Making Ambleside Work: The Gory Details

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I’m really looking into Ambleside Online and think it may be more appropriate for my children…

I have NO idea how to implement AO, I mean none. I feel like I’ve read the website cover to cover, but have I missed some big page that gives me weekly ideas or instructions on how to gather materials and organize my day? How in the world do you do your lesson planning? From where do you get your ideas and material? I get a nervous knot in my stomach everytime I think about actually implementing and going day to day. I guess for me, AO sounds beautiful and majestic in theory, but actually doing it just befuddles me. I do have all 6 of CM original volumes and have read/skimmed most of it.

Would you have pity on me and tell me…what am I missing????

The above is a portion of an email I recently received. Let me tell you, I have been there. Seriously. Only, my difficulty was more generalized. When my children were very young {as in: not yet school age}, I knew there would come a day when I needed to begin giving lessons daily, and I had no–and I mean no–idea in how to actually pull that off.

As a disclaimer, before I go on, I want you all to understand that I am not a complete and utter Charlotte Mason person. Our approach here is a fusion between Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and Christian classicism. The reason for this is actually pretty subjective: I love them both, and I think they are mostly complimentary rather than at odds, and it suits our family perfectly. I give the disclaimer, though, because I don’t want you to think that the advice I’m giving is 100% Charlotte Mason approved.

It isn’t.

Now, I haven’t read all of Mason’s volumes {yet…I own them and I read them from time to time}, but so far I don’t see anything about formal study of the entire Trivium, even though grammar is taught formally, and rhetoric seems to be taught almost intuitively. I love this, but I also plan to add in a couple text books, especially for logic. My plan is to use Martin Cothran’s Material Logic and Peter Kreeft’s Socratic Logic, but never to replace any part of Ambleside Online; rather as an addition to it. All of this is to say that, as the years go by, I will probably “look” more classical than I do now.

Resources

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Charlotte Mason or Ambleside Online, I have a list of quick helps for you:

1. Anne White’s An Introduction to Charlotte Mason. This is your best starting place if you have no clue what I’m talking about.
2. If you are a big reader, then either get yourself a copy of Charlotte Mason’s six volumes or read it free on the Ambleside Online website in a modernized version. Do not try and print this out! Mason wrote thousands and thousands of pages over her very long life and you will rue the day you tried to print this.
3. If you want something more manageable, I have heard good things about A Charlotte Mason Companion, A Charlotte Mason Education, For the Children’s Sake, or When Children Love to Learn. Just remember that whenever you read a book that isn’t an original source, you are getting someone’s perspective on that source, which may not be entirely the same thing. I haven’t read any of these because I prefer Mason’s own works, even though that means it’ll take me a lifetime to read them all. However, some folks find them very helpful, and you might be one of them.
4. There are a number of websites that you could check out to try and form a vision for what you want in your own home. My favorites are listed here.
5. There are also blogs that deal with specific aspects of Mason’s methods, such as nature study or art study. I understood the concept of nature study better after reading the blog Handbook of Nature Study, and I have also found the sister blog Harmony Art Mom occasionally helpful.

Gathering Materials

The number one easiest way to gather the materials for Ambleside Online would be to grab the booklist for the year you are doing and enter the titles on your favorite book-buying website, press “add to cart,” enter necessary information, and quietly wait for everything to be delivered to your front door. God bless that UPS man.

Ahem.

Then, all you would need would be odds and ends, like something to use for a nature journal, some art supplies, and whatnot.

For me, though I have running lists, and when I buy books I usually have four windows open with which I am price-checking. I also enter books for the coming years on my PBS wishlist from time to time, so that I can gather as many as possible as we go.

But here are the important things to do when starting the early years:

