How to Schedule Ambleside Online and how to make it actually work from a second-generation homeschooling mother of 4. You can do AO!
How to Schedule Ambleside Online and how to make it actually work from a second-generation homeschooling mother of 4. You can do AO!
Planning and implementing recitation in a Charlotte Mason Homeschool
In an earlier post, I wrote about the various education options we considered and how we determined that we would use a Mason homeschool method. So while we had a big picture for the type
These free daily rhythm cards are inspired by Charlotte Mason’s method of education, specifically, Ambleside Online’s curriculum but they will work for any Charlotte Mason curriculum.
We recently wrapped up our nature study unit on wild mammals, and I realized that it may be useful to share some of the living books we used for it in our homeschool. We follow the nature study rotation set out by Ambleside Online and it is these books that make up the nature lore,
Amazon links are affiliate links. I love it when you click on those…so thanks! I’m really looking into Ambleside Online and think it may be more appropriate for my children… I have NO idea how to implement AO, I mean none. I feel like I’ve read the website cover to cover, but have I missed some big page that gives me weekly ideas or instructions on how to gather materials and organize my day? How in the world do you Continue Reading...
Freedom Homeschooling lists free high-quality complete all-in-one homeschool curriculum for all grades and learning styles.
These free daily rhythm cards are inspired by Charlotte Mason’s method of education, specifically, Ambleside Online’s curriculum but they will work for any Charlotte Mason curriculum.
We’ve been homeschooling our four kids for over a decade now, and most of those years have included the books mentioned in the AmblesideOnline.com curriculum. Ambleside Online is a free Char…
Homeschool Morning Time Menus with Free Printables. Everything you need to fill your menus if using Ambleside Online for 2021- 2022.
The official blog of the Ambleside Online Advisory Board.
A review of Ambleside Online free Charlotte Mason based homeschool curriculum. The AO website is packed with everything you need to get started.
Yes! FREE homeschool math curriculum for K-8th grade does exist and it's wonderfully Charlotte Mason. Click, print, and done! Watch the video
We’ve been homeschooling our four kids for over a decade now, and most of those years have included the books mentioned in the AmblesideOnline.com curriculum. Ambleside Online is a free Char…
Practical tips for planning Ambleside Online Curriculum
How to Schedule Ambleside Online and how to make it actually work from a second-generation homeschooling mother of 4. You can do AO!
Our family has used the Ambleside Online homeschool curriculum now for two years and loved it. Here is an in-depth curriculum review of why we chose Ambleside Online and how it varies from similar curricula such as The Alveary, CMEC or A Gentle Feast
These charts (schedules/templates) are available as downloads here. Please let me know if you grab one!
This is a FREE Updated Charlotte Mason Planner. This year it includes two files, one with all the subjects included and one you can fill in.
How to Schedule Ambleside Online and how to make it actually work from a second-generation homeschooling mother of 4. You can do AO!
It occurred to me just today that I had printed these list of attainments Charlotte Mason wrote about in her own curriculum and also in School Education Volume 3 of her series, but had not taken them out since starting my 2nd student (my 7 year old daughter). And as one of them is a list that a child is supposed to learn at the end of their school year at age 6, I feel a bit behind. Not that there really is such a thing as behind as a homeschooler. So, as I look into building my own curriculum I felt it was important to start delving a bit deeper into the meaning behind some of these attainments and gathering some specifics. It is open to a bit of interpretation, I'm sure, but I always think a pretty printable with the information on it helps me. Feel free to use these as you need them, and print them out & use them to help give you a little guidance in your child's education experience. I'm going to use them as a bumper -- like when you bowl with bumpers -- to guide me into the pins. And also, definitely as a goal. Click on it to download the PDF I'm no Charlotte Mason expert so I've definitely been asking questions in the communities I'm apart of for direction on how best to use this list without getting into overwhelm mode. Especially on the To recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable & psalm. Because I am not sure I know a parable short enough that my daughter's attention span would lend to reciting perfectly and beautifully, even after a year of practice. Ideas? I'm open to them! Click on it to download the PDF As far as the list for 12 year olds, my son has quite a bit of work ahead of him in the next year. Ha! Let me know if these were helpful to you. God bless! Julie
A Recap of Ambleside Tales Academy Day 1 Today was our first day of Charlotte Mason homeschool. I mentioned in a previous post that we decided to homeschool for Kindergarten and that our approach was
Need inspiration for hosting poetry teatime with your homeschool group? I've got a year of homeschool co-op poetry teatime themes waiting for you here!
