Planning: Enough Already

I think we’re just going to start school on Monday.

I started looking at the fall and the chances are that school is going to get disrupted many times with DOB’s medical issues. Better to start a bit early and have some breathing room. If we start this next week, we have five extra weeks to get through the end of the term before Christmas break. Which means if all goes well we’ll have plenty of time for a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas break and the long weekends and even if it doesn’t all go well we should be *done* before Christmas instead of scootching it in afterward and playing catchup all winter and spring.

I *think* I’ve done everything on the must-do list. I got the Spanish book in (it looks good!). The notebooks are ready and the papers and maps printed out. No doubt things will turn up missing once we plunge in, but we’re just going to make  a start at it.

The house isn’t perfectly organized, but it’s functionally clean and I’ve at least made a start on the basement. If I have the energy tomorrow, I might organize the shelves and desk area. Or I might get started on the legal work I have coming due next week. So many things to juggle sometimes, and only so much energy.

The kids are excited. Whether it is from the studies itself, or because it means we will be resuming daily computer time, I’m not sure. Either way, it will work. (And they did just fine all summer without the regular computer time, so I am satisfied that it is not taking over our lives.)

Here goes.

Planning, Part 3: Subjects

Science: AO Y3 has some nature study readings (Pagoo and Secrets of the Woods) and then some science options, one of which I don’t care for the writing style of and one of which isn’t readily available. So I plan to continue with the next stage after Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Elementary Science Education. It just got here in the mail last week and I have started flipping through it. It looks really good, but really challenging–at least for the teacher. Plus, I’m going to need some equipment, most significantly a proper microscope and a triple beam scale, which aren’t cheap but should last us several years. I’m a little intimidated. I’m also not sure how to plan, or how to make sure it actually happens. It slid off too easily or got shortchanged last year. But there’s some really cool stuff in here. We will also need to start keeping notebooks, which means–sigh–more writing for Deux. That AND I want to make Nature Notebooks a weekly thing this year. (We did do many more entries this year than the year before. And this can be an independent activity.)

History: Duchess wants to do her own timeline. I think I’m going to get a small notebook and have her use it just for the time period covered during this school year. I’ll probably need to get one for Deux, too, even if he doesn’t put much in it. I am not certain whether I want to read history out loud or have them read it to themselves. And if they do read it to themselves, how do I provide the appropriate introductions and preparation? The trouble is, the history reads are usually relatively easy to read independently, but they do need context.

History Biographies: For the first term I will have Duchess read the biography of Da Vinci by Hahn, which is fairly lengthy. Deux will read the shorter one by Diane Stanley. In the second term, I’m going to have Deux read the biography of Sir Walter Raleigh recommended for Year 3.5 and Duchess read both Bard of Avon and Good Queen Bess. I haven’t decided what to do for the third term yet–I may have them both read The Landing of the Pilgrims or I may have Deux read Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims by Bulla.

Geography: An idea I want to try is having them trace their own map of Asia to fill in. I’m going to do one map for the whole year to which they will add the journeys of Marco Polo, plus the weekly blank map to learn to fill in the modern countries. I got the Komroff Marco Polo, which looks good, but I have to schedule it myself–there are only 26 chapters, so I might intersperse with some activities from Marco Polo for Kids, which I will probably just get from the library.

Math: I’m still planning to do MEP–I think it’s the best fit for where they are now. What I really want to do long-term is now the Art of Problem Solving, but they don’t have anything between 3d grade and pre-algebra. (And I don’t care that much for the younger level stuff, anyway.) That means switching curriculum again in a couple of years. Which, of course, is supposed to be bad. However, I think I have good reason for the choices at each stage, and I’m willing and able to help them bridge any gaps. I’m still dreading the writing issue with Deux.

Languages: I still have to order this, but I’m excited to try using a Spanish curriculum based on the Gouin series. I’m hoping it will help them make the jump from being familiar with the sounds of Spanish to actually *using* it. For Duchess, I’m going to have her try Mango for French–we can get it free through the library.

Art and Music: I’ve changed from the AO 2013-14 selections to ones from various years that will correspond with our current timeframe. Other than that, I think we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing. It’s not fancy, but it begins an acquaintance.

