Tag Archives: Ambleside Online

Year 1 Wrap-Up for Kid Uno (my version)

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If you’re wondering what we really think of the Ambleside Online selections for Year 1, you’ve come to the right place. These are my thoughts and notes to myself from the end of the year (my Year 1 page has links to everything we used):

 

  • Average weekly time: Together (5 hours), Kid Uno alone (2.5), total 7.5
  • Rate each book (like, neutral, dislike).
  • Add a few comments.
  • Any changes for next child?

Poetry and Recitation

A Child’s Garden of Verses

Neutral. Sentimental and a few racist. Classic, and several fun poems. Nice illustrations.

When We Were Very Young & Now We Are Six

Like. Funny and child-like and fun to read.

A Child’s Book of Poetry

Like. Nice selection. Beautiful illustrations. Rosetti was Kid Uno’s favorite poet.

 

Music

Classical Kids CDs

Like. Kid Uno liked stories. Not as much emphasis on music as I hoped.

Hymns

Like. Need to re-type and correct the gender-neutral versions for future years.

 

Literature

Tales From Shakespeare

Like. Very long. Difficult to read aloud (vocabulary, names, dialogue, long sentences). Need to look up name pronunciations in advance. Read and narrate in very small segments. I usually narrated instead of Kid Uno. Review characters frequently. Listen to on Librivox after reading. Watch play after reading. Kid Uno especially liked the female characters.

Blue Fairy Book

Like. Very long. Change schedule so they don’t coincide with Shakespeare readings. Kid Uno’s best narrations were probably from this.

Just So Stories

Like. Very long. N-word and some other racism in Leopard. Hard to read aloud at first but got easier and will be more fun second time around. Kid Uno enjoyed.

Aesop’s Fables

Like. Very short. Almost verbatim narrations. Kid Uno enjoyed and finished rest of book.

Science

One Small Square Cave

Like. Good illustrations and organization. Not easy to narrate but retained fair amount.

One Small Square Swamp

Like. Good illustrations and organization. Not easy to narrate but retained fair amount.

One Small Square Arctic Tundra

Like. Good illustrations and organization. Not easy to narrate but retained fair amount.

James Herriot’s Treasury

Like. Good stories, beautifully illustrated. Old, but not dated. One of Kid Uno’s favorites.

Burgess Bird Book

Dislike. Boring, repetative,  and conversation is dull to read aloud. Birds are difficult to keep straight with nicknames and without pictures. Kid Uno may have learned a bit about identifying birds based on plumage and nests, but I will look for something better (Arnosky?) and either ditch this or use as free read with next child.

Among the …. People

Like. Old and quaint. Nice combo of accurate animal descriptions and slight moral. It grew on us.

Nature Connection

Like. Practical and versatile. Weather section was good for Kid Uno’s current interests.

 

History

Trial and Triumph

Like. Difficult to read aloud, and mostly over Kid Uno’s head. Specialized and advanced vocabulary. Need to look up name pronunciations and define lots of words in advance. I learned a lot of church history. An older kid would get more out of it, but it’s ok as a read-aloud at this level. Slight Protestant slant so far but not anti-Catholic.

50 Famous Stories

Like. Short and interesting. Good narrations from Kid Uno. I learned a lot too. Schedule in entirety and in chronological order for next child.

Our Island Story

Neutral. Well-written, but more appropriate for older kid. I ditched after 2nd term; decided that much detailed British history was not what I want to focus on this year or next 2 years. Maybe for student to read alone in Year 4 or 5. Not much retention except for Boadicea 🙂

Viking Tales

Like. Need to define lots of vocabulary in advance. Good mapping. I learned a lot, and Kid Uno had good narrations. Nice combo of anthropology, mythology, battles, and history. Incorporate 2nd half of book with next child.

Biographies

d’Aulaires Pocahontas

Like. Nice to have a female history character.

d’Aulaires Benjamin Franklin

Like. He came alive. Lots of mapping.

d’Aulaires Buffalo Bill

Neutral. Mostly like, but uncomfortable with “savage” Native American depictions. May ask DH for second opinion. Lots of mapping.

d’Aulaires George Washington

Neutral. Mostly like, but uncomfortable with “happy slave” depictions.

