HOMESCHOOL YEAR IN REVIEW | Ambleside Online Update
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- Опубліковано 23 кві 2024
- It's time for a homeschool year in review and Ambleside Online update! I'm well overdue for a homeschool update and sharing our ambleside online experience, so let's get into the knitty gritty! I'll be sharing what our Ambleside Online homeschool looked like this past year, what we kept, what we changed, where we thrived, and where we departed from Ambleside Online curriculum and scheduling in our (modern/eclectic) Charlotte Mason homeschool. Our year with Ambleside Online curriculum, overall, worked very well for us with some changes we made to best need the needs and desires of our family.
I hope this Ambleside Online review is helpful for your family and empowers and encourages you to adapt whatever homeschool curriculum you choose to best serve your unique family! (FYI, we completed Ambleside Online year 3, joining my two second and fourth grade elementary learners together for family style Charlotte Mason learning.) Share your Ambleside Online thoughts in the comments if you used it this past year! Let me know what other Ambleside online chats you'd like to see in the future.
I realized when getting ready to post this that I completely forgot to include our pick for This Country of Ours! We used Volume 1 of the updated and annotated version by Donna-Jean A. Breckenridge, which I highly recommend if you choose to include this book.
*Find it here: amzn.to/3xNLHrP
*Shop our book selection from the year here: amzn.to/4aOxgT8
Ambleside Online Playlist: • Ambleside Online
*Get a free trial class with Homeschool Spanish Academy: bit.ly/39WXMzr
Places I shop for discount and secondhand books online:
^ ThriftBooks - Get a free book with $30 purchase: www.thriftbooks.com/share/?co...
^ Book Outlet - $5 off your first purchase of $25+: bookoutlet.com/loyalty/referr...
^ Discover Books - 15% off on 2 or more books: bit.ly/3gJ0j17
*Amazon (I always compare the price for their used book listings): amzn.to/3gEAS0O
*AbeBooks: affiliates.abebooks.com/theho...
Ebay.com
I'm Jess, a homeschool mom raising three awesome girls. I'm a reluctant homeschooler turned full-blown homeschool convert! Now, my girls and I love being a homeschooling family! I've embraced my love for Charlotte Mason and running an eclectic homeschool. I'm so thrilled to be part the homeschool community here on UA-cam and enjoy getting to know other homeschoolers. Whether you're a fellow homeschooling mom or are just interested in learning more about home education, I'm so glad you're here! Subscribe to follow along as I share our homeschooling journey and my family's experience living, loving, and learning at home. Introduce yourself in the comments so I can say hello!
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Music: UA-cam Music Library
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I'm an Usborne Books & More Consultant and would love to help you shop for books! Feel free to reach out to me personally or browse here: b11022.myubam.com/
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Audio books are not cheating! It’s just another option for reading aloud!😊
Honestly, my kids LOVE mythology BUT this is YOUR homeschool. You teach what you want your children to learn. That is why these curricula and programs are wonderful to guide you but in the end it’s what your homeschool is guided to do by your family, your children, your own dynamics. Do NOT feel bad at all.
On another note: There is a very good animated movie about Pilgrim’s Progress. All my older kids love it except my 5 year old who has difficulty with some of the scenes which can be scary.
Many blessings!
The Burgess books are my 8 year olds favorite! So fun when he asks me to keep reading 📖
It’s so sweet to see what resonates with them most!
I just take what I love from CM and the rest of the time do what I want. There are so many wonderful options out there, and I feel not the least bit worried about Plutarch. We haven't done much Greek mythology either. Do what you love and feel works for your family! Love end of year overviews of curriculum.
It sounds like we have a similar mindset!
Yes. I take what I want from it and Plutarch unfortunately isn’t it. 😅 my children have had great enrichment of what we did use from it.
For anyone looking into CM, The paraphrased Parables of Nature has been our favorite. I highly recommend, such great lessons in there. Im glad we did the paraphrased, it helped my daughter (and myself) fully understand the story.
