Overview
Ambleside Online is a free, Christian curriculum based on a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. Their goal is to stay true to Charlotte Mason’s high literary standards, while trying to use as many free online books as possible to help keep the cost of books to a minimum.
A 36-week schedule is provided for each grade level. The general idea of the program is that they give you a list of books for your child to read for each subject. Instead of using textbooks for teaching, your child learns the information through reading interesting books about those topics. You can learn more on their Introduction page. Before using this curriculum it would definitely benefit you to look up more about a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling.
Reading
The approach to teaching reading using a Charlotte Mason style would be through a mixture of sight words and phonics. Early readers, reading materials, and flash cards are encouraged. The reading is heavy in this curriculum, as all of the subjects are taught through reading.
Language Arts consists of reading, copywork, narration (retelling of events), dictation, and grammar. They believe that the most effective way to teach language arts is to get your child reading their own school books as soon as possible – but they strongly discourage trying to teach your child to read before the child is ready.
Grammar in the lower levels really only consists of learning the four types of sentences and the eight parts of speech. The idea is that your child will learn most of their grammar, spelling, phonics, etc, through exposure – so teaching these things at a young age is not necessary.
Writing
Creative writing is considered a three-step process; there are three “stages” of learning. The first stage is learning how to form letters (copywork); the second stage is learning how to form thoughts and verbalize them (narration); the third stage is transferring those thoughts to paper (written narration).
By following these stages, creative writing (written narration) will likely not begin until the later lower years. These stages are not taught together or even at the same time in the learning process. They’re taught as different subjects- levels that build on one another. The child will not start writing creatively until they get to the third stage, which could be as late as level 5, or Year 5, (which would loosely represent 5th grade).
Writing mechanics are taught once the student begins the writing stage – the third stage of the process. Parents are encouraged to trust the process. I haven’t personally experienced this, but Charlotte Mason’s styles of teaching are considered to be a time-tested and effective method of teaching.
Subjects
Subjects included in Ambleside Online’s curriculum include History, Literature, Poetry, Geography, & Science. They also do Picture Studies for Art Appreciation, Composer Studies for Classical Music Appreciation, Folk Songs, and Hymns. For students that are Year 4 and higher, they also add in Shakespeare and Plutarch’s Lives (biographies of Greeks and Romans).
Language Arts, Reading, Writing, Spelling, and Vocabulary are assumed to be learned by exposure through listening to read alouds, reading on their own, doing their copywork, and dictation at their own level. They do not encourage buying supplements for these, but you can of course make that decision yourself, as it’s your own homeschool.
Math and Foreign Language are encouraged to be taught with their curriculum, but are not provided within the curriculum.
Homeschool Style
AO is definitely a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. The website boasts that they have tried to do everything they can to stick as closely to the ways of teaching and curriculum that Charlotte Mason used herself in her own PNEU schools. History is taught in chronological order in this curriculum, which lines up with a Classical style, but my understanding is that it may be taught differently. Read alouds (reading books to your children) are highly encouraged as a form of teaching in the CM style.
In a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling, children are taught through the reading of “living books,” which are interesting books that mentally engage the child’s mind with each topic rather than presenting material and learning facts. So, the general idea is that they give you a list of books for the year for each level and subject taught and your student learns the information through reading those books.
For this homeschooling style to be executed “correctly,” there would be an emphasis on oral narration (retelling events from stories read), nature studies/outdoor life, nature journals, copywork, and short and focused lessons (no more than 20 minutes of focused learning at a time for younger students and no more than 45 minutes at a time for high-school-aged students). You can find more out about Charlotte Mason and who she was here. You can learn more about a Charlotte Mason approach to schooling here, here, and here.
Taking it Offline
Ambleside can very easily be adapted to be used completely offline by just buying all of the reading materials required. Of course, doing so will have costs associate with it, but it’s not uncommon for people to need to buy curriculum AND reading materials. So, by using Ambleside as the curriculum choice, you are still cutting out the costs of buying curriculum, even if you do have to buy or borrow the reading books.
If your concern is that you don’t have an actual computer, many of the reading materials can be accessed on a tablet as well. They use mostly books from the public domain, as most online free options do, so the majority of the books should be available for free online, which could also help with book costs.
You could also try downloading Google Books on an android device, as they have many e-book options for a low cost. The website suggests installing the Push to Kindle app to send online texts, e-books, articles, and AO book lists to your Kindle app for free. They have a tutorial video of how to do it this way linked on their website.