Twins: I’m making a list of books to work through, not on any particular schedule, though generally rotating through: the “Among the ____ People” books, a book of fairy and folk tales, the “Twin” books.  I’ll try to read a few appropriate history tales when the older kids are doing something similar, and not give up picture books entirely. I’m not going to schedule reading lessons in advance, because I really have no idea how quickly they’ll progress, but we’ll start with doing word building (maybe in some cool little notebooks) and then add in actual CM-style reading lessons when they seem ready. I don’t think I’ll plan math as part of school–I will continue using the recommendations from The Arithmetic Primer, but as part of ordinary life. I also want to work on a calendar of firsts with them. They will continue to participate informally in memory work and in art and composer and nature study. I would like to look through Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding and make notes of specific areas I want to be sure to discuss with them this year–they are asking lots of good questions on their own. Having worked through it once more formally with the older kids, I think I’m doing better at simply integrating it into their own observations rather than making formal lessons out of it.

Planning, Part 2: Reworking

Now that I think about it, I don’t want to follow Y1 as written with the twins, nor do I want to do it as I did with the big kids. No, what I really want to do is coordinate their history with the big kids.

And I think the main reason I want to do that is to coordinate our art and music appreciation with the time period in history we are studying. It just makes so much more sense to illuminate the time period in history with the appropriate art and music than to just have it chosen in a random rotation. I understand why AO does it that way, but I don’t think it’s ideal. And if I’m willing to do just a bit more of the legwork myself (since I can’t always borrow someone else’s labor of gathering the appropriate pictures and music), I can have the ideal.

Also, DOB think it makes a lot of sense, and that’s a strong point in its favor, especially since he is most insightful at history conversations and every once in a while we toss around the idea of doing history as a family in the evenings. (And maybe if we could go six weeks without a new medical crisis, we would do it.) Since the twins inevitably listen to the big kids’ free reads (and vice versa) it just makes sense to be aiming for a similar timeframe. I can’t wait to do, say, Carry on Mr. Bowditch as a family. (Some people caution about the increasing maturity of the reads in upper years, but looking at the lists, I’m seeing very few things I would feel the need to wait on. Maybe my kids are just very insensitive. Or maybe they just are very used to eavesdropping on the big kids. Last week I read them all The Wanderings of Odysseus, complete with man-eating monsters and the slaying of the suitors and they all thought it was the greatest thing ever.)

As for changing the history rotation, it really will involve only a tiny tweak the first year–swapping out Fifty Famous Tales for something with a more early American focus (since that is what the big kids will be doing in Y4)–probably Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans. The existing biographies will be perfect. (I’ll probably still include a few tales of ancient Greece and Rome, especially those inspiring to the early Americans, like Cincinnatus.) Y2 will be a bit more, but I will use the same history books currently scheduled for those years, just different chapters. (Not sure if I will keep Little Duke or do it as a free read when they get back to that time period in Y4. On the other hand, Tree in the Trail and Seabird will actually fit, which may make them more comprehensible.) It will probably take the most reworking when the big kids are in HEO and the twins are still in the lower years, but once they all get to HEO it will be no big deal–the HEO years are a more “salad bar” approach, as they say, and I can easily just pick a lighter load of similar materials for the twins. The only challenge is, if I do this, I really should stick with it–it will rearrange the schedule sufficiently that it would be very hard to put the twins back in the usual sequence.

This next year it won’t change anything for the twins except that I’ll make sure to include some picture books that will go with the time period the big kids are doing. (OK, honestly I can’t think of any that will go with the very early explorers–except Columbus, which we just read–but Pocahontas and the wonderful photobooks from Plymouth Plantation will be ideal in Term 3.) And for the big kids it will mean that, instead of jumping all over, we will listen to Palestrina and Purcell and Handel, and look at Da Vinci and Raphael and Rembrandt. I also am going to include at least one folksong each term that is from the appropriate time period. (I finally discovered that folk songs by time period are listed on the HEO years, so I can take them off there.)

Another thing I am maybe thinking about changing is the way we do memory work. Since they were just preschoolers listening to me sing, I’ve done one set of memory work per month, changing to a completely new set at the beginning of each month, and reviewing one older item each day. It’s very simple for me to keep track of, which is why we have stuck with it. However, they really don’t need that long to learn most of the items (especially poetry and folk songs) while they may need much longer to learn, say, a longer Bible passage or a Spanish song. So it’s possible that a more varied rotation would be more effective. On the other hand, it’s also possible that if I try to do anything more complicated, I will lose my place and mess up what we have going, which is pretty decent. This needs more thought.

School Planning with OneNote

I started out by creating a folder for Subject Overviews, with a page in it for each subject. Here is where I list all the books that will be needed for the term, any general resources I want to keep track of, and if I need to schedule it out myself, create a table to help me do that.

