BUJO with Charlotte Mason

We are moving into our second term of our second year with Ambleside Online. We are so blessed to have such an amazing curriculum provided for free! Thank you, Ambleside Advisory!!

In this short time, I have tweaked the schedules so many different ways to suit our family. All of which were completely unnecessary. Over time, I've made scheduling sheets for each child, I've added readers, science curriculum, geography books, a Bible curriculum, and who knows what else, making it so much harder than it really needs to be.

I have prayed and prayed that the Good Lord would cover our homeschool journey and fill in the gaps that I couldn't see. I have a terrible time seeing the big picture of things. I am so focused on the now that the end result tends to escape me. I know it's there, I have an idea of what I want but I fail in seeing how it's accomplished.

That is until I started working on my "Birds Eye View" chart. I created a matrix of AO years 1-12 using excel. I've only completed years 1-4 so far and I'm already discovering how the Advisory has intricately woven this curriculum together. I will trust that AO is enough. As a result of this leap of faith, our days have grown simpler.

In the spirit of simplicity, I've done away with the long detailed sheets, the check boxes, the extra readers, and the external curriculum supplements. I now have one page in my BUJO dedicated to the weekly overview of what needs to be accomplished!

Buying the heavy-weight paper required for my disc planner is more expensive than washi tape, so I just print on regular paper and then tape it in place.

I love this format, for my weekly dashboard. I can see at a glance what needs to be accomplished. If I miss something it's easily traveled to the next day. This works for me. In between each week (the back side of these pages) are my bullet lists for the day. I had a downloaded and shrunk version of the 36-week schedule in the back of my journal but I now work directly from the AO site. I've found I had been missing some great tidbits and helps in the weekly lists making things unnecessarily harder.

Next will be a simple list for the kids to work through. My youngest is reading now, which makes it easier. This will also point them in the direction of being independent learners and self-starters, I hope!

Scope and Sequence at a Glance

I've mentioned in earlier posts how I've found it difficult to envision the big picture with Ambleside. In order to remedy that I started pulling together Scope and Sequence Sheets.

These sheets give me a good overview of our year. As you can see the ones above are personalized for us. We are still trying to decide which Holling C. Holling book we will be using in Y2 because my son has previously read the one required.

These were also created before I decided to combine our Shakespeare and poetry. I will likely choose Y3 poetry and Shakespeare readings to give a good middle of the road between the two students.

The other neat thing about these forms is they tell me which books I still need to purchase and which books we've completed reading at the end of the year. I will keep these forms in our end-of-year file along with each student's 36 week grids from the Ambleside, their attendance record and progress reports should I ever get "audited." Not that they do that in our state but it's still nice to keep up with and will help with transcripts in later years.

Daily Schedule

I live for checking things off my list. Its a part of my character that if I'm not careful can really hurt our Charlotte Mason directed homeschool culture.

Being task oriented is a tremendous asset in getting things done. On the flip side though, it can easily result in missing the beauty of CM. I have found those little boxes seem to get bigger and bigger the further behind one gets! At one point in our journey I was just plowing through because I believed if we worked harder and did more we would stay on track! No body was happy in that season!

While reading "Teaching from Rest" by Sarah Mackenzie I realized I had allowed my schedule to become my master. I also learned that if I don't have something to guide me I tend to lose sight of the big picture, skip subjects because of brain overload, and just because I'm a procrastinator. I know a procrastinator who loves check lists. Yes, I own that t-shirt that brags about being an "imperfect perfectionist!"

So I needed a guide, a check list with flexibility. Some love loop scheduling but I'm not sure I will ever feel comfortable with that. This list keeps me on track with everything we need to get done in the week. It has daily boxes I can mark as we go and blank lines for those things we don't get done and need to carry over.

I've built some margin into it as well. Usually we don't take two days to read certain books but its there if we need it. If I don't get something done I just write down the stopping point and can easily transpose it to the next week's schedule. This schedule follows along with our Year 2 schedule with Ambleside Online.

Prior to this format I had a bad habit of putting certain subjects on the back burner. This year we will start our days with a Power Hour. During Power Hour we are combining some subjects the kids were doing separately, such as poetry and Shakespeare. I want to stay within the framework of Ambleside Online as much as possible but desperately need to lessen the load between my beginning reader and not quite ready for independent Shakespeare Y4 reader.

We are definitely excited about starting our new school year and that alone is a success!

Below are pictures of our Y2 and Y4 schedules.

Finding Our Groove

Our first year of homeschooling thus far has been quite the journey. We've gone from doing a blend of everything, to mostly AmblesideOnline. We've changed our handwriting program, our math curriculum (a couple of times), and few other things over these past months.

We took our time through Term 1, taking a lot of time off during the holidays. We won't do that again. All the time off really threw us off and we had a hard time getting back into the routine of school. So, from now on we will school 12 weeks with a week off between terms. When the holidays roll around we will take a week off for Thanksgiving and Christmas but that's it. Because our school day is a short 4 hours and the kids view it more as fun than work, they don't require "time off" to destress.

