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Ambleside online?
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Has anyone used the CM plan laid out on amblesideonline.org successfully? It looks good but sure seems like a lot of work goes into one week! Also, for those that have used it, is it possible to combine grade levels? If so, how did you do this? Thanks so much for any insight!
I’ve never used Ambleside, but one of the founders, Donna Jean Breckenridge, goes to my fine arts co op, so I bend her ear a lot! I do believe you are welcome to “land” in a particular year with multiple children. It would work like any curriculum that cycles through…work with family books, then read more books out loud to younger ones, and require older ones to read higher level books on their own for the same time period.
We used AO year 6 for my daughter’s 7th grade curriculum. We did not use it as written because I am an incurable curricula tweaker. 🙂 I never use anything as written.
We used mostly the history, science and literature selections. It was a wonderful year and we both greatly enjoyed it. However, I tried year 7 and didn’t care for it. I then tried many choices from year 9 for my daughter who is just starting 9th grade but, again, many of the selections just aren’t my cup of tea. I have found some wonderful treasures through their book lists though!
I have 5 children and have used AO for 3 years now. My oldest is 9 and doing year 3. My 3 younger ones are 6, 7, and 8 (also a 1.5 year old) and although most people over at AO would advise against it, I combine them. From the beginning I have taken those weeks that are laid out and turned them into more like modules. We do module 1 before we move on to module 2, etc. My oldest does much of his reading on his own. We have a set time that we do school activities, usually about 3-4 hours a day, with less for the younger ones, and we work with a loop schedule. Our day looks like this:
8 AM
Breakfast/Morning time: 1hr (everyone together)
Proverb (5min), Bible Reading (10min), Hymn (5min), Fun Read Aloud (15min), Folk Song (5min), *either* Tales from Shakespeare, Parables from Nature, Pilgrim’s Progress, Composer or Artist Biography, Picture Study (10min)9 AM
Next, oldest goes off to begin his work on his own. This includes scheduled readings, math, copywork, dictation study, memory work, French on CD-ROM.Younger ones take a break for 30 min to an hour (outside, weather permitting) and I join them with the baby.
10 AM
After break, the younger ones come back together for about an hour session and we work completely from a loop schedule. I have taken all the AO readings for years 1-3 and placed them in a list by subjects – History, Biographies, Natural History/Geography, Literature. Our Loop Schedule looks like this: Copywork, History, Memory Work, Math, Biographies, Phonics, French, Natural History/Geography, Poetry, Math Drill, Literature.We just work through the list, doing whatever comes next. If it is something like Math or Phonics then I get the older one started first and then move around to the younger ones, offering help as needed. For the readings, I just do whatever is the next assigned reading in that subject and read for 10-15 min. including taking turns narrating.
11 AM
After this session we have lunch (listen to composer now) and immediately following lunch the baby goes down for nap I work with my oldest for an hour on Latin, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Poetry, and if he has questions about math while the younger ones go back to playing.12:30 PM
Oldest will finish up some work if needed and younger ones come back for a shorter session, about 30 minutes before we end our school day at 1pm. Everyone is done at 1 pm and we stop wherever we are and pick up with the next thing tomorrow.Later in the evening we have a Free reading time. This is 20 min where everyone must have a book to read quietly to themselves, or a picture book to look at for the non readers. And we also do a free read aloud to everyone before bed.
I hope that was not way more info than you were even looking for but I just wanted to give my example of how I make it work with multiples and some combining. I will move each of my children out of the younger combination “class” as they reach the ability to read most of their school books for themselves and then will put them in the year most appropriate for their level. The littles have approx. 2.5 hrs of school time / day plus some reading practice in the evening with me or dad and 5+ hours of free time. The oldest does about 3-4hrs on an average day with 4-5 hours of free time. The baby just sort of hangs out close by while we are doing work, playing with toys or drawing on chalkboard, or sitting in a lap or someone holding him or……
HTH
BeckyYou can combine, if that works for your family. We only combine picture, nature, composer and a few other odd ones, and that’s only if everyone is home at the same time. And, my dc are far apart enough in age where we don’t need to combine grade levels. For some families, it is easier to have the children separate for almost all of their studies (our family works best with separate histories, sciences, etc.). Family studies rely on my participation but my health problems complicate everything too much. But, that’s just how it is for our family. We are much happier and peaceful with the separation.
If you check their forum you’ll find this addressed there and how separation or togetherness works for each family, large or small.
HTH
I make up our own curriculum plans to customize them for my individual kids, but loosely follow Ambleside’s structure and use a lot of their recommendations.
Depending on how close your kids are in age and ability, you may be able to combine them in the same grade level without having to make any adjustments, or you may have to change some things up a bit to make it work. I have six school-aged kids and prefer to keep them on the same history rotation, so it’s easier for me just to start from scratch than to tweak Ambleside to fit.
