse. We have truly enjoyed it so much that I will be directing the newest chapter in St. Amant, LA for the upcoming school year, and I am overjoyed! Want to join us? Message me at themushymommy@gmail.com for details! I hope this very lengthy post has helped you in your discernment for homeschooling with Catholic Schoolhouse.
We use a Charlotte Mason approach to our history and science. By utilizing the history cards from Catholic Schoolhouse (my favorite) we read beautiful picture books to build upon our studies. My oldest has other curriculum work that she does just since she’s older. The kids will often do copy work, write small reports or do an art activity at home to go with this.
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