We look to the old PNEU Programmes to see what a Charlotte Mason style education included term by term. These programmes were used by Parent Union Schools
Truth is, finding virtual dissection and labs isn't as hard as it used to be. We have a list of the best Virtual Dissection and Labs for Homeschoolers!
When sharing about our homeschool rhythm a few weeks ago I mentioned that I wanted to write a post about how I plan our year without a curriculum and I
An awesome thing about homeschool crafts is that no matter how you schedule out your homeschool year, you can plan out crafts during the off period as well. Although the kids may take breaks through the year, moms never get breaks. So, we could use a plan for crafts that will keep them occupied during the week while we get 'mom work' done. Use these 52 project ideas for your kids to do fun crafts throughout the homeschool year and during breaks. The FREE craft planner will be a great tool to use for the projects.
I love the wonderful lists of Living Books compiled by Amblesideonline.org. For fans of Charlotte Mason, Classical Education and even Unschoolers, their website is a treasure trove of great resources, even if you don't plan to follow their curriculum.
Amazon links are affiliate links. I love it when you click on those…so thanks! I’m really looking into Ambleside Online and think it may be more appropriate for my children… I have NO idea how to implement AO, I mean none. I feel like I’ve read the website cover to cover, but have I missed some big page that gives me weekly ideas or instructions on how to gather materials and organize my day? How in the world do you Continue Reading...
I have several homeschooling sisters and friends with children slightly younger than mine. Because I've heard similar responses from several of them when I tell them I'm using Ambleside Online, I've decided to dedicate a post to these sisters and friends. The responses I can remember go something like this: "I can't see my child being ready for the books they recommend at age six." "I've checked out their website. It just seems like SO MUCH to do!" "I have several younger children. I can't see myself having time to do all that reading aloud." I am writing from the perspective of a fairly new homeschooler. We have been through one term of Ambleside Online's Year One. That's not very much experience, I know. I also write from the perspective of a mother with young children. My boys are six, four, and two, with another child on the way in January. Still, the experience we have had so far has been very satisfying, and I am convinced that it will continue to be so. It feels like home. So here's how I would respond to the objections I mentioned. "I can't see my child being ready for the books they recommend at age six." To be perfectly honest, I would have had a similar objection a year ago. I didn't think my five-year-old would be ready for narration (telling back) of the challenging books recommended by the time he was six years old. But as it turned out, he was ready, and we began. Still, even if he had not been ready, that would have been okay. We had a rich "kindergarten" routine that included lots of time outdoors, poetry teatime, reading lessons, and math. We could have continued with that indefinitely until he was ready for the books of Year One. Depending on their children's readiness, many mothers do wait until their children are age seven or even close to age eight to begin Year One. I think it's important to realize that doing this will not put your children "behind." If children are doing work they are ready for when they are ready for it, and growing steadily from there, they are exactly where they should be. It's also important to realize that the riches of nature, literature, history, poetry, and everything else are not tied to your child's reading level when you use Ambleside Online. If your child learns to read early, wonderful! But if he is behind in reading, even at an older age, you do not have to wait until he is caught up to begin to feed his hungry mind with a feast of ideas. Reading aloud and narration work just fine, even for the late reader. "I've checked out their website. It just seems like SO MUCH to do!" It is a lot to do. There is Bible reading and narration; hymn, Bible, and poetry memory work; picture study, music appreciation and poetry; readings and narration in history, geography, and literature; mathematics; reading or spelling lessons; nature walks and journals; copywork (for handwriting and spelling); foreign language; drawing and handicrafts. I would have been overwhelmed at the thought of it all even just a year and a half ago. And even now, I'm still growing into it. I have no doubt that I will continue to make adjustments as our family grows and I have more school-aged children. Still, there are several things I can say to this, based on my experience. 