 

Geography

Paddle to the Sea

Like. Short. Lots to map. Fairly engaging story. Positive (if slightly stereotypical) depiction of Native American.

 

Copywork

Rod&Staff Penmanship 2

Like. Mostly self-directed, takes about 10 minutes a day. Beautiful penmanship, and I like that the copywork is Bible and bird/animal themes.

Rod&Staff Penmanship 3

Like. Mostly self-directed, takes about 10 minutes a day. Beautiful penmanship, and I like that the copywork is Bible and bird/animal themes.

 

Math

Life of Fred

Like. Kid Uno loves it. Fun, and concepts I’ve never heard of (commutative principle). Apples, Butterflies, most of Cats.

I Love Math books

Like. I actually haven’t looked at them much; Kid Uno likes to pore over them for about 20 min. as an assignment 1-2x week.

Ray’s Primary Arithmetic

Like. Methodical and easy to use (with Eclectic series teacher guide). Have thoroughly covered addition and subtraction with single digit carrying and borrowing up to 100. Boring for Kid Uno, but we do it daily and she spots patterns and likes the word problems.

Miquon

Like. Have done most of orange and some of red. Takes a lot of preparation for me since it’s an unfamiliar method. Will be easier for me second time around. Love that it introduces concepts (like equations and negative numbers) far earlier than traditional math. Also measurements and geometry and time not covered (so far) by Rays. Kid Uno does several pages 1-2x per week. Usually enjoys it.

Bible and Memorization

Ambleside Online Bible Selections

Like. Good selection; maybe a bit short and sparse. Frequently need to provide context. Would like to discuss a little more than we did. Kid Uno reads aloud from NIV.

Simply Charlotte Mason Verse Packs

Dislike. Liked at first because free and self-directed, but dropped after 2nd term as the verses were so random and out-of-context. Memorized Ps. 136 together for 3rd term. Big improvement.

 

Reading

Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

Dislike. SO BORING for us both. And at least 2 typos and weird formatting. Flew through the first .75 of book. Last .25 helpful for covering phonics, syllables, roots, etc. but there’s got to be something better for phonics follow-up of 100 EZ Lessons.

McGuffey’s Second Reader

Like. Great for student read-aloud skills. Great for vocabulary. Will be great for spelling and recitation if we need it in the future. I find the extreme moralistic tone highly entertaining, and Kid Uno loves the stories. Covers interesting topics.

 

Art Appreciation

John Singer Sargent

Like. Pictures are small.

Van Gogh

Like. Not as many familiar paintings as I anticipated.

Caravaggio

Like. Good size pictures.

Art Instruction

Art Treasury

Like. Kid Uno complained about it but produced nice art. Great selection of artwork. I bought and consolidated all the supplies at the beginning of the year, and it was nearly all self-directed after that.

Drawing Textbook

Like. Kid Uno complains but does one lesson daily and seems to have incorporated some principles into her regular drawing. Usually self-directed, but pretty easy for me to demonstrate if she needs help.

Youtube Drawing Videos

Like. Free. Kid Uno loves them. Lots of variety.

Nature Journal

Like. Combo of observation and art. About 1x per week. Might help to make it a bit more methodical but I think it’s ok as-is.

Mesa Art Classes

Neutral. Kid Uno and Kid Dos loved them, but I don’t think they learned much art for the amount of my time and money invested. More of a social experience.

 

Sports

Soccer at Rec Center

Like. A fun family experience if not a lot of skill-building 🙂 Kid Uno loved it.

Purpose of This Blog

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Why add yet another blog to the billions out there? And why blog about a Charlotte Mason education when there are others far more expert than I? The short answer is that Charlotte Mason lived about a hundred years ago, and while her educational principles remain the same, the world has changed, and we have access to lots of more up-to-date material than what she used. The internet, for example!

We are loosely using the resources and schedules at Ambleside Online  to homeschool our children. The hard work put into that free curriculum is amazing, and has made it easy for me to get started without starting from scratch. It has its weaknesses (for our family and goals), but I love to tweak, so I’ve made lots changes to fit the curriculum to our family.  I’m hoping to use this blog to keep track of all my changes (and the reasons for them), and do a yearly wrap-up of what worked and what didn’t. And maybe it will be helpful for other homeschoolers.

