Ambleside Online Year I, Term 1

A few weeks ago I finished my first term of AmblesideOnline (a free Charlotte Mason curriculum) with my oldest (7 years old, at the time of this writing). I’ve had some time to reflect since then and somewhat organize my thoughts about what went well, and what I’d like to do differently. For any other newbie momma’s, I figured I’d share to help!

The first thing I want to say is this: this has been our best “bit” of school thus far, and we’ve been homeschooling since the beginning. That’s even in the midst of some new family diagnoses/illnesses, my husband getting injured, unexpected financial setbacks, and adjusting to school with a baby. AO brought us so much joy and rhythm when things felt really unsteady!

What went well…

A lot went well, honestly. I think this is something really important to reflect on because it shows us all the good we are doing! If we only focus on what needs to change, a habit I find myself slipping into, we miss seeing the truth, goodness, and beauty we’re helping lay out.

I think the biggest thing that went well: I could see how this change made our whole family look forward to learning together. I enjoyed our readings and what we were learning together, my kids loved acting it out or talking about it, and I heard in our conversations/their play that connections were being made. Ok, on to the nitty gritty!

We did our Bible time at the breakfast table: this kept my 4 year old and baby occupied for at least a short amount of time. I didn’t follow the Bible readings in the listed Year One, and that’s because I felt like I wouldn’t have enough time to read them and talk about them while also feeding the two Littles breakfast. But as I’ll talk about next I may change that. We had some great discussion from the book of Genesis as we were reading through it, and I just edited on the fly and only read certain parts of Genesis.

My Y1 would do his reading practice while I did one-on-one games, puzzles, play with my 4-year-old Y0 and the baby napped. As soon as reading practice was over, I’d jump into math with my Y1 while my Y0 played or colored or did another activity nearby. Then we’d hop around on his “to do” sheet with what he wanted to do next: copywork, recitation, readings, Spanish, or whichever rich we had assigned for that day of the week.

A quick run-down on those…. He wanted to learn to do cursive, so we changed from copywork in print to learning cursive form, and that’s gone so well I’ll likely move to tracing copywork in cursive for the next term. Recitation didn’t get up and running til halfway through the term while I was trying to decide what we should do for it, and how exactly it works. Once I found out how simple it was, we took off just fine! Readings were our favorite part of the day; my Y1 narrates very well, so we tried to find ways to help sister be a part of it when she wanted. Her favorite was acting out the story! For Spanish, we used Georgia PBS’ Salsa episodes and would watch 1 episode per week (we did the same episode 3x before moving on to another one… I feel that helped their understanding so much). Picture study we played “I Spy” or just talked about the picture and kept it out in the learning/play area. Composer study we played the music while working on copywork or making lunch, and this went well. We talked a bit about one of the composers lives and that seemed to make things stick more (did you know Bach has so much music it would take 40 years to handwrite it all out?). Hymns and folksongs were a favorite, and the kids still often ask to sing The Wellerman. I loved seeing how their familiarity with hymns came out in worship – the favorite was To God Be the Glory.

We did timeline and a nature walk once a week. It took a bit to get timeline going until I added it into our schedule. Our nature walk has been consistent, with a variation in focus on what we’re observing when we’re out and about. For his first handicraft, my Y1 hand-sewed a stuffed owl for his baby sister’s birthday. What a special gift to have for many years!
Physical activity was done every day – with time spent in our backyard on our playset, or at a playground, or at a homeschool co-op, or at a homeschool open gym, or on our nature walk.

We ended the first term with an exam, which was so beneficial for me. It helped me see what stuck and what could use extra attention on my part.

What We’re Going to Change

First things first, I want to be more intentional with both my Y1 and Y0’s Bible readings. For my Y1, I think I’ll have a simple notebook he can keep in his Bible with a list of readings for the month (got this idea from Educating the Whole-Hearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson). Since many of the Y1 readings are major stories in the Bible, we may backtrack over those once we finish going through the book of Mark together. For my Y0, I want to make sure we don’t miss out on reading their picture Bible daily together to develop that quiet time habit, so that’s my habit focus for the next term – to have daily quiet time as part of the morning “getting ready” routine.

Copywork, as I mentioned before, I’ll print off some traceable cursive sheets correlated to our readings. If he still wants to practice form individually, I’ll keep our wipe-clean book available, but I want the language to be impressing itself on him since his cursive is going so well so far.

Recitation we’ll continue in its simplicity. But I’d like to celebrate the end of the next Term with a recitation night with other Charlotte Mason-minded families, or just for family or friends.

We’ve been using The Good and The Beautiful for math, and it’s been going very well. We’ll continue using it, but I’ll be more purposeful of having an individual practice sheet out for him while I work with my daughter Y0, in order to help train in him the habit of math practice unaided.

Foreign language is a bit of a puzzle for me, currently. The Salsa videos the kids just love! And I honestly do too, as I don’t know Spanish. I think I need to make more of a commitment to learn more Spanish on my own in order to create a more immersive atmosphere. Also, utilizing “pockets” of diving deep – for example, in winter, focusing on how to say winter words/phrases. Or before we go to a concert, spending time understanding music words/phrases.

Physical activity we’ll continue as before, but exploring even more ball games and hiking spots.

Readings – so much love for these! I’d like to explore more options/ideas for narration, as well as Charlotte Mason’s own words on the subject.

Art we do daily; my Y1 is just a natural lover of creating things! I’d like to start implementing direction in his drawing, though I need to research where I want to start there. For artist study, we’ll continue as-is. Same for history readings and timeline: but instead of once a week, I’d like to do visit the timeline with each history reading, and pick one per week to add with a small drawing. Handicrafts – we’ll be exploring soapstone carving next! Composer study: we’ll continue the listening at calm times, and read a picture book for the new composer. Hymns and folksongs have been awesome; we’ll keep at it, as-is, with singing first thing in the morning to signal the start of our day learning together. Nature study we’ll keep meeting weekly, and I’ll be using John Muir Laws to help guide my Y1 to begin his own nature journal in earnest. We be-bopped all over the place this past term in what we focused on, and it was too hectic for me… we’ll stick to the AO nature study focus this term (rocks!).

For anyone just starting out, I hope this was helpful to you! My biggest tips: 1) Just start. You’ll figure out more as you go, but if you wait til you know it all, you’ll never get going. 2) Enjoy the process for yourself as well, it’s a joy to learn together! 3) Let snacks be a part of the morning work… it has made that “table time” so much more enjoyable!!