Our Year with Ambleside Online Year 1

How I adapted Ambleside Online (AO) for Australia - I've updated this post from 12 years ago with some thoughts, further ideas and what I might have done differently...

I started AO year 1 (a free curriculum) with my youngest daughter (aka Moozle) at the beginning of this year (2012) just before she turned 7 years of age.
This has been the first time in about 19 years of home educating that I've actually followed a set curriculum - I basically stuck to the weekly schedule for AO Year 1 and added some extras.

My planning is very simple. I have the page below as a Word document and each week I go to the weekly AO schedule & copy & paste the books & chapters from there onto this page, add in Composer, Artist Study and whatever other areas I want to cover and print it out. As each item gets done it gets ticked. If we miss something one week I just carry it over to the next one.

(Update: I’ve used this basic Word document for AO all the way through to the end of high school with my four youngest children.)

When we first began, she had just clicked with reading, but it was hard work for her. If I'd read a book to her, she would peruse it afterwards but put it aside quickly. She would have been happy to sit beside me all day and have me read aloud to her and she would narrate almost word perfect when I asked her about anything I'd read aloud.

One day after we'd been reading Peter Pan she snuggled up in a chair with this book and stayed there most of the afternoon. From that point on her reading ability took off. I think it was a combination of readiness and access to a book clothed in literary language.

Here are some of the things that this year has included:

Audiobooks

(Update: I mostly used these when we were in the car or played them in the background when her and her brother were playing with Lego. A poor narrator can ruin the best book. Librivox has a few excellent readers but also quite a few duds but the ‘‘professional’’ audiobooks you have to pay for also have some narrators that are awful. Even some of the better readers mispronounce words.)

A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett (Free Librivox recording narrated very nicely by Karen Savage)

Focus on the Family Audio dramas - very well done:

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - 2 hours long

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery - 4 hours long

Winnie the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner and A Party for Pooh - BBC Radio Collection read by Alan Bennett; abridged but done very well). These were fun on long car trips with all 9 of us.

Wulf the Saxon by G.A. Henty; read by Jim Weiss (8hrs long)

Shakespeare for Children (A Midsummer Night’s Dream & The Taming of the Shrew) by Jim Weiss (about 1 hour long)

Farmer Boy & On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder; read by Cherry Jones. I read these books aloud so many times that I was happy for my youngest to listen to them.

Free Reading

Childhood of Famous Americans: even though we're not Americans, these books were interesting and covered some very well-known people. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Thomas A. Edison, Daniel Boone.

Milly-Molly-Mandy series of books by Joyce Lankester Brisely

The Box Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

The Sarah Whitcher Story by Elizabeth Yates
An inspiring story based on a true incident. A little girl becomes lost in a forest and a search begins. The searchers grow desperate and hopeless but her father's trust in God doesn't waver.

Madeline Takes Command by Ethel Brill
Based on fact, this is a stirring tale of a 14-year-old French Canadian girl who is left in charge of her younger brothers in her parent's absence. When their settlement is threatened by the Iroquois she takes charge. Published by Bethlehem Books that sells quality living books.

Winding Valley Farm: Annie's Story by Anna Pellowski

Based on the experiences of the author's mother, this is the story of Annie, a girl growing up on a Wisconsin farm in the early 1900's. The author has also written three other books about different members of her family.

The Martha Years by Melissa Wiley

Melissa Wiley has written a series of books based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's great grandmother. We have the unabridged hardback volumes (I can't believe that our local library wanted to get rid of them!) but they're hard to find so grab them if you do come across them. Here's a list of them in chronological order.

Composer & Artist Study (Read Alouds)

The Young Brahms by Sybil Deucher

Joseph Haydn, The Merry Little Peasant & Franz Schubert and His Merry Friends by Opal Wheeler & Sybil Deucher

Benjamin West & his Cat Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry

At the age of seven, Benjamin, a Quaker boy in 18^th Century America who had never seen an actual picture himself, suddenly developed an urge and a gift for drawing pictures. He learnt from his Indian friends how to dig colours from the earth and his cat, Grimalkin, provided the hairs for Benjamin’s paintbrushes. A lovely, humorous story, well-illustrated with line drawings.

A picture study narration - the painting was observed closely for about five minutes and then a drawing was done from memory.

Some drawing practice from Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. Moozle loves this book but I haven't started going through it properly yet, something I plan to do soon.

(Update: so much for my plan. I never got around to using this book properly, but we used a few of the ideas.)

A book we did use regularly was The Usborne Art Treasury by Rosie Dickins. I think it’s out of print but worth getting secondhand if you’d like something with easy & lovely art projects.

Handicrafts

A First Book of Knitting by Gosse & Allerton

I bought this book because it uses rhymes to teach the different stitches plus, I thought the patterns might be useful for me as they are fairly basic! There are instructions in the book on how to make wooden knitting needles which one of the boys made for his little sister. So far, we've done casting on & plain stitch. I've also taught her to do basic chain stitch in crotchet.

Beaded gecko key rings - made with wire (instead of ribbon as pattern says) & pony beads.  Pattern here. (Update: if this link doesn’t work try Googling for free patterns.)