1. Start with the booklist{s} for the year{s} you are planning. You can find them using the links on Ambleside’s curriculum main page. This is the bulk of what you need to use the curriculum. I know that some families use the library for this. I like owning the books in general, and I have three other children who will use them, so they are worth the investment to me. I buy many of our books used. Please, I beg of you, do not buy any books published by a company called Wilder. These books are often abridged, even though they don’t declare it anywhere in their product information, and I have also read reviews complaining about the quality {i.e., typos, binding, etc.}.
2. Print out your geography maps. I mentioned that I recently started using National Geographic Interactive MapMaker printable maps. Geography readings are from Holling C. Holling books in the early years, plus Marco Polo’s journeys in Year Three, though you really can map whatever you take interest in as you go.
3. Choose something for penmanship/copywork. Two years ago, I bought a font so that I could type up copywork worksheets until the time when my children are ready for their own commonplace books or reading journals. You can also do a google search and find free copywork pages, though I don’t know if they’d last you a year.
4. Choose a phonics program. Or, do it yourself using Bob Books. And, by the way, children don’t always need reading instruction. With strong readers, you can watch for weaknesses, but I wouldn’t subject a child to phonics unless they need it. Having the child read aloud to you will allow you to make sure they are not becoming a slipshod reader.
5. Choose a math curriculum. For now, we use Math Mammoth plus Wrap-Ups.
6. Choose a foreign language? I believe Mason suggested learning one French word per day or week or something in the early years. I don’t know; we didn’t start this until Year Two, and we are learning a tiny bit of Latin using Song School Latin and we’ve slacked on that lately, so writing this makes me feel guilty. Great.
7. Choose a handicraft and buy/gather necessary supplies. We were going to do one per term, but we haven’t gotten far enough along and will probably use two terms for the ones we are currently working on. Here is a list of ideas for very young children. General ideas can be found here.
8. Make a wall timeline. We didn’t do this in year one, but have really enjoyed it in year two. Ours was fairly inexpensive and easy to duplicate.
9. Gather supplies for learning folksongs and hymns. Ambleside Online assigns a monthly hymn and folk song. I tend to choose other hymns because I have specific goals {like making sure the children first know the songs we sing in our congregation}. The Ambleside Online website often has links for the songs, and if not you can find what you need online, for free, using Google. In the past we have used YouTube to aid us in learning folk songs.
10. Buy or download the music you need for each term’s composer. Ambleside’s composer section is here; one composer is assigned per term. I tend to just buy a CD from a composer and play it while the children are doing their chores or having quiet time, occasionally telling them the composer’s name. This works fine until your CD player breaks. Ask me how I know.
11. Find and purchase or print copies of the paintings for artist study. Ambleside assigns one artist per term, and information about that can be found here. As a general rule, you will study one painting for two weeks, and then move on, so that by the end of the term, you will have studied six paintings from the single artist. I tend to find the paintings via Google, download them, turn them into a .pdf file, and have them printed nicely by Office Depot. Olga’s Gallery is a good place to look for paintings.
12. Buy a nature journal and necessary supplies. You can use whatever medium you like. My oldest just began watercolor pencils for this; my second child uses crayons or colored pencils to color what I draw for her.

This is all you need in the early years. As the years go on, you are supposed to add in study of a musical instrument, lessons on Plutarch and Shakespeare, a foreign language in addition to Latin, formal grammar, and so on, but this list will get you through the first few years, I think.

Planning a Daily Schedule

Ambleside Online will tell you what you need to do in a week, but the day-to-day is up to each individual headmistress. I cannot tell you how everyone plans, but I can tell you what I do.

To begin with: Circle Time.

I first learned about the concept of Circle Time {not part of AO, but I use it to accomplish AO} from the Preschoolers and Peace site. This is how we start our day, every day, four days per week. During Circle Time, I cover just about everything that can be done with all children at the same time. So, for me that means prayer, Bible reading, manners training, poetry reading, hymn singing, folk song learning, artist study/art narration, history reading, and so on and so forth. Whatever from Ambleside Online, whatever from our personal goals, whatever can be shared in Circle Time, Circle Time is where it goes. I think that the only thing that can be done together which isn’t on my list is Nature Study and that is because {1} I am terrible about doing this consistently and {2} it needs to be done out of doors while I prefer Circle Time indoors.

Circle Time has been the key to our success with AO, I think. Otherwise, it seems like this long, insurmountable list. Also, Circle Time is when my littles learn a bit about having lessons. If they are old enough to be awake, they are required to come to Circle Time and participate to the best of their ability. This has really prepared Daughter A. for kindergarten next year.

You can see an example of our Circle Time plans here.

The other parts of the day for E., who is my only full-time “student” right now are: math, copywork, “Ambleside Time” {where we do our actual AO readings and narration}, spelling, and grammar. I think that is it. Handicrafts are a part of our days, technically speaking, but they really come and go. We don’t do them consistently, and we often find ourselves doing them on weekend afternoons instead of during the week. It isn’t because they aren’t important, but because I’ve found that when the children are in the mood, they just seem to do better at the whole thing, so I watch for opportunities and capitalize on them.

To organize Circle Time, I sit down with one paper divided into four days {four days, because we choose to do four days of lessons plus one day where we are out and about, either visiting relatives, serving in some small way, baking together, or taking a field trip} in front of me, plus a blank sheet divided by half-hours to use for a “master schedule” in order to play with a full day.