Next I created a folder for each term. Within each term folder is a page for each week. On the main page for each week I list everything I want to have done that week (and this year I’m putting EVERYTHING on it) with lines for how many times it will need to be done. I plan for a four-day week with one day for nature walk and errands. Further down on the page would be the subjects to be read together, along with art, composer, and nature study.

OneNote then allows the creation of subpages, and subsubpages, and subsubsub–not sure how far it goes. Subpages is enough for me. The subpages vary according to the needs of the week, but I will have one with all the copywork selections for that week, usually one with a list of resources I may want to hunt up (library books, science materials, YouTube videos, etc.), and one with maps or links to other things that need printed. This year I also have the study guides to go with The Little Duke and pictures of the animals to go with each week of The Burgess Animal Book.

The final stage of planning will be to print out copies of the weekly assignment sheets, copywork sheets, any maps, coloring pages, or other materials, and putting them in folders for each week. Then at the beginning of each week I just have to pull out the right folder and everything is ready to go.

Ten Reasons We Are Loving Using Ambleside Online

After finishing our first term with Ambleside Online and deciding to stick to it as our guide for the foreseeable future, I felt inspired to write down the reasons I am so pleased with it. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. It’s not tied to reading or writing ability level.

Someone pointed out once that the parent of a child who’s a late reader and the parent of a child who’s an early reader have the exact same problem: most K-2nd curriculum is going to be completely inappropriate, because it’s all built around Learning To Read. Ambleside Online isn’t. If your child can read to themselves, great, but it’s really meant to be read aloud for the first few years. Not every 6 year old is ready to learn to read yet, and some have been reading for years. But I have yet to meet a healthy six or seven-year-old who wasn’t ready to have their mind awakened by great ideas in wonderful stories. Year 1 has proven equally appropriate for Duchess (7.5), who fills pages with exquisite handwriting in her free time, and Deux (6), who can read well but still struggles to remember how to form lower case letters, and I know kids who aren’t reading independently yet but love it, too. Reading and writing are dealt with separately, but the high literary quality of the stories means that whenever the child does learn to read (which takes so much less time if done when ready), they’ll have the rich vocabulary and understanding to handle higher level materials, instead of being held at basal reader material for years. There’s no reason why a six-year-old’s active mind should be limited by their inexperienced eyes.

2. It’s free.

Now, we did spend a bit of money buying a few books that we just couldn’t do without, but between electronic files and using our great library, even the cost of buying books has been very low–special effort has been made so that most of the books are fairly easy to find and/or public domain. (Many of the out-of-print ones are still quite common at libraries, so before you gasp at the second-hand price, check your library.) The curriculum plans themselves are free, and that includes a weekly schedule for the core subjects, resources for art, music, folksong, and hymn study, and lots of stuff people design and volunteer to supplement (like printer-ready files of all the art works to be studied each term, or Grooveshark playlists of the composer selections). And the money we are spending is mostly on books I want to own forever anyway.

3. It includes a lot of English History.

I know, this is the one that people love to hate. Why all this ancient and English history? I’m not going to offer an apologetic for it (though I do think it makes sense for anywhere in the Anglo-speaking world). I’m just going to say: my kids think English history is awesome. This is all the fault of Robin Hood.

4. It takes things slowly.

This is a big difference between Ambleside and almost every curriculum out there: you read the books really, really slowly. A chapter a week in the books you move through quickly. Some it’s once a month. This gives time for the stories to sink in, for the children to take the ideas and live with them. Good books, like love, should be taken easy.

5. The books are the master.

Titania rests, attended by her fairy court.

Most curricula the Plan is the master: Children need to study X, Y, and Z, and if we can find a good book on it great, if not, soldier on with something mediocre. Ambleside doesn’t settle for less than well-written, engaging literature in every subject and at every level. That means some topics might be skipped for now, if there’s just not a good book on the topic for that age. But you know what? You can’t study everything all the time. Better to concentrate on the best books. (Which is not to say that everyone will find every book delightful. But so far we’ve been very happy with them.)

6. It’s Christian without being preachy or prudish.

Both my husband and I were homeschooled in a curriculum that specialized in being both. Although we appreciated being homeschooled, we decided that was not the route we wanted to take. (Just this morning DOB was reminiscing about the lengthy chapter trying to establish that the Magi were astronomers not astrologers. Sorry, no.) Ambleside recommends regular, thorough Bible reading, and includes some books from a religious perspective, but it also includes secular science books and plenty of fairy tales, mythology, and other nurturing food for the imagination that is too often discounted by a certain brand of Christian homeschooler. Our folk song for this month is Carrickfergus, which includes the line, “For I’m drunk today, and I’m seldom sober . . . ” Let’s just say that would never have made it into the list when we were kids. (OK, nothing but hymns did. But the great thing with Ambleside is, we’re still learning the hymns, too.)