Love, love, love this type of video! Thank you! ❤
I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
Yay! I've been waiting for this update. I'm living all my Charlotte Mason delusions through you😂😂😂😂 I love hearing how you adapted to make it work for your family. I get so anxious when I'm "behind" in something and it stresses me out. I love how you just made it work.
Haha!! 😂 Glad you can live vicariously through me! 😆 There are certain things I work hard to not fall “behind” on, but I’ve become better and better at figuring out what those priorities are so I know what I can drop if I need to.
I'm on a very similar page to you when it comes to Charlotte Mason. I appreciate so many of the CM principles and try to implement them, but it does not work for our family to be complete purists. I loved your statement that your goal is to serve your family, not fulfill a specific curriculum or method. I looked over Plutarch this year and decided it was not something I wanted to introduce to my children. They also get a little bit of the mythology simply from our typical history readings, but it's not something I choose to focus on. I would much rather they knew the Bible better than anything else. I've been tempted to try latin, but decided instead to use vocabulary from the classical roots. This is more doable for me and hopefully will give us the space to work on other foreign languages.
We have so many options to navigate as we homeschool! I have found a Latin program that intrigues me, but I’m still on the fence if I go with that or keep working on word roots.
This was very helpful! A review of other curriculum that you used this year would be appreciated!
I am a second generation homeschooler. My children are all still early elementary right now, but I am planning on using Vocabulary from Classical Roots once they reach about 4th grade. I used this curriculum for a couple years in high school and have found it very helpful in my everyday life as a nurse. In nursing school it was incredibly helpful to break down or figure out the names of human anatomy and physiology concepts having that foundation of classical roots. I did also take a year of Latin, which I do not remember anything from, but the classical roots have helped me time after time.
Thank you for that insight!
Totally get it! I got mine from A Beka and the Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes. There were not so many options when I was homeschooled. 😂
Pagoo has been one of my daughters ALL TIME FAVORITES! 😊❤ I love hearing her narrations of it. 😊
Kennedy and Rowan were so sad when it ended! They still talk about Pagoo!
I combine my kids as well! 😊😊❤
Pagoo was such a hit for us this year! I also feel you on the nature journaling 😏 I love hearing your perspective and take on how you implement AO in a way that works for you and your kids. I’m definitely combining my students next year in AO AND using Little Pilgrims Progress.
Kennedy and Rowan couldn't wait to see what happened next to Pagoo and were sad when it ended! Little Pilgrim's Progress has definitely been a favorite for them this year, as well. We have just a few chapters before we finish.
I love that we can take and leave what we want but use it as a fab guide! My Y2 loved Burgess Animal Book!
I’m getting more and more empowered to pull together my own resources, but AO definitely helped me find my groove!
You mention that you aren’t doing CM perfectly, but in many ways you are. CM is a method, not a system and there’s so much freedom in that. Switching out books is legal 😜 and choosing beautiful, rich retellings. There’s a podcast on A New Mason Jar with guest Leah Boden (author of Modern CM) that you may enjoy :)
I’ve made some of the same changes as you. We used the D’Aulaire Myth book, too (ADE also recommends it), and chose to read Little Pilgrim’s Progress first (an absolute fave). We also fell off of Spanish 😂 but my son really does want to learn so I’m gearing up to do better. We follow a completely different history timeline, so I switch all that up.
Love hearing what y’all are doing! It’s always fun seeing how others piece together curriculum.
Haha, yes, totally onboard with switching books being legal! 😆 I do add components for language arts that are definitely not “purist” CM, though. I didn’t discuss that a whole lot here though. (For example, using Writing & Rhetoric for a more “formal” writing instruction versus solely relying on narration.) I love discovering more and more what works for us the further we go along this homeschooling journey!
@@TheHomeschoolConvert I’d love to hear more about your LA you chose :)
I started assigning some free reads too!
