Some tips on scheduling AO in the early years

For those of you considering Ambleside Online or Mater Amabilis for the next school year, here are some suggestions for scheduling that have helped make things easier for us. Like us, many of you will have several small children to work with at once, and the idea can be daunting.

To give you an idea, this year, we combined AOY1/ MA 1B for my oldest with Connecting With History I for my "kindergardener."  I also have a "pre-school age" daughter, and an infant. Despite all this, keeping everybody happy was suprisingly simple because we followed Charlotte Mason's advice and simple biblical instruction about parenting.

My first piece of advice in scheduling is to begin habit training very early. Charlotte Mason suggested that it was possible-- and I believe this with all my heart-- to begin training a child in good habits even in infancy. Creating a culture of love, prayer, discipline, and hard work begins at the breast and continues throughout the child's life, and no where is it more evident to me that we can help children to learn good habits from the beginning than when I hear how many mothers out there struggle with keeping a two year old occupied while his or her siblings "do school." When a child is secure and payed attention to, and has been given clear boundaries in a loving but firm way, he grows to be an easy child to be around.

I have always had toddlers who would happily sit for 30 mins at a time with one activity and then happily switch to another half hour of another activity, entertaining themselves as we went, all the way until lunch time. My children have always been trained to play alone as well as with others and to happily occupy themselves and pay close attention to the things they are playing with. We rarely use the television as a babysitting tool because we don't have to. This works! And after this problem-- the "What To Do With The Little Ones" question-- is answered, scheduling becomes a breeze!

My second piece of advice is to closely adhere to what Charlotte herself says about scheduling: keep lessons short, leave the afternoons free for handicrafts, lifeskills, and play, send the mother out to play from time to time, and take lots of outdoor time when you are able.

That being said, you still need to get an idea of the logistics of using the Ambleside Curriculum. These will look different in EVERY family, but for some, here is how it will work. In AOY1-3, the mother (or father) is doing the majority of the reading, and aloud. As Y3 comes to a close, the goal is to have transitioned the child to reading their work on their own, but this doesn't happen overnight, and especially in years 1 and 2, the parent has a big job. I've been told it will get easier, but to be honest, I will probably miss these days--- I LOVE the one-on-one time I get with each child.

Other AO moms much more experienced than I have said that they enjoyed keeping their children in separate years, and that despite the large family aspect, their kids and homeschools have been in thriving mode doing so. In other words, don't panic and shove all your kids together in the same year just because you don't know how you will do it all. You will. And it will work.

I got my basic outline for our weekly schedule from one of my favorite blogs: The Fisher Academy (another missionary AO family) It works for us because we have the time. Other families do ALL the AO reading in a couple days and leave the rest of the week open, or spread it out over the seven days. It just depends. The way we do it is based on a five day work week.

It looks like this:

MONDAYS we do Science & Natural History
TUESDAYS we do Literature, Poetry & Shakespeare
WEDNESDAYS we do Geography & Travel
THURSDAYS we do Salvation History
FRIDAYS we do Fine Arts & Philosophy

In addition.... Saturdays, we do Torah Study and Plutarch, Sundays we emphasize Gospel Study and Good Works.

Also in addition, also this won't apply to many of you, we do Connecting With History. This means we do one unit every four weeks or so... and have different activities emphasized each of those weeks. To keep things straight, I assign my CWH units like this:

WEEK A: Consider & Overview
WEEK B: Notebook & Explore
WEEK C: Notebook & Explore
WEEK D: Wrap up & Present.

When I go through the AO booklist, all I have to keep straight is what is due to be read that particular week, any additional books I've assigned, and which week of which unit CWH we are in. Sounds like a lot, but as you'll see, it gets easier. In fact, one of my favorite things about AO is that I don't have to waste time thinking about things that don't matter all that much (like schedules) and instead can spend my time thinking about the great ideas presented, just like my kids.

As an example, let's work with AO first, and then I'll show you how I add in CWH.

let's take Week 18 of AOY1.

for Week 18
Bible: 1 Kings 18:20-39 (Elijah and the prophets of Baal)
An Island Story: chapter 11 "The Story of How the Giant's Dance was Brought to Britain"
Fifty Famous Stories Retold: "George Washington and his Hatchet"; and "Doctor Goldsmith" (1774)
Burgess's Bird Book: choose one chapter based on geographic region and season
Aesop's Fables: "The Lion, the Bear and the Fox" (pg. 37 in the Milo Winter version) and "The Hares and the Frogs" (pg. 39 in the Milo Winter version)
Trial and Triumph: chapter 5 "Ambrose Bishop of Milan" (339-397 AD)
A.A. Milne: a poem a day
Blue Fairy Book: "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" (A wicked Magician and his wicked Brother are killed) OR "Why the Sea is Salt" (a greedy man tells his brother to go the Dead; a ship sinks and all perish)
Paddle to the Sea: chapter 14

If I were just doing AO, each child would be doing arithmetic, hearing a poem, doing phonics, reading, and writing (via copywork), foreign language, as well as some memory work and catechism first. Let's say that goes from 9-10:30. (Short lesson, remember?) Then from 10:30 to 12, we would do whatever was assigned from the AO schedule that day.