There are users of Ambleside from other faiths, too–you would probably want to modify slightly (obviously drop or replace the hymn and Bible study), but most of the books have a very broad

appeal.

7. There’s a variety of voices.

This ties into the previous two points, but deserves its own. Textbooks pretty much all read the same. Many unit-study type curricula have a lot of writing from the author that introduces or holds together the main points. It’s monotonous and mind-deadening to always be reading the same voice. In Ambleside, there are only the books, and they are all different. Kipling doesn’t sound anything like Burgess, nor Holling like D’Aulaire. We learn how different authors play with language; we see things from new perspectives. (Yes, there’s a prejudice towards Western Civilization. What can I say? It’s in English. Obviously if you were teaching in Chinese you’d have a different set of resources. I also think there’s something far more honest about teaching a child about his own heritage first rather than this shallow pretense of multi-culturalism. You can better understand other people’s love for their own ways if you have something deeper in your heart than the current TV shows.)

8. It’s only as complicated as you want it to be.

Duchess models a Grecian paper doll.

Some people seem to LOVE doing complicated projects with their children. To you I say: have fun. Some people prefer to get school done and send the kids off to play (where they may or may not design their own fancy projects). I am firmly in the latter camp. Following the core curriculum of Ambleside is incredibly simple: Read, narrate. Lather, rinse, repeat. You can do as many or few fancy projects after that as you please. In our house, I like to see our readings turn up in their independent play. Interestingly, I find it is often several days or even weeks after the thing we read about that it finally comes out. I think ideas take a longer percolation time than the standard school setup of “read about it, do a project.” (I also concede to print out paper dolls or paper soldiers when I can find some that go along with the history lesson.)

9. It’s gentle for the littles, challenging for the big kids.

My Year 1 students spend only an hour and a half at school on a long day. (And yes, Deux still believes he has no time to play, poor child. Only eight hours a day! I think his trouble is that he has no time when compared to the number of ideas he has. A problem with which I identify.) But the time that is devoted is well spent on the best books with the best language (which the children devour because they’re fairy tales and stories of adventure). Looking ahead, by Year 9 they’re reading Winston Churchill, Thomas Paine, Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, etc. This is why people entering in later years usually have to start in an earlier year–but the preparation is all there if you start at the beginning. I think most of the time we expect too much in the way of sitting still and grinding out papers from 6 year olds, and far too little in the way of actual thinking from teenagers.

10. Did I mention the books?

Then let me mention them again. The books I used to hide out in the attic and read when I was supposed to be doing school are now our school books. I know I learned more from them than I did from the workbooks. (My only fear is that having them endorsed will make the children love them a little less. Some risks we must take, however. They still seem to be enjoying them, although I admit they have not yet learned to love narrating them.)

And then, after I came up with ten, I remembered others I had wanted to put in, so here’s some extras:

11. It hits a nice sweet spot between structure and freedom.

There’s enough structure to keep moving, but not enough to get you overwhelmed if you’re not a very linear person. There are people who plan it out day by day, and people who just pick up the list for the week and do it when the spirit moves. The weekly organization helps keep you from getting too far ahead or behind in any one area. You don’t have to wade through pages of assignments to pick out which ones really matter, nor are you left to puzzle everything out on your own.

12. Despite what you may have heard, Ambleside and Charlotte Mason are perfectly appropriate for modern boys.

Deux tries out some facial expressions on a hike.

There’s a bit of a girls-in-long-skirts image to it which is quite arbitrary and I think an accident of illustration choices of some early Charlotte Mason proponents. Deux likes Lego Hero Factory, Nintendo DS (in moderation), and Monsters, Inc. And he likes to hear about famous battles and laugh at A. A. Milne’s poetry and go play in the woods. Usually pretending to be Robin Hood. There is nothing particularly girly about history or nature study or poetry or handcrafts, all of which have been practiced by manly men for centuries.

