We love
Ambleside Online, and have been using parts of it in our homeschool for 3 years, but this is the first year that we are really, truly following the entire curriculum. I'll admit - it's not for the faint of heart. I'm equal parts scared to death and totally excited.
Bent is 10 years old and a "5th grader" by regular school standards, so we will be working through AO's Year 4 for this school year.
The website provides you with a glorious curriculum that would have Charlotte Mason tap dancing in her grave, but the load is quite heavy for the average "regular schooled" child. All books are linked to from the site - a great many of which can be found in the public domain.
Ambleside provides us with an extremely helpful weekly schedule for each year's curriculum, but in order to keep my sanity, and stay on top of Bent (whom I don't feel is ready to be given a weekly checklist just yet), I needed to find a way to turn that weekly schedule into a daily schedule.
I've skimmed through all the required reading for the year, and used my own judgement to decide which books I though would be appropriate for him to read independently and narrate to me afterwards, and which I'd like to read with him during our formal "sit down together" school time.
The day will start with Breakfast and Morning Chores, after which he will move to the school room and begin to work on his Morning Basket.
The Morning Basket will contain:
* Easy Grammar (one lesson per day)
* Copywork
* Drawing (I found this really fun book called
Oodles of Doodles (Drawing Books)
that has a different creative task on each page, so he will do one page per day).
* Math (he will work 20 minutes on Khan Academy)
* A Rotation of either Story Book of Science, Robinson Crusoe, or Poor Richard.
*He will be listening to Robinson Crusoe on Librivox while reading along on his kindle, as I've heard that Robinson Crusoe can be a bit daunting to read independently.
Since I've gone through and divided the weekly work into daily work, I thought I'd make the schedules available for you as well! Simply Click on the link to download the PDF for Term 1 (12 weeks).
Please note that the page breakdowns for Madam How and Lady Why are different than listed on the AO Site, as I purchased a different edition (the one pictured below). I went through and marked off the starting and stopping points for the edition that I purchased, and used those in the daily schedule.
I also thought it would be fun to imagine what the little fairies Madam How and Lady Why might look like, so I made these posters to hang on our school room wall. Just right click on the image to save if you'd like.
As for Plutarch, I just printed out this school year's first term (Julius Caesar) from the Ambleside website, hole punched it, and added it to a binder.
The version on AO's site is broken down into a easy to follow, 3 parts per lesson, one lesson per week format. I intend to do this for each term.
Enrichments are not listed on the schedule, as I don't want those to feel like part of school "work." I've printed out the first picture for
this term's Artsit: Peter Paul Rubens, and hung it in the school room to be observed and talked about as often as we like.
For
Composer Study,
Hymns, and
Folksongs, I am working on creating a YouTube Playlist for learning the songs and searching the songs on Amazon Music to play in the car.
As for Nature Study, that's something that we incorporate into our lives, rather than schedule on a calendar. I will be steering our attention towards birds this term, but we will be observing nature as it presents itself to us, and learning all the time.
Something that I've found really helps us pay attention to details and be more mindful of the natural world around us is to keep a nature journal. We simply use a sketch book, and while we are out, either bring home our specimen (ie. flowers, shells, leaves), or take a picture with our memory or with my phone and draw when we get home.
I'm also hoping to add this wonderful Bird Bingo game that I found on Amazon to our collection to help us increase our Bird Knowledge in a fun way!
Not included in the schedule are Recitation (we will work on that when the opportunities present themselves), and Poetry (we hope to follow the AO Year 4 Poetry on our Kindle and read the scheduled poem a day).
I hope you found this post helpful!! If you use Ambleside Online, please leave me a comment with any tips you may have, or links to Year 4 related posts! I'd love to connect with you!
that has a different creative task on each page, so he will do one page per day).