We are doing the d’Aulaure Greek book this year as well… It’s very thorough! 😮 I’m not a huge fan of mythology as well, but my kids are interested in it.
My girls don’t complain about it, but it’s definitely not one they ask about or want more of. I did find a constellation mythology book to use while we’re doing an astronomy unit next year, and I think they’ll really like that tie in!
We love audiobooks! We’ve been listening to them every evening before bed - it calms the kids right down and makes bedtime a breeze. We get through so many books this way. Sometimes we follow along in the actual book while listening as well. I like how you modified AO to fit your needs!
Audiobooks for the win! We include them in so many ways. My kids have tablets but don’t use them for screen time - it’s how they download their own audiobooks to listen to!
That’s a great idea! What tablets do they use? I might consider doing that for next school year!
@@cm6037They have old Amazon Fire tablets - nothing fancy!
My 7-year-old just listened to the unabridged Pilgrim's Progress audiodrama by Answers in Genesis and loved it! It's really well-done if you're looking for a good audio version. They use music and sound effects, and I think there are 50 voice actors!
That sounds great! Thanks for the recommendation!
@@TheHomeschoolConvert You're so welcome! Always love your videos!! :)
I loved hearing how you utilized AO and would also love to hear about what you used outside of it. With having 4 kids not being able to do family style history and science is the killer for me with AO. I also want all my kids in the same time period. I’ve also heard AO users complain that they use unnecessarily old books when there are better updated books to use. We are going to use Simply Charlotte Mason’s history, Bible and geography. I’m hoping we really like it. I really like the fact that the guide is only $25, has a daily lesson plan, and you can see the book list on their website any time and can buy your books used. I’m not a CM purist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do love learning through living books for sure. Especially for history!
Yes, I love doing history through living books! 4 kids would definitely be more of a challenge trying to combine AO’s history because of the bigger gaps. Meeting my girls in a middle year has worked well for me since there was only two of them I’m doing it with. I’d love for you to share how SCM goes later. I’ll talk about it more later, but we are completely departing from AO science next year for some of the reasons you mentioned.
@@TheHomeschoolConvert I’m anxious for your upcoming videos! ❤️
Would love to hear what other curriculum you used this year
Sounds like most AO users. Myself included. Pick and choose a few books you enjoy from their lists and forget about the bulk of it. Lol
Haha! I find many AO users to be pretty purist about it, but being purist about a curriculum someone else wrote defeats the purpose for why I choose to homeschool. 😆 I’m so glad we have the freedom to glean what we can from resources of interest and ultimately make choices that best suit our families.
I follow AO very imperfectly also and have skipped or substituted some books. Nature study and handicrafts have always been a struggle for us. We also used the D'Aulaire Greek myths and Norse myths.
Did you do Age of Fable in y4 or have you not made it that far? Really thinking we won't do it next year...
@@TheHomeschoolConvert Yes, we did do that one (and still doing it). Like I said, I don't follow the schedule perfectly so I don't see anything wrong with putting it off for a year if you're just not feeling it this year.
We fill all mythology and plutarch etc slots with apologetics and manners plus logic and lifeskills. I have a list of topics that are important to us to cover that supersede greek gods and I dont believe in teaching all that to younger kids anyways. I do believe in teaching them about Christ and setting a firm foundation in their faith.
I’m highly leaning toward doing etiquette/manners as our “citizenship” next year!
I love AO but we also don't follow CM style strictly. I love the whole idea of reading living books and narrating and doing copywork. And eventually doing written narrations and dictation. But its a lot to do it all even with just one kid.
The CM “feast” can be a lot, but it’s a lot of *good* stuff! Knowing we have the freedom to drop things that don’t make sense for us and add things that do is liberating though.
