The drama of history.

Just a little of the way into Term 1 and already I'm re-evaluating everything. Who is with me?

A good reminder today for me from a friend yesterday to "stay the course" strengthened my resolve to do just that, and I think some of you might need it too.

I use Ambleside Online as my main curriculum, adding elements from Mater Amabilis and Connecting with History. I find that I love the Ambleside Curriculum more each day, except for the history, which stirs up in me many different emotions, both good and bad.

The advisory's background, mostly protestant and Calvinist, at that, necessarily presents a history outline that is -- to me-- worse than secular, because it is both incomplete and heretical in its explanation of the role of the Catholic Church in history.
By that I mean that (a) it presents history as this rolling set of events throughout time, not taking into account the things God Himself was doing through these events..... it gives us history, but not salvation history... because Ambleside students are not being made aware of the Church's activity throughout history,  and (b) it presents the Catholic Church as the enemy of the Christian spirit in the world. Which is just.... ugh. A secular history program might ignore the church and glorify a nation, which is annoying, but not devastating.
A protestant history program, though, usually lies about the church (and in a sneaky way! Often the great Catholic heroes of history are presented as protestant "Christians" while those Catholics who failed their fellow man are referred to as "Catholics!"). A protestant history program also usually glorifies a nation over others, and promotes heresy. No bueno.
The selection of books in AO's lineup definitely lean towards vilifying the Catholic Church, which I expected, but they also lack the depth of understanding I want for my kids in salvation history: that God was working through the events of world history, that each step in time is a step in the story of the Church. This is a paradigm shift that only ancient-creed Christians can understand as they work through history, and my children would miss that if I stuck to AO as written.

In addition, it's very English-centric, which some people take issue with (I don't, and actually like that) but at the same time it is incredibly American (for example, ascribing glory and honor to pilgrims and puritans and American founding fathers like any Calvinist American evangelical would be likely to do, but which Anglican Brits might not... really.) Protestantism and national patriotism tend to go hand in hand, and do so in a very unreasonable, over the top kind of  way, whereas Catholicism is truly universal and accepts the unique role of all nations in Kingdom building. 
In other words, it's a bit of a hodgepodge, with some ecclectic stuff, some silly, over-the-top patriotic stuff, and some outright heresy mixed in.

On the other hand, the history booklists are quite good. While there are some recommended books which need to go the way of the trashcan ("GOOD Queen Bess??!"), and quick, other choices are phenomenal and should be passed around to all children.

Ambleside's religion segments, as well, I have a love/hate relationship with. True to Miss Mason's vision, they recommend regular bible reading, devotional reading, and reading on the lives of the saints and martyrs. Unlike Miss Mason, who had a set liturgical year and a sense of Church time and Church teaching, including traditional catechesis, AO's is -again- a bit of a hodgepodge, clearly put together by Christians who don't have a liturgical sense or a common catechetical tradition.

This gives one pause, and at least in my case has often caused me to want to throw the whole thing out the window. But I can't! Ambleside was my first love as a potential homeschooling parent, and something about it keeps me coming back for more each time I start to plan and think.

I have asked many Catholics and Orthodox how they implement the Ambleside curriculum in their homes. Some tell me they don't change it at all, but only discuss everything with their children. This option is unacceptable in our household. We believe we are FORMING our children with what they read.

Others tell me they have removed the religion and history portions, often using Connecting with History instead, and retained the science and literature portions.

I find that hard--- because Ambleside's literature choices are very tied in to their history choices, and the time periods being studied. It truly frustrates me, and keeps me up at night... if I were to do this, I would have to throw out so much of the curriculum that I'd really be starting from scratch.

Ambleside is intense... and rigorous,  no doubt about it. I want that for my kids. I also want the huge variety that it brings to the table. I have chosen to make book substitutions, usually based on what I find suggested in Mater Amabilis or Connecting with History. And so far, it has worked beautifully.

I can say that I "use" Ambleside, all the while fully using Mater Amabilis because their booklists are very similar, often a book from AO that isn't used one year in MA is used in a later year.

Connecting with History, on the other hand, has booklists which are really good, but also which have some issues. The program as a whole does some things which are not CM in nature--- it reads voraciously, when CM advised "savoring" a book in small portions and over a long period of time. (for example, AO uses Augustus Caesar's World over two terms in Y6. CWH uses it over one two units, about the space of a month or two.)
It also recommends many books which are selected not for their literary quality but for their "living" nature... in other words, they are poorly written, or at least poorly edited.
Lastly, it presents history in a unit-study sort of way, often recommending science and the arts to be integrated into the historical time period being studied. This can have a place in a CM education, but we don't want to be making connections FOR the child, and we need to be aware of that.

Also, CWH promotes FAMILY history, whereas Ambleside uses individual history. And there are benefits to both. In my case, my children being young, individual reading means that they pay attention and are more present during reading. Nothing like reading aloud to a gaggle of children at the table to make you want to drink.
Even they agree: if you ask my children to choose between family read-alouds and one-on-one read-alouds, they pick one-on-one every time. That might change as they get older, but right now the only person who LOVES family read-alouds would be the toddler who talks through the whole thing about lions or giraffes while we strain to hear the words of the story and not to lose our tempers.

At the same time, it is a lot of work for me doing individual readings... I feel like I spend all my days running from child to child, since my kids are so young.
At the beginning of the planning period for this term, I thought I would use CWH and developed a plan to use their booklists over a term instead of a unit. I found that my kids still had individual reading to do, but that we shared a family read aloud, which really ended up in practice looking a lot like AO.

But I realized quickly that I had made unrealistic expectations for our family, for one thing because I REALLY wanted to keep using some parts of AO that involved historical reading, and for another because it really did NOT simplify our homeschool day the way I had hoped it would. The benefit of it, though, was that my younger kids had some GREAT reading that taught them quite a bit about history. And they truly enjoyed that. We have incredible memories built from our year in Ancient History using CWH. So much so that I've decided to keep going with that, and to pass the upcoming Year 0 kids through the same booklists on ancient history.

This year, after a test run of three weeks on my created AO / MA/ CWH mix, I went back to the peace and calm of AO. There everything always seems to click into place for me--- there is structure and order but also flexibility and freedom... like freedom to add things, or take them away, without totally disrupting the flow of the curriculum.

Still, though, sad that I had to leave CWH behind, I began to do some soul searching. And I realized something profound along the way-- AO works alongside CWH really well, if we remove the presumption that CWH is meant to be used (a) together only and (b) over the course of one year.

The idea of working as a family was very pleasing to me... but the reality was that even as a family, we basically enjoyed one read aloud and then I needed to read separately to each child from a book at their own level.

I had already worked out which chapters of Our Island Story, for example, fit into which units, and marked them in my CWH syllabus. So when I looked at it from my AO history perspective, all I had to do was line up which chapters of Our Island Story we were already reading in AO, and add a book or reading selection that helped bring Catholic perspective from that unit or time period! Duh. I have no idea why this didn't occur to me before, but it did, and it was wonderful. Suddenly, I found myself removing Synge from the AO history list (which I love, but have a real issue with on topics like the reformation-- sad!) and instead replacing it with Our Old World's Gifts to the New using the notes in the Connecting With History syllabus. And that was it! Just a couple, simple changes and I was done, and still using AO almost as-written, but not having to let go of CWH, which I really like. Yay!

I also added some books to the free reading list that added a Catholic perspective. For example, the Little Duke already does that wonderfully, but instead of reading something slightly dark and anti-establishment like Alice in Wonderland, why not read The Boy Knight of Rheims?

So, now I'm happy and my family is happy and my historian dad is happy and everyone is happy. Yay.