There is a great article on the Afterthoughts blog about combining. http://afterthoughtsblog.net/2015/05/virginia-lees-post.html
Personally, we’ve only used parts of AO…although I tried it as-is when my oldest was 6. The readings were too much for us at that time.
I’ve been looking into Ambleside as well. However, I have heard many times that the readings are advanced and to start your kids a grade(or 2) behind where they would normally be. My oldest, 7 years old tomorrow(Happy Birthday Iris!) is a little behind with reading, according to public school standards. So I was intimidated by the reading options at Ambleside. Is Ambleside geared towards more advanced kids? Just wondering. I think its great that it is free. I mean, the booklists are awesome to have as a reference regardless if you use anything else!
7 years old is a good age for year 1. The books are mostly for you to read to your child until he is old enough to take over some of the readings for himself. It is good to take the transition slowly and only switch one reading at time to the child until he eventually does most of the readings on his own.
The readings are definitely advanced when compared to most curricula. However, you’d be surprised what a child can handle and find interesting when they are raised on classics and mom is reading them aloud.
AO is definitely not for everyone but lots of families love it. If you are really interested, you might join the forum over there. The ladies there are a wealth of information.
My oldest is doing most of Y12 as written from AO; my second, Y7, and third, Y4. This year, I needed most, if not all, of the planning done for me. We have Kindles, Kindle apps, most of the books, etc., so it’s been pretty simple for me. I chose our years by looking over the year before and the year after their current year to see which would best fit each child. I had to get over the history rotation not lining up perfectly with what we’ve done, or were already doing, and it’s been fine. I’m looking forward to next school year and having much of the planning/choosing done for me.
We started off last year following AO year 1 as written but switched to SCM for history. The reading was just so DRY. I couldn’t even remember much of what we read! We are using some of the literature and the poetry this year, but that’s it.
Oh, and we started the Joshua-Malachi study this week, which asks for the child to narrate on the Ten Plagues, Ten Commandments, Moses, and Egypt. I was blown away by how much my son remembered about each of those, which we learned about with SCM. This is the same kid who couldn’t say more than “Uh…. they were fighting” about most of our AO history reads.
SowingLittleSeeds, a year later now, now did your plan work for you? Going well? I loved reading the details – very helpful. I have children ages 6, 5, 3, 7months and like your routine of morning time, break for outside play, loop scheduling etc. I’m most drawn to SCM and keeping the family together as we all love to read-aloud together so much.
I will be using ao for the first time this year. I have a 7 & 8 ye old who will be doing year 1 & 3 My plan is to not use the curiculum plan as it was written out. We have homeschooled for over 5 years now and I know what works.
I will be adding classical Conversations maps for map work in geography. & First Lessons in Geography on the plan of object teaching. By James Monteith .
For math we will use pieces of:
Ray’s New Primary Arithmetic, Ray’s Elementary Arithmetic as well as the models used in Morey’s Artithmetic by Charles W. Morey.
For Recitatio:
Memoria Press first grade recitation & second grade recitation.
For Language Arts:
The ordinary parents guide to teaching reading (to get the hang of basic reading skills more advanced)
As well as literature guides to various books I think we will be enjoyable to our family.
For copywork:
Memoria press Copywork book 2
For timeline:
Not sure if we will use the Classical Conversations or another version one yet.
Bible study: We will focus on memory verses and read 1 bible story once a week.
Foreign Language: Prima Latin by memoria press
We will skip the natural history and history tales to replace for science and drawing.
Will follow the poetry schedule.
Hope this helps give you an idea.
Ecerything will be spread out so we don’t wear out easily. We did a lot of this last year. My best advice is do what works for your family, you don’t need to stick to a certain schedule to give a good education.
We have used AO quite a bit over the years. I think my children are rather smart;), yet each has been a year or two behind the AO year. I am not worried. We are planning to do their recommendation of yrs. 9-11 in two years with my coming ninth grader when she is in 11th grade. This way she completes all but one year of AO.
I do substitute some readings and we usually do some of the SCM family readings and Bible together. We combine for Morning Time: artist, composer, Shakespeare, Plutarch, hymns, folk songs, poetry, and nature study. But each student is in his or her own year for the literature, science, language, and history. Of course math and foreign language are separate as well. Except that we work through English from the Roots Up together twice a week in Morning Time. I also keep them together for Map studies/ geography terms, which works well with SCM’s map guides.
I do usually pull from the SCM guides for some family history, bible, and literature readings.
In the early years, I tried to have everyone on the same history cycle, but I found as they became late middle to high school age, it just didn’t always work. So, now with my last two, they are in different history periods because they are in different years. But we still do Morning Time together and that is a beautiful piece of our schooling.
I love when an older child says to a younger, “Oh, I remember that book. You will love it. It’s one of my favorites.” Or, “Oh, you are learning about …? I love that time period. Wait till you read about…”
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