I'm on the fence about greek mythology as well. Something that happened the other day was that i listened to a sermon and he compared Greek ideas on love and Biblical ideas on love and even growing up with a Christian mom, i realized how much of my beliefs were Greek just because of our culture. It really made me want to teach Greek philosophy or mythology or something so that my kids would be able to identify it for what it is instead of unknowingly soaking it up... I'm still not sure though. I'm looking into Under the Home for Shakespeare for us and its so nice to see a non purist AO user, we are doing family style as well 😊 also not sure about Plutarch but it's considered citizenship so I just do other things for that like Charlotte Mason's habit building and Hero Tales and I substitute Trial and Triumph with Generations curriculum. Also love how you're serving with your kids... way better than Plutarch!
I don’t think we’ll eliminate mythology completely, but we’ll likely use different resources than what AO recommends and not include as much. I get all the reasons, but there’s just soooo much, and I think I’d like to include more tales alongside mythology. We’re including an astronomy study part of next year, and I found a more modern book about constellation mythology that I think my girls are going to love!
@@TheHomeschoolConvert excited to hear about your astronomy finds!
I am starting AO y1 next year and thinking about doing Generations History instead of Trial and Triumph as well. Has that been a good fit?
Yes my kids are very close in age so we just started Jesus' People and my 7, 6, 4, ,4 and my husband liked it a lot.
We did ancient history this year and also skipped over Greek Mythology. I have no interest in diving into what greek pagans believed, and our time would be better suited elsewhere. Theres a disney movie called Hercules that skims over the various characters of mythology, thats about it. We have been reading Aesop's Fables for some time which is suggested during Ancient History. Looking forward to covering Medieval middle ages next year. 😊
The kids and I have learned so much grammar and Latin really cements the grammar into our heads. It is like adding another math program to your schedule though, because it feels like doing math with letters.😬
I’ve been looking into a Latin program recently that I think I might want to use! Still researching. 😁
Yeah, I am with you, I like a lot of CM principles, but I have no interest in or use for mythology (and I don't even know who Plutarch is 😂). Also, Ambleside isn't the solo authority on CM. I like some of the Simply Charlotte Mason resources more. And Sonya Shafer is an amazing orator and the podcast is awesome.
I love Sonya Shafer, and SCM definitely has some great resources! We use Spelling Wisdom for copywork/dictation, and I reference their book lists occasionally.
Loved listening to you experience with Ambleside! How do you teach spelling? Do you use the charlotte mason approach?
For Kennedy, we do some spelling the more traditionally CM way with Simply Charlotte Mason Spelling Wisdom, but we don’t follow her method to a tee. We use the passages for copywork, she identifies words she doesn’t know how to spell from memory and practices them, and then we do dictation with the passage when she’s confident she can spell everything correctly. However, we added in Splendid Spelling by Mom Delights to learn and reinforce some spelling rules because I do find that learning some of those rules are very helpful for my girls. They do that together, but we are moving pretty quickly through it. We didn’t add that in until the last term or so, and we’ll continue through the summer.
I feel the same about mythology. Everyone insists on it and I’m just like… blah. I tried reading d’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and while it was written well like most of their books, the actual myths themselves just bore me to tears. I don’t know why! I just can’t.
Glad I’m not alone!
Do you still do the picture study? You mentioned the songs but not if you do the painting study
Yes, we do! We replaced first term with Michelangelo while reading his biography, subbed Van Gogh second term because we hadn't done him yet and had already done the artist scheduled, and then stuck with Georges Seurat for the final term. I use the free prints from A Humble Place.
I just had to shelve Our Island Story, I found is dreadful 😂
🤣🤣🤣 I think I would have too if we didn’t do it on audio! My kids were charmed by it on audio though, haha.
So does your dad have a British accent? Lol
Haha, yes! It’s become a little jaded over the years living in the US but still very British. 😂 It amps up when he’s around other British people or speaking to family on the phone.
@@TheHomeschoolConvert that’s amazing 😂🩵 love it!