Although, we've been schooling long enough to place us well into term 2, our switch to following AO more closely has led to the decision of starting Term 2 next week. I sat down and figured out our schedule all the way through 2017 to ensure we would have the right amount of days our state requires. What a job!

I've found that I like for the children to complete a few of their subjects on the computer. It frees me up and yet I don't feel guilty because I know they are learning in a style that suits them best.

For example, my first grader is working through Explode the Code online for his phonics program. I was so nervous about teaching him to read but not anymore! We do add supplement readers to the program like Bob Books and Abeka's readers (which are good, leveled phonics readers). His love for reading is growing and that is the most important thing! I didn't want it to feel like a chore to him.

We have been using XtraMath.org for drilling math facts but I knew my 4th grader needed more than drills. We went ahead and took the plunge and purchased Teaching Textbooks Math after she used the online sample and fell in love with the program. We will continue to use XtraMath as a supplement but not as a sole curriculum.

My first grader is very frustrated with XtraMath. He becomes rather discombobulated when he doesn't type the answer correctly or in time. I lengthened the time allowed on their site but he has stated he would rather just do worksheets. I don't want him to hate math so I need to find a more gentle approach for him. For now we will incorporate his math facts into his daily copywork. Maybe seeing them correctly written will plant a memory seed for him. Plus, he writes one word, perfectly. He did a great job and was very proud of himself!

Another thing that kept falling to the wayside was his free reads. Because he isn't reading independently yet, I have to read those to him and I ended up putting them off. Now, I've finally found a way that he won't miss out on those great books. LibriVox! We had an old phone that can still access WiFi so I downloaded the LibriVox app to it and bought a pair of Dollar Tree headphones. He is so proud that he can listen to his books without anyone's help now.

I've found that allowing the kids to stay up 30 minutes past their bedtime was great encouragement for free reading. They have definitely devoured some books during that half hour!

So that's it about the kids journey so far! They've done really well. As for me? Well, I've definitely experienced a number of epiphanies along the way too. I'm learning to have faith that God will fill in those gaps that are undoubtedly there in the children's education. I've learned its not the end of the world if all my boxes don't get checked off. I've learned there is much to be gained from having friends who are walking the same road and from those who have actually been there.

Homeschooling is a journey, not a destination.

Term 2... sort of

According to the dates and the amount of weeks we've been homeschooling we certainly are in Term 2. However, as life would have it, and because I've been a terrible curriculum junkie we are still finishing up Term 1 work.

I keep telling myself it will be alright. The kids are definitely learning and enjoying themselves. So, those are both pluses. But being behind grates my need to follow a plan. I've preached there is "no catching up" in homeschool, only picking up where you've left off so many times that you would think I'm fine with it. Secretly though, yeah, it bites.

There have been many things we've tried and realized it just wasn't a good fit for us. Many weak areas I've found in the children that have needed more time. And many days I've come to realize I just need to work on my own habit of finding our groove.

We are continuing with Ambleside Online for the most part. The parts we have changed...

Bible-We are following Simply Charlotte Mason's Genesis through Deuteronomy and Ancient Egypt. We only read the Scripture assignments and grade 1-3 living books (as read alouds) because the kids were really overwhelmed (and so was I) in trying to sort through the history and geography assignments and tying them into our AO foundation.

Geography- I would prefer geography be tied to our Bible or History reads versus Ambleside's assignment of Marco Polo which is China. I've been struggling here trying to decide on the best route. We don't enjoy the books assigned in SCM (new or old versions), Ancient Egypt and Her Neighbors or Letters From Egypt. So, I'm still on the hunt, in the meantime we are looking in various places for resources on Africa.

After we finish Boy of the Pyramids (Egyptian living book) we will begin reading Tirzah. The kids are really excited about this one. We read a similar book last term titled Timna which was about one of Noah's daughter in laws on the ark and the kids loved it. Tirzah is an Israelite slave in bondage to Egypt. The story is a perfect companion for Exodus.



Math-We started out with Math-U-See which worked for a little while but seemed very teacher intensive and to far out of the box for us to feel comfortable with it. Then we switched to Math Mammoth because it seemed a good fit until she started teaching 10 different ways to complete a math problem (it had a vague ring of common core to it). I wanted a program that was direct and easy to teach. Well, I found Xtra Math which is basically flash cards online for the kids. Its a mastery program where the kids have to master all the facts before they move on to the next order of operations. They love it, its a game to them and they can see their progress! Once they master addition and subtraction facts we will try and incorporate Math Mammoth again.

Ambleside is definitely our foundation. I started out with my own versions and combining schedules because I was worried my oldest would miss out. Seven weeks in though, I decided it was best just to jump into year 3 with her and go from there. She's actually enjoying it and doing well. I realized their age and grade gap was to great. My oldest needed something more challenging and something to call her own. She's actually done well and being an independent reader this was a better choice for her.

That's where we are at right now. I'm praying and trusting for His Grace to cover the gaps that's for sure!