The first thing I do is look at the master schedule and fill in the known quantities: breakfast, lunch, chore time, etc. If I know that something always happens at a certain time {even the ending of my youngest child’s nap}, I write it in. No sense fighting the inevitable. Once I’ve written all of this down, I can usually pinpoint my approximate starting time for Circle Time.

You can check out my Average Day Charts to see what we’re doing and what we’ve done in our days so far.

Before I do anything else, I scribble in the things that I want done daily during Circle Time. For me, those are things like Bible, manners, poetry, singing review songs, and so on. Then, I have a third paper that has listed the things I want done weekly, and I start to assign those things a day on my Circle Time page. So, for instance, I have one day where Circle Time focuses on learning a new song, and another day that focuses on artist study/art narration, and so on. As long as my list for what I wanted to accomplish in Circle Time was thorough, this is usually successful on the first attempt.

In my planning for Ambleside Time, instead of working from a list, I am working from the Ambleside weekly schedule and breaking it up into days. I usually have all the books in front of me at that time so that I can check chapter lengths and make sure I’m not overloading a single day. The easiest thing to do is probably to just write what day of the week you want next to each assignment. I typically type up and print out our own official Ambleside Time Schedule, but it always starts from this sort of organizing: printing off the weekly schedule and dividing each week into days, keeping in mind that each reading will need to be narrated {unless it is geography, and then we do map work instead}.

I feel compelled to note that many families have found success in simply putting the weekly schedule onto a clipboard and checking off readings as they go. I am going to save that for when my son is ready to have more control over his schedule. For now, I enjoy having the readings spread fairly evenly over four days.

In Year Two, Ambleside Time takes us an average of 45 minutes per day, including narration time.

So, now you have a Circle Time schedule, an Ambleside schedule, and a master schedule. The master schedule has Circle Time planned in. This is where you have to figure out where to put Ambleside Time, and this totally depends on your family. Do you do it before everyone else wakes up {I have seriously met people who do this}? Late morning? During naptime when others are sleeping and you have uninterrupted time? Plan an hour, and then see how it goes. I think that Year One usually took us only thirty minutes per day, but then I have a fairly quick narrator who doesn’t ask tons and tons of questions.

Lastly, you need to put in the things that have been left out: math, phonics, spelling, copywork, or whatever is on your list. {Mason suggested that copywork should only be as much as a child can write perfectly, so this might be only five or ten minutes.} In the end of all of this, you have built something similar to my Average Day Charts.

If your days vary a whole lot for some reason, you might try a chart for each day of lessons, making, for instance, an Average Monday Chart, an Average Tuesday Chart, and so on, if needed. I have found it helpful to block out 45 minutes during which we do…something. And then, for instance, on Tuesdays we go to swimming lessons, on Thursdays we read a fairy tale, or whatnot.

I do the bulk of this planning in the month or two prior to the beginning of the school year. I plan all of Ambleside Time in advance, and then I plan Circle Time one term at a time, however, the general feel of Circle Time remains the same throughout the year. What I am really changing up are things like manners, how we do poetry, or what type of read-alouds we are doing {if we do any at all in that time}.

Getting a Vision for Ambleside Online

One of aspects that makes AO so difficult to get our minds around, I think, is that it is so simple. I, for one, with my public school experience, imagined that things could only be learned if the teacher spent hours and hours of time planning what the children were going to learn. Mason had a completely different approach. She said the children feed on ideas, and AO becomes, then, their “food,” so to speak.

We read these beautiful stories and the ideas are there for the taking. The children narrate, and as they go along the narrations become conversations, and much is learned, but this kind of learning cannot be planned. All that can be planned into the day is enough space for ideas to feasted on.

This has a feel about it that is akin to some descriptions of unschooling I have read, and yet it is not unschooling, if I understand unschooling properly, because the curriculum itself is orderly and planned out in advance by one who has authority over the child. However, I believe it shares one of the aims of unschooling, which is to grant the children a rich and enjoyable education.

Once I did a year of AO, I was truly amazed by its simplicity…and also by its brilliance. I keep coming back to what I have learned so far from my CiRCE lectures: nature. Mason, I think, firmly grasped the nature of the child, and always taught with this in mind.

Anyone else?

I know we have some other Amblesiders lurking around here, and some of you have far more years under your belt than I do. Anything I’ve missed? Any tips for us? And if any of you have past posts on how you do your planning, please link them in the comments.

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Read More:
–The updated version dealing with an older child.