Content
I’m not sure how I feel about having my fourth grader learn Shakespeare or read biographies about Greeks & Romans. I would probably replace these with biographies about great Christian men and women, let them learn about Shakespeare when they’re a little older, and save the Greek & Roman biographies for that specific era of history only. These ideas seem a little more like a Classical style to me.
They also answer the question on their website of why they assign some readings that clearly support theories that many Christians are often opposed to, such as evolution. Their answer is basically that good reading materials trump Biblical worldview in some cases, and I’m sorry, but I disagree with this narrative. I believe that if our children have been taught scripture, and taught how to have their own personal relationship with God, that HE will be faithful to guide and direct them in ALL things.
My job as a parent is NOT to necessarily expose them to good literature, but to direct them to the Creator of ALL. I should not have to compromise, or be expected to compromise, for the sake of a specific book that was “well written.” And if I do compromise, I should ask myself which one I’m truly worshiping – God or well-written literature. If “well-written literature” trumps my call to teach and train up my child at all times in the things of God, as has been mandated in scripture, then “well-written literature” has become an idol in my life. I’m sure many will disagree with me on that, but to each their own. Forgive my frank words, the suggestion of the ideas behind their reasoning did get me a little riled up. All of that being said, you could certainly allow your children to read these books and use them as a topic-starter to discuss different beliefs, etc, which I absolutely believe is important. As parents, however, we would need to be aware of the content we are assigning our children so that we know when & how to discuss these topics when they come up in their reading.
You can read their response to this question here. I admit, I did not read the entire explanation due to my own frustrations. I want to be clear that I do believe these things should be adequately discussed with our children. I think the parent is the appropriate person to lead children through what others believe, different theories, and different worldviews – they should be exposed to these ideas and be able to understand them on some level. But I cannot discount the effect that a well-written book, written from a stance against the Word of God, would have on a young, impressionable mind without someone guiding them through those tough questions and viewpoints.
My Thoughts
While I think the workload and reading load sounds heavy, I’m intrigued to know how the workload would “feel” if it is being broken up every 20-45 minutes through nature walks, journaling, picture studies, etc. I guess what I’m saying is that since I’ve never tried a Charlotte Mason approach to schooling, I’m not exactly sure how the overall picture looks in the end. In theory, it sounds like a good mixture of rigorous teaching and low-stress learning activities (like singing hymns, and nature walks).
Each grade level is expected to do their own reading, so I’m not really sure if it would be necessary to adapt the curriculum if you have multiple children. If I decided to use this curriculum for teaching my own children, I think I personally would combine the history, geography, science, music & art appreciation, etc, so that we could do those subjects together as a family.
They do offer suggestions of which historical eras are covered during which “years” of the lower & upper grades, so that you can teach this way if you’d like. Doing it this way, you could match up lower level assignments and higher level assignments with one another, teaching multiple children the same information but at their own levels. I would probably do read-alouds for these books, but that’s my personal preference – my children are all 4th grade and younger.
I have no idea how long you should expect your school day to last using this curriculum. I did find a page on Ambleside’s website with scheduling tips, however. Most people seem to be suggesting that they start around 8:30 am and are done by around noon, just in time for lunch.
Getting Started
To get started with Ambleside Online, first you’ll want to check out the FAQ page to get answers about the curriculum before starting. Next you’ll want to figure out which year your student should begin. They suggest joining the AO Forum to ask these questions on their website.
Something else you could do is check the book lists and have your child try reading an excerpt from a few different years to see where to place them. You’ll want to choose the one that is the hardest for your child to read while still being able to understand what’s going on. It needs to be challenging, but not over their head.
One of the wonderful things about homeschooling is that you get to customize your curriculum and meet your child where they’re at. If your child is not at the “year level” you think they should be at, don’t worry – it doesn’t mean your child is behind! It just means that you have the opportunity to meet them where they’re at to help them grow. You’ll likely find that a child who was in public school will place lower than their grade level on many homeschool curriculum level equivalents – this is mostly because homeschooled children have more individualized attention and are able to move on quicker, not because your child is behind.
After you’ve figured out the year they are going to be doing, you can watch this video of how to use their curriculum. It gives instructions on how to get your weekly schedule for each child so you can get started. The website does NOT suggest watching this video until you’ve already read all of the FAQ’s, and joined the Forum to figure out placement for your children.
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