Planning Again

I’m trying to plan Term 2 now. I had aggrandized notions of planning Term 2 and Term 3 in a leisurely fashion over Christmas break, but instead I’m cramming to get Term 2 done before Monday. This is mostly because I was doing other things, though. I think it takes me about 12 hours to plan and print out a term, which seems pretty reasonable when you consider that’s 12 weeks of education at 2 hours a day, and it’s open-and-go at that point. (So about 1 hour of planning for 10 hours of education–pretty good return on time invested.) I still want to work in some science lessons and find printables to go with each week, and then I need to finish printing, but the laying-out is done.

While I’m planning I’ve also been thinking ahead to next year. My original idea for school was to create my own stuff, using a four-year history cycle and using Ambleside Online as a booklist and resource. This year I’ve done a slightly modified Ambleside Online, mainly changing the history to a more complete Ancients year. However, the more I use Ambleside, the more I like it. There were a few factors nudging me away from doing it totally:

• With a four-year cycle, the twins would stay at the same point in history as the older kids.
• DOB favored a four-year cycle, believing that six years would provide insufficient review.
• I enjoy the process of curriculum creation.

On further consideration, though:

• If I keep the twins four years behind the older kids, they won’t start Year 1 until 7. Given that they can listen to, understand, quote, and discuss books like Winnie-the-Pooh and Little House on the Prairie at three, I think they’ll be quite ready by six for Year 1. Now, granted, I don’t think the Duchess was damaged by waiting a year, but it’s not something I would have done without a good reason.
• DOB, having seen how the ducklings interact with the stories, continue to explore their own topics, and generally maintain connections with the larger scheme of things, thinks a six year cycle will work fine. He was envisioning each topic being studied and then abandoned entirely until it was scheduled again. Quite the contrary, they have continued their obsession with the Middle Ages and dabbled in American History while we study ancient Egypt and Greece.
• By the time the twins are ready to start Year 1, the older kids will be 10 and 9 and starting Year 4. They should be predominantly independent in their work at that point, freeing me up to work with the twins. It shouldn’t matter that they are studying different time periods–indeed, that may promote interesting discussions.
• When I envisioned doing so much curriculum creation for myself, I didn’t have many–shall we say–intellectual outlets. Now I’m trying to practice law, I want to get back to writing . . . I have a lot to think about and a lot of time on the computer. I don’t feel the need to create everything from scratch just to give myself something to do with my brain. Where there’s a need for tweaking, I enjoy it, but I don’t really want to spend the time making everything from scratch anymore.

And I’ve been very happy with how Ambleside is designed. It gives a high quality education while leaving the kids plenty of time to explore their own interests. I’m sure I’ll need to keep making adjustments as I go. (Like what am I going to do about using Robin Hood next year when the ducklings practically memorized it last year?) But I’m happy with the decision to make that our core and tweak rather than make up my own core.

A Schedule I Think Will Work

So I haven’t had this implemented for a long time yet, but I’ve given it a try two days and I think it’s going to work. The challenge has been how to keep three-year-old twins (Dot and Dash) busy and happy while providing some concentrated work time for the oldest two (Duchess, 7, and Deux, nearly 6).  We’re using a modified version of Ambleside Year 1 for the oldest two (the main change is starting from the beginning of A Child’s History of the World as our main history read).

The goal is to start at 9, after breakfast and cleanup.

15 minutes: “Singing Time” (also known as “Morning Time” and “Circle Time”, but this is what my kids call it): Bible passage, hymn, folksong, Spanish song, and a poem to memorize–we change these out monthly, and I’m hoping to add review this year.

15 minutes: Big kids do free reading from a basket of books related to our topics for the week. Twins do a “lesson” with me. I try to keep this flexible as I find it works better with three year olds to follow their cues, but we will be making alphabet books this year, as well as counting, playing with manipulatives, cutting with scissors, etc.

10 minutes: Handwriting for everyone. I use personal whiteboards (grids for the big kids, blank for the twins) and dry erase markers. One day a week we will focus on letter formation, one day a week on word building/spelling, and the rest we will do copywork from our readings, which includes both spelling and handwriting, as well as basic mechanics (capitalization and punctuation) for Duchess, who can copy a whole sentence. (This is the one area they are differentiated–Deux is still working on writing his lowercase letters.) The twins just draw, but they feel included.

10 minutes: Kids read aloud. One of them reads to me (from the Treadwell Readers), the other reads to the twins from whatever picture book they agree on.