1. Each of these many things are little things. Many of the items I listed take no more than five minutes a day (all the memory work, copywork, foreign language) and none of them take more than fifteen minutes (math, narrations). Many of them become effortless when you work them into your habitual routine. Others can be done as infrequently as once a week (picture study, nature walks, drawing and handicrafts). I know, it is still a lot, but... 2. Each of these little things matter. There is no useless busywork here. Even the handicrafts are of the useful skill variety, done with real materials to make a real product of beauty or usefulness. All of the little things recommended, when done regularly over time, cause real growth in your children. I can almost see it happening. SA's vocabulary has grown immensely over the last year. He is asking "Why?" more often. He is recognizing references to composers and to poetry that he has come to know and love. To me, "SO MUCH!" is all worth it. 3. It is okay for you to grow into it over time. In fact, I recommend it. I incorporated several of these things into our routine when SA was still only five, and they simply became part of our everyday life. First, I incorporated Bible reading and Bible and hymn memory work into our after-breakfast routine. This term, we just added five minutes of foreign language to that (still not terribly consistent with that, but as I just said, we're growing...). A little later, we began to have our poetry teatimes just to enjoy poetry and snacks together. This soon became a favourite part of the boys' day, and they would never hear of skipping it. Then this term, we adjusted what was already a routine to include picture study and music appreciation once a week. Year One, Term One was still a big adjustment as SA began to learn narration (telling back from books that I read aloud to him). This really became our focus this term, and it became easier and easier over the term to fit in the three narrations a day required to get through the scheduled books. (One Bible narration was incorporated into our after breakfast routine, then two narrations from history, geography, or literature during his "lesson time.") Still, I found myself neglecting some of the "riches" as we focused so heavily on learning this new skill this term. Foreign language did not really take off, focused nature walks became a bit less frequent, we did less math games and activities, and I didn't even begin to think about handicrafts (though I'm realizing now that my boys learned quite a bit from baking with me and with their Opa, who is a baker.). Something like this will probably happen to you, too, to some degree. It has to be okay that we will not do things perfectly or even well at times. There will always be room to grow. My answer right now is not to deliberately neglect any of these areas (though I think that may be a legitimate option during some seasons of life...like new babies, or moving, or other crazy busyness), but to commit to grow into it over time. Gradually, I hope each of these things will become a joyful habit for us, because I know we will be the richer for every one of them. "I have several younger children. I can't see myself having time to do all that reading aloud." This too is a very real challenge. All I can say to this is that if it matters to you, you will make it work. And it does matter to me. But I will also be honest and say that I can't count the number of times my two-year-old was tearing around and yelling and making things difficult for SA(6) during his lesson time. Sometimes we ended up cancelling the lessons until nap time. Other times I bundled the younger two outdoors while I hovered near the windows watching them and trying to do lessons with SA at the same time. It was not easy. Charlotte Mason said something about mothers doing wonders when wonders are required of them. I won't claim wonders, but we made it through. That was enough for now. I should also mention that the Year One readings and narrations may not take as long as you think they might. Each reading/narration session shouldn't take much longer than 15 minutes (including both the reading and the narration). Longer passages can be divided up and read over several days. We found that two reading/narration sessions per school day (not counting Bible) allowed us to follow the schedule at Ambleside Online. Some "weeks" took more than a week, and some took less. We just progressed steadily through until we were done. We may have taken thirteen weeks rather than twelve, but we rarely did more than fifteen minutes per session. I think the key here is to take things one day at a time, one term at a time. Don't borrow trouble. Try to deliberately build some good habits in your preschoolers, too. I know, this is easier said than done, sometimes. But this season with little ones underfoot will be shorter than we think. We love Ambleside Online. Going through even one term has been a satisfying experience, even with our shortcomings. And yes, satisfying is the very best word I can think of to describe it. I felt that SA's mind was fed with ideas every day. I saw growth and development in many areas. It was all very slow and steady, and yet the progress was not imperceptible. And so, my sisters and friends, try it. I think you will find it worth your time and effort.
This post showcases free copywork for homeschool! Multiple-age copywork downloads for you based on the Ambleside Online Folk Song Rotation.
