Ambleside Online Yr 5 + 6

We started our new school year, year 5 + 6 following Ambleside Online, a bit earlier than I normally like to in anticipation of a major move we have coming up in the next couple months. We will be moving from Georgia to Pennsylvania and I am anticipating many days devoted to the process of packing, moving, painting, cleaning, unpacking, and recovering. By many days I might mean weeks.

And well certainly there is much to an education in everyday living and the hands on learning that will come in the process of this move, there is much to be said for diligence. I seek that balance – the one that sets a plan for our days and then bows in sweet surrender when the Lord unfolds something bigger that causes us to let go the smaller tasks of the day.

To keep a heart that seeks diligence and surrender to Him and not one that wavers and gives in to laziness that is a tricky balance for myself. It would be far easier for me to call the move a learning experience and chalk it up to their education for the next few months, but a careful examination of my heart would reveal that is me being lazy, and I know starting the year earlier will give us plenty of time to both get the work completed and give us time to complete the move and rest.

For the first four years with the boys I use to be with them by myself for weeks on end. Paul would be gone with work and we had no family near by. When they were bitty babies I played movies for them throughout the day because it was all I could do to survive. But there came a point when I was getting more sleep – feeling more whole – where I knew that to continue with the endless loop of movies was me being lazy, They’d served their purpose when I could do nothing more, but it was time to do the next thing.

I think back on that experience often – I truly believe it was the Holy Spirit teaching me as a mother. And how thankful I am that I heeded that still small voice and began the hard work of dying to self and working hard.

There are seasons where extended rest is necessary. Those seasons may look like movies, or lengthy school breaks. But they are meant to be a season only, so be diligent, dear mama, to guard your heart from laziness. It’s where I’m at right now, and it’s a tender and hard place to be.

John Bunyan has a lovely little quote, from Pilgrim’s Progress;

“This hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear. 
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.”

I have that on our bathroom wall and it’s a dear reminder that difficult things are not to be avoided.

It is a tricky thing to find balance though. The rest is necessary, and yet it shifts so easily into excuses and laziness.
I shared this print and the following in this post entitled How to Find Balance;

It is still a great paradox to me that we are to run with endurance and yet also be still and know that He is God.
Being still before God is the only way we can truly run with endurance – and doesn’t it just line up so fittingly with how God’s ways are not our ways?

 

If you want to be great in His kingdom, serve.
If you want to be rich, give what you have away.

 

Want to run with endurance? Be still.
No value can be placed on the quiet, still moments spent alone with the Lord each morning. Or slipped in whenever it can happen – some seasons don’t have quiet mornings. But that time with Him gives purpose and direction to each days steps. And during those weary seasons He is so, so faithful in our weakness.
We all have our to-do lists and endless tasks to accomplish and setting our priorities with the daily communication with God is both refreshing and a very practical step.

(you can read the entire article here.)

I have been drawn to this verse in Psalm 147 over the past few weeks and think I will make it our theme verse for this school year;

It is such an excellent reminder of where our priorities ought to lay – a fear of Him and a hope in His steadfast love. Yes, we are educating our children and laying before them a feast; but it is not the things the world finds excellent that the Lord finds pleasure in, and when faced with something big (like a move) in the midst of a school year I don’t want to forget that above all I need my focus to be on Christ and His steadfast love. It calls us to a place of rest and gives a standard of excellence when we are to do all things to the glory of God.

I do want to share our homeschool plans for the year as I find it so helpful for my own organization to lay it all out there, and also because I know others have asked to see our plans for the year. I love looking at others homeschool plans, so I totally get that!

On Saturday I shared my homeschool planner and all the free printable planner pages here. These are the pages I am using for my own organization. (The planners I have made for the boys are coming soon.)
Last year I made do without an official planner – I printed off the schedule (12 pages total for both grades!) and used my Traveler’s Notebook and the simplicity was wonderful. But I miss having a place for my seasonal planning pages (you can see them on my printable planner pages) and with us moving to a state that has a bit more strict of homeschool rules I wanted to be sure to have everything organized and in order.

This year Judah is in grade six and Wesley grade 5. We are following the lovely schedule that is provided for free on Ambleside Online. The work these women have put in to building this resource that makes up all of Ambleside Online is remarkable. There are years and years of work and refining and putting it to work through many children – it is a true act of love that it is offered free of charge for the public to use and we have enjoyed the beauty, depth, and simplicity of it over the years.

There are some tweaks I have made to what is laid out on Ambleside Online to fit our family. Last year this included adding some books about missionaries to Nigeria, as we were planning a trip there in the Fall of 2017. This year it includes some books about people or places related to areas we are moving to or additional reading related to some of the required reading. Mostly this is because I have a boy that delights in reading, can narrate well, and retains what he reads. So I spread his feast a little bit wider by offering him a few more books.
But this also includes a boy who does not adore reading. And for him we include audiobooks – some following along in his book (this is SO important for spelling and grammar purposes to actually see the words and sentence structure!) and others where he can close his eyes and just listen. He learns so well this way when it comes to more challenging books, so I balance it out with lighter books that he can more easily read so he is not missing the repeated exposure of seeing the words on paper.

I am also utilizing Letters From Afar – the adorable letter in the picture above – for geography studies (as well as continuing our Book of Marvels – which you can see all of the videos pulled together for the first half of the book, here and is the geography book Ambleside Online recommends for both years.)

I am not so pulled together right now to have our morning routine down, but I am building a binder with our poetry, art study, folk song, Shakespeare and Plutarch readings that we rotate through.

I’ve also found a Playlist on Spotify with the 2018/2019 composer, hymns, and folk songs as laid out on Ambleside Online already organized, so I am using that, too.

Between now and when we move there is no organized nature study or handicraft. Both boys have developing interest and skill in a variety of handicrafts, so I’m not too worried in the craziness of the next few months about them devoting time to it in an organized manner. They’d both had big plans to create an assortment of items and host a Christmas shop, and I am sad for their sake that this move isn’t going to make that possible.

Our math this year is, again, Teaching Textbooks. They are both loving it which is nice to see after having not started a math program until 4th grade.

Copywork and dictation are also planned out for the year.
Copywork is coming from a premade book and the dictation was sourced from a collection of friend’s favorite literary quotes.
One of the things I will have in the planner pages for the student notebooks I will share is the dictation I used for them for this year. It is really short and simple again this year – my understanding is it should be longer and more complicated to really help with grammar, spelling, and punctuation. And we will get there. But simple and short is where it’s at again this year.

I plan to have the student planner pages available later this week, but this book is the glue that holds it all together. Haha.
It has their dictation, their schedule for the week, reference sheets for notes on what we go through in our morning time, and a calendar.

The schedules are ones I fill out once a week for them. I use the sheet Ambleside Online provides, which tells you how much needs to be completed each week. I break it down and tell the boys what to do each day.
I usually spend Sunday evening going over their books and planning out the upcoming week and it works so smoothly for us. Then, during the week they see me for narrations or when they lose a book (… do your kids do that too?!) but otherwise things run pretty seamlessly from day to day. Apart from the things we work on together I let them pick the order in which they complete things, save for their Bible reading which is to be done before breakfast. We do follow our own Bible reading schedule, not the one laid out on Ambleside Online.

I’m excited for our new school year and all there is to learn and discover through year 5 and 6! Thanks for reading!!