15 minutes: I read aloud. This is when we do our core reading from the Ambleside list, generally History on Mondays, Aesop on Tuesdays (they read this to themselves), Nature study on Wednesdays (Burgess Bird Book, Parables from Nature, sometimes James Herriot when it doesn’t fit elsewhere); Geography on Thursdays (Paddle to the Sea); Literature on Fridays (Blue Fairy Book, Just So Stories, Herriot when it fits). They narrate back and we refer to maps or charts as needed. The twins can play quietly with manipulatives, draw, or go off to play, as they prefer. (Actually I’m realizing that the twins and big kids will probably want to do the same thing, so today they all strung beads and if I have coloring papers to go with the reading, I’ve made four copies.)

15 minutes: Project time. This generally correlates somewhat to the reading, so on Monday we will usually work on maps or timeline figures or a simple history-related activity. Tuesdays is our library and shopping day, no projects. Wednesday we will go on a nature walk (hopefully with friends) and draw in our nature notebooks. Thursday’s geography reading is very short, so even with map work we will have plenty of time for a math game and doing a math page. Friday will be art or handcrafts. The twins can participate in most of these.

So moving along at a brisk clip, we should be done by 10:30 or 11 if we’re going slow, with plenty of time to play before lunch, unless we’re doing something like a nature walk or art that can keep going as long as they want to participate.

Other things will sneak into other times of the day: We do our Bible reading during breakfast, and I plan to start playing our music selections after that. Art selections are hanging on the wall, and I plan to do a little extra look at it once a week during Singing Time. Our math program (The Arithmetic Primer) emphasizes oral work, so we will do that daily over lunch, as well as practicing a bit of conversational Spanish. (They also watch a Spanish video twice a week and we include Spanish picture books from the library in our free reads.) Poetry and free reads we will do during our read-aloud time before afternoon naps. (Actually only Dash naps anymore, but we try to at least have some quiet.)

Summer Activities, Future Plans

Well, it’s been over a month. We have moved. The twins are potty-trained. (Wonder of wonders.) I didn’t plan to do both at the same time, but they decided to. Also, my aunt’s death a week ago has left DOB and me reeling. She was a special friend to both of us.

But, this is the school blog. For school, we have, as planned, done nothing. We are loving our new backyard, which is huge and neglected enough to be a popular resort for wildlife. (Ironically, the first house we bid on is now under contract for $15K less than the price the seller wouldn’t take from us. It was much bigger inside, but had very little yard.) One visitor we have seen several times and identified is a yellow-shafted flicker. I was quite impressed when D2 pointed out, as we watched it, that it seemed like a kind of woodpecker. I wasn’t sure because it was also hopping on the ground, which I had never seen another kind of woodpecker do. Sure enough, it’s the only woodpecker that also feeds on the ground.

We are doing the summer library reading program, which meets my criteria in that it counts hours, not pages (thus not giving an incentive for easy books) and the primary reward is a new book (thus not creating false incentives–reading is its own reward). D1 has already completed the core 10 hours, mostly reading The Violet Fairy Book. D2 finally made it through The Sword in the Tree and enjoyed it; he’s also been reading some Beatrix Potter. I’m trying to get him to give Encyclopedia Brown a try. (However, I’ll admit, neither child is much interested in stories of ordinary modern children. Adventure and magic are what they’re after.) Aloud, I’m trying out The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, after an irresistible endorsement by Semicolon.

The twins have, as mentioned afore, potty-trained, day and night, with a few minor lapses here and there and the awkward issue that what finally worked for D4 was going in the grass outside, and now I can’t persuade him to use the actual toilet except when absolutely necessary. I’m hoping he will grow enough to stand at a full-sized toilet soon or at the worst that it will get cold enough in the fall to persuade him to come indoors.

Slowly, slowly I am still working on moving in and organizing and establishing household routines and getting chores going. We are making some progress. D1 likes to help with the planning and is really getting to the point where she can make life easier. D2 is maturing greatly in his ability to tackle a job.

I’m thinking about fall. And now, after all, I’m starting to look a lot harder at Ambleside Year 1 again. I think I will wind up modifying it less–or at least differently–than I had thought. I’m seeing more value in the wide variety of topics and slow pace, I know the kids will love most if not all of the books, and I just feel a need for a little more structure and balance. DOB opines that this is because everything else in my life is chaotic. Maybe so. Anyway, it’s worth a try.

I probably will drastically alter the history. I don’t plan to get Trial and Triumph, 50 Famous Tales would provide a lot of duplication with Tales from Long Ago that we did last year. I’d like to do a true Ancients year. So what I’m going to try is using A Child’s History of the World. It works out pretty neatly to one chapter a week to cover Egypt through Rome, which would put us ready to pick up the Middle Ages in Year 2 as scheduled (although we’ll need some more modifications there, since they already have Pyle’s Robin Hood memorized.) I might supplement with An Island Story in the third term. Probably save Viking Tales to read over the summer. And on the “Yesterday’s Classics” special I downloaded for my nook there’s a nice collection of stories of saints, which I will probably use as well.