In other words, by the time 10:30 rolls around, it's time to do the following (and this is where the magic happens!)

MONDAY-- nature study and Burgess Bird Book
TUESDAY-- Aesop and Blue Fairy Book
WEDNESDAY-Paddle to the Sea and a map drill based on the next day's work, Bible
THURSDAY-An Island Story and Fifty Famous Stories retold, Trial and Triumph

In the beginning, you don't need to require a narration of EVERY story, but do require it of a few.

Now, if you want to add in some other readings, like a recommended free read, for example, you would assign those where you aren't too busy. Let's say I want to add Little House in the Big Woods and Little Therese to the mix--- I would assign Little Therese in the place of our regular catechism study twice a week (say tues and thurs) because it's a living book that teaches Catechism. Then I would add in Little House as a bedtime read aloud on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (where the read alouds are sparse)

There you go! Done by twelve.

Now, you'd still be missing some elements. Charlotte Mason did music study, taught an instrument and  did picture study, shakespeare, etc.

I do those on Fridays, and spread the instruments and songs out over the work week.
For example, we study music and art theory on Fridays, but we will study our month's hymn by just singing it every morning during devotions til it is memorized. I've added a geography course Mason herself wrote, and we do a lesson a week from it on wednesdays.

The most important thing we do is center our work day around two key periods: Morning and Evening Prayer.
In the mornings, we pray together and then study catechism (or read a living book about the saints or church history). In the evenings, we read a bible story together and then discuss it. Then we say night prayer before bed.

 In the end, I'm always amazed at how much we have accomplished in so short a time.
I do try to capitalize on mealtimes, when my kids are naturally more inclined to be attentive. At that time, I do read to them as much as possible, or take advantage of other thinking moments--like a drive in the car, to listen to a music selection or poem... even an audiobook. In theory, we can do AO from our vehicle, and don't need papers and pencils at all at this stage. :)
In practice, we don't do that much. I like holding books and reading them, and we don't get out of the house much except into nature. As you plan your CM education, you will find that you will be planning nature time as often as humanly possible. One other tip I have for scheduling is to carefully select your "other" non-AO curriculum carefully... using a complicated math program that takes an hour to complete each day isn't going to help you meet your goal of short lessons and being done by noon!

Now, for the adventurous, here is how I add CWH to our AO routine.

WEEK A: Introductory week.

I add the discussion questions to our dinner table conversation in a casual manner the first night. Then I add the introductory reading from the Bible or Spine (What CWH calls the Core) to the first week's Catechism or Bible reading time (we do Catechism study in the morning and bible study at night). I also use this time to do memory work with the suggested poems and bible passages from CWH. I take the vocabulary words from CWH and teach them in a casual manner during reading time.

WEEKS B and C: Notebook & Explore.

I usually continue with the poem and scripture memory, and add in the non-core CWH subjects. This usually involves some reading assignments for the kids, and making some entries into our book of centuries. It can also involve movies, projects etc. If so, there is always time to do the movies or projects at night on the weekends or in place of a handicraft one afternoon or something, and as far as the reading goes, we will often do the additional reading as naptime begins or at bedtime. If there is a LOT of reading to do, we don't do the AO free reads that week, instead reserving them for the summertime when CWH will not be in use. Also, we don't do CWH on thursdays, when AO's history is thick and takes up a lot of the day.
On Wednesdays, we do map drills out of CWH during these weeks. We also do any geography or travel reading from CWH on that day instead of paddle to the sea, which my oldest doesn't like much.

WEEK D: Wrap up & Presentation

If there is any reading left to do, I assign it as above til it is complete. Then I pick a day, usually a Saturday, to present in whatever way the kids decide to present the unit that month. One more thing: I don't combine AO history with CWH anymore. Charlotte herself said it was better for kids to make their own connections, and using the Book of Centuries helps them to place events in history. So I just go through one volume of CWH per year as a family, and then do individual AO readings for each kid. It works great!

That's it! Sounds really complicated and scary, I know, but when you have done it a few times you will be amazed-- as I was-- by the simplicity of this system. Of course, this is only what works for my family. Many of you will find innovative ways to use the AO curriculum without coming close to the style or structure we use here.

If this helped you, pass it around! And let me know if you find a way to improve on my combination AO/CWH scheduling. I'm always thinking about ways to simplify this process.