Marguerite Makes a Book by Kathryn Hewitt

Marguerite is the daughter of a famous manuscript illuminator who has been commissioned to make a book for a great lady. Set in medieval Paris the book shows the craftsmanship that went into the making of these beautiful works and how Marguerite becomes involved in her father's work.
The lovely illustrations inspired Moozle to try her hand at 'illumination.'

Narrating Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare with paper dolls - Dover Publications have sets of paper dolls. Or here are some ideas to make your own. Moozle is actually using some of her Little House paper dolls for her Shakespeare narration. :)

Favourite AO books this year:

Peter Pan, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, Burgess Bird Book & Viking Tales.

A family game we have all enjoyed is Articulate. It's a great game for a wide range of ages - played in teams, you get a card, and the idea is to describe as many words as possible on the card to your teammates in just 30 seconds without saying "sounds like" or rhymes with" and it can be hilarious.

The other day when a group of us played, Moozle got the word Valhalla on her card so her clue was, "This was heaven for the Vikings." We'd been reading Viking Tales in previous weeks so she knew what the word meant. The game is meant to be played with a 30 second timer but we don't always use it and sometimes we just use the cards & play when we are on a long drive.

Kayaking

Movies

Anne of Green Gables
The Sound of Music
Mary Poppins
Tin Tin & The Secret of the Unicorn - We watched this as a family when we were on holiday & it was fun.

French

Skoldo Elementary by Lucy Montgomery. We have the book & CD, but we've only used the CD at this stage which has 15 songs included.

(Update: Charlotte Mason Simple Languages wasn't available when Moozle began to learn French. I really like how it's done; it’s economical, ideal for very young children - no writing required, and they have other languages available, too.

Science & Nature Study

Chick & Chickens by Gail Gibbons.
One day I might write about our chicken saga but for now I'll tell you we have four of them - Princess, Tinkerbell, Black Beauty & Cinderella. The last two replaced Amy & Snow White who died/disappeared much to Moozle's distress as they are her charges. Anyhow, this book helped me to answer her questions as I've had no prior experience with chooks at all. Well-illustrated with a good amount of information.

(Update: my husband reckons we had the most expensive eggs in Sydney. We certainly didn’t recoup the money we spent. After all our efforts to look after them, one day we found a hill of feathers on our driveway and no chooks. I forgot to lock them up the night before and either a dog or a fox took them.)

Living with Wildlife by Eva Murray is a book I picked up at a library sale. It's a 'comprehensive guide to encounters with our native animals.' It's been most helpful at times as we do have regular encounters with the natives. The author was forced to take more of an interest in wildlife when she had problems with possums, snakes, lizards, injured birds and what not in and around her own home so her book is practical and born of her own experience.

Exploring Creation with Astronomy

I read sections of this aloud, mainly the parts about the earth, sun & moon. We had an enjoyable time with this book. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to source (not to mention very expensive) unless you’re in the USA.

We've been using the Outdoor Hour Challenge for nature study and regular nature walks in conjunction with Australian field guides and bird books. Even though we don't see the birds in the Burgess Bird Book here it is still one of Moozle's favourite books.

(Update: now there are Aussie resources for nature study, e.g. Nature Study Australia. And these very economical Nature Storybooks.)

Maths

We completed A Beka Year 1 earlier this year and went on to year 2 but it's not going very well. A Beka does tend to go quickly so I also did some Rod & Staff Year 2. This is basically what we've done with all 7 of our children in the first couple of years mainly because it was all that was available when we first started homeschooling & it worked well for all of them up until now.

Update 1: we've just got back into lessons after a couple of weeks holiday week and I've been trying out some ideas on teaching Maths from Volume 1 of Charlotte Mason, a book I've been slowly reading over the last couple of months. I'm also using the 100 charts and addition charts from Donna Young.

(Update 2: I think I jumped around too much with my youngest in Maths. I started using Singapore Maths after reading all sorts of wonderful reviews, but it was not a good fit for my daughter. It would have been better to continue with Rod & Staff and use a more hands-on teaching method.

My advice - if you have something that works O.K. try adapting that, especially if you’re on a tight budget.

In conclusion, Ambleside Online Year 1 seems like it was custom built for my daughter. Even the couple of books that she said she found difficult or wordy (Parables of Nature & Just So Stories) were worthwhile and did engage her at times. I’m glad I didn’t start when she was 6. I think if you had a child that struggled to pay attention some of the books might be better left until later, but I think it's good to give them a try as sometimes a child can surprise you and what we think won't interest them just might. I wouldn't have chosen Peter Pan and in fact a couple of times my daughter said she didn't understand what I'd read but by the time I was halfway through it she was hooked (pardon the pun).
Also, the AO curriculum is a bit like, 'How do you eat an elephant?' - 'One bite at a time,' and once I made a start it fell into place fairly quickly.

If you would like to add some Australian living books to the Ambleside curriculum I have some suggestions here: 'Towards an Australian Charlotte Mason Curriculum.'

'The business of education is with us all our lives...'

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