The literature will stand pretty much as is, except that I’ll rearrange the schedule to accomodate the ones we need to borrow from the library, skip some of the fairy tales we’ve already read and add in selections from the D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. Nature study and the Burgess Bird Book sound good, although I’ll still be using Building a Foundation for Scientific Understanding for reference and guidance. (Plus I still haven’t found the box with Handbook of Nature Study in it.) Paddle to the Sea we’ll do as is.

So I guess that is a bit of modification. I’m having fun playing with a schedule, though. It’s kind of funny because there are always a few moms on the AO groups who are adamant: DO NOT combine children, DO NOT modify the schedules, they are so great as they are. But oh well. I really can’t imagine separating D1 and D2–they do everything together. And D2 is more than ready to handle Year 1. And I could not deal with doing two separate years for them while I still need to read aloud many of the books. (Well, D1 could read most Y1 selections to herself, but she couldn’t do Y2 by herself and what would be the point of having her read Y1 to herself while I read Y1 to D2?) And I *like* playing with resources and schedules.

Still not sure how the twins will handle a more formal school schedule. I’ve been working on independence with them, I plan to integrate a few activities for them. (They’re old enough to enjoy alphabet books now.) Still, I can see why people resort to preschool or videos. But I’d like to find a better way.

My other big concern is the degree of freedom the kids have had up until this time–how to still allow them choices and yet deal with the logistics of planning. I feel like we could operate at a much higher level if I had time to prepare, but I can’t do that and have them pick everything at the last minute (the picking itself taking an awfully long time!) I’m hoping that we can get through scheduled stuff quickly and still have plenty of time for free study.

The Y1 schedule is pretty light. It averages out to one required reading a day. My thought is to have that be the one I read to them, then they each have time to read aloud (their choice entirely), then they each have time to read to themselves and then come narrate (their choice from approved selections connected to other studies).  Add in singing/memory time, copywork, and perhaps a math game–can I keep it all under two hours and leave time to get outside? Somehow things always take so much longer than it seems like they ought to.

The End of the Year

Life, in the form of packing, moving, and potty-training twins, has led me to conclude that it is time to wrap up our formal school time for now. (No, I didn’t decide to combine packing and potty-training–the twins demanded to be done with the diapers. They’re getting it, slowly in D4’s case, and going out a lot definitely doesn’t help.)

We still need to finish The Swiss Twins, but then, we all would like to know what happens to them. We probably won’t finish Heidi, but then, perhaps we’ll come back around to it in a couple of years, when it’s scheduled in Ambleside Online. I’d like to keep reading Among the Meadow People sporadically (maybe with narrations, maybe not) and they are really enjoying Japanese Fairy Tales, although I pick through for suitability. I broke down and bought the huge package from Yesterday’s Classics for the Nook so that I would have books with proper chapters.

We wound up with the week of tests, although we did not go through all the questions I selected. I let them pick which ones they wanted to do. D2 wanted to do far fewer than D1 was willing to try. He wanted to just repeat “Tell me a story from Robin Hood” every day, although he also did well with math questions and managed to recite a poem and folk songs. D1 did a wider variety. I was pleased, on the whole, and I might type them up some time.

I like what we’re doing with math. I’m happy to continue it. I took out the double 9 dominoes and asked them questions, sometimes letting them look at first one side, then the other, then tell me the total, other times covering half and telling them the total, then having them tell me how many were missing. They were able to quickly identify the number in the groups, add almost instantly, and subtract with only a little thought. Neither ever made a mistake, and D2 was only unsure of his answer once. Pretty good for never seeing a math flashcard or drill sheet.

Spanish went tolerably well. I want to start working more on production and response–they are starting to get comfortable with actually starting to say things.

They didn’t do as well at reciting as I had hoped. They become familiar with the songs and passages, but they have not up until now been expected to recite, and thus put that extra effort forward to get every word down. (Except for AWANA, but those passages are not very taxing.) I think it’s time to change that. I’m hoping to make a regular recitation/performance time part of our routine–at least monthly, maybe more often.

Neither of them were really comfortable with narrating anything about nature study. I hope to make that a more formal effort in the coming year. Wondergirl picked up some nature journals for me at a book sale–I haven’t seen them yet, but I am looking forward to it.