One goal of AO was to make the curriculum cheap and accessible by using mostly public domain texts. Another goal was to re-create as nearly as possible the type of education Charlotte Mason provided her students. Neither of those are my goals, so a lot of my tweaking reflects my attempt to modernize some of the content (especially history and science), and to use books I prefer over some of the free, vintage books. I’m using  “modernize” loosely; lots of our books were published in the 1950s and 1990s 🙂 And lots are from the 1800s.

Many homeschool curricula these days revolve around history. For us, it’s not the center. My academic tiers are skill subjects first:

  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Arithmetic

and then all other content subjects are second tier, have more or less equal value, and may depend somewhat on the interests of the child. For example:

  •  Geography
  • Music theory
  • Astronomy
  • Botany
  • Public speaking
  • Drawing
  • Art appreciation
  • Poetry
  • History
  • Economics
  • Statistics
  • Test-taking skills
  • Zoology
  • Ballet
  • and so on

So I want our children to develop strong abilities in the first three areas, and then to have at least a taste of all the other areas. This is for ages 6-12…I haven’t planned much past that…yet. 🙂

What Charlotte Mason Means to Me

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Have you read Charlotte Mason’s original writings? I haven’t — I have read a fair amount of the paraphrases done by Ambleside Online, and most of the books published about a CM education. I’m not one of the WWCMD [What Would Charlotte Mason Do] type of people.

Some things just won’t work for us. Picture her ideal of a mother sitting outdoors on a blanket for 4 hours, while her children cheerfully bring back natural objects for her to see and talk about. That’s where I start laughing (or crying, depending on the day). Hahahaha….what happens when the very-pregnant mother is desperately searching for a restroom 30 minutes later? Or the 2 year old falls in the creek and is turning purple and we forgot to bring a change of clothes? Or the three older kids are fighting and someone needs some discipline and someone else needs a snack and someone else needs some alone time…and we are supposed to do this every day?!

But what I take away from that ideal is that outdoor time is beneficial, and so the way I accomplish that is by sending my kids outside to play…while I nurse the baby in a comfortable chair and get stuff done around the house. Or we spend a weekend camping. Or go for a hike on a Saturday when DH is here to wrangle kids with me. Or meet a friend at a park or the zoo. And we encourage cups and jars full of bugs and worms and spiders, and bouquets from the yard or the mountains, and getting dirty and playing in the treehouse with friends. All of that helps accomplish nature study, in a way that is practical for us. Anyway, here are the main ideas that add up to a CM education for our family:

 

  • Literature-based learning. This means we use very few (if any) textbooks, read lots of real books, and supplement with DVDs, excursions, classes, concerts etc.
  • Living books. The books we read differ from textbooks in that they are written by a single author with a passion for and knowledge of the topic, and are written in an engaging style. Living books are not necessarily old! There are old “dead” books, and new living books.
  • Slow readings. Reading lots of books spread out over a long time (a term, or 1-2 school years) allow time to chew and digest the material.
  • Short lessons and lots of subjects. We cover lots of topics, but spend a short time daily or weekly on each. We want to expose the kids to as much of the wide world as possible. Alternating subjects allows the brain to rest. Short “school” sessions equals more time for childhood.
  • Narration. At this stage (age 7 and under), I read aloud, and then the child tells me back in her own words everything she remembers. This trains the child to listen carefully the first time around, helps her assimilate the information, and lays a foundation for future written compositions and public speaking skills.
  • Emphasis on nature and outdoor time. This is great for children’s development and health. They also gain familiarity with and ownership of nature, and get first-hand experience with concepts they might otherwise just read or hear about.
  • Beauty, truth, and challenge. We aim to give our kids material that is beautiful and true, and that challenges their ability to understand, think, and express.
  • Good habits. Obedience, diligence, persistence, helpfulness, neatness…these are all things we work on while the kids are little. They are essential qualities for (relatively) smooth school days, and are characteristic of the kind of adults we hope they become.
  • Delayed academics. Our kids do nothing academic before age 5, and very little before age 6 or 6.5. More on that in another post.

It seems most useful to me to figure out the “whys” of what CM did what she did, and then decide how to incorporate those principles today, rather than to try to re-create what she did. Around here, practicality trumps mostly everything else! 🙂