Robin Hood undoubtedly has made the greatest impression on them, but Robin Hood is giving them a great store of knowledge and connections and I won’t begrudge him his devotion that rather outshines any planned school.

We are hoping to move in two weeks, and will spend the next two cleaning and painting and preparing. Then there will be settling in, then Grandma and Grandpa come in July. Plus potty training, which is about the most stressful part of routine parenting I can imagine. (Driver’s ed will be worse, but *that’s* DOB’s problem.) I think we’ll be busy enough for awhile, although I’m trying to at least still read a few books.

Once we are settled in, I want to devote this summer to establishing good routines and schedules: morning and evening routines, housecleaning routines, better cooperation and more consistent chores. Just getting used to being in our own house again will be a change, and I want things to be running more-or-less smoothly before we start up school in the fall. Which might not be until October, depending on the weather. The best weather tends to run July-September, and I want to take full advantage of it.

Our new house is not the one with a lot of rooms–in fact, it’s quite small and I’m going to have to keep “stuff” strictly limited. But it’s on a half-acre lot that’s been running rather wild and should have lots of possibilities outside.

I feel like we’re on the brink of a new epoch–the twins finally leaving infancy behind, our own house at long last. Maybe it won’t be as big of a change as I imagine. Then again, maybe it will.

Moving Right Along

So . . . the rest of December. Well, after the last duckling had the last relapse of throwing up we had about a week of relative health. During which time we had torrential rain, our storage sprang a leak, and about half of the book boxes had to come over here to be checked for damage. (Fortunately only one cookbook got really wet and the rest seemed to air out quickly.) So on top of the general mess I was not keeping up with, we had a couple dozen boxes of books. They’re still there.

Because, that Saturday, the dreaded stomach bug hit the grownups simultaneously. After two days of the acute version we have managed just barely to drag through regular life for the past two weeks, but we are still barely able to eat. And yes, that would have been with Christmas and New Year’s and everybody home from college and other Faraway Dangerous Places.

So . . . school? We finished The Nutcracker. And Robin Hood. We’re still reading The Carpet and the Phoenix and they are getting more out of it all the time.  The twins have been listening to Madeline and Katy and the Big Snow and books about zoos. We’ve still done copywork and our singing time and gotten outside whenever I could get vertical before the sun went back down.

That’ll have to do for this month.

Now, since it’s the new year, it’s time to think of new plans. I’ve been realizing that our favorite and most meaningful thing we did all last year was the project on the planets. They still talk about and draw up the planets.

My long-term plan has been rather influenced by wanting to do Ambleside Online, or at least a heavily-adapted version of it. I think Charlotte Mason has the best ideas about children’s education, the right mix of rich material and child-friendly approach. But since I wanted to start the older two together and D2 is still well shy of six, I’ve been waiting and doing other things in the meantime.

Now I’m wondering if we should just stick with the “other things.” Not that we won’t be heavily influenced by Charlotte Mason, but I’m not sure I can follow a set program. I find it awkward to keep so many different books going at once for so long. And . . . this is the clincher . . . I want to let the children have a great deal of say in what we study.

The more I reflect on it, the more I realize that the approach to school I first envisioned when D1 was an infant and D2 still kicking my inner organs is still exactly the way I want to do things. It suits me; it suits my children. More flexibility and choice; discrete packets in which we do one thing and then move on. (It hurts my head to try to think a whole term in advance–a month is about all I can handle.) Freedom to do projects (which they love) without me having to be the driving force.

Narration has been a real problem, as I’ve mentioned before–not that their narrations aren’t adequate for their age and level of practice, but that they are so far below what I know they can do with motivation. But they don’t see a reason to be motivated when we all just read this together. Why not let them read on their own different materials and then share? Then there’s a reason for narrating clearly.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled out a yellow pad at breakfast and asked them to tell me what they wanted to know about. They exploded with questions and ideas. Even D3 contributed that she wanted to learn about animals in the zoo. I said I wanted to get back into studying different parts of the world, but they vetoed Japan as next (which made geographic sense to me) and suggested France instead. Well, why not? D2 also had a lot of science questions.

I still want to do our best to get living books, when available, but I don’t want to ignore a topic just because there aren’t tremendously great living books on the topic at the current age level. We will always have at least SOME of our books at any given times being great literature. I don’t know if we can ever manage short lessons, except on things like copywork, or following a set schedule for different subjects. My mind thinks in chunks, with infinite connections. I need to make room for that.