We have just finished week 6 for years 7 and 8 following Ambleside Online (AO) and I am finally sitting down to record our plans for this upcoming year. If you have followed along on our adventures over the years I am going to write this in order of newest changes to repeated routines. If you’re new here we are a military family and moved to PA two years ago to a house that ended up being a surprise massive reno project. We basically gutted the whole house in order to update the wiring and install insulation in the walls. Our two boys have been pretty hands on through the entire process and it’s been its own education both in terms of physical labor and also in keeping our eyes on Christ and things of eternal significance while our day to day felt impossibly challenging. That’s us in a nutshell right now! This blog has been sorely neglected as we have focused on building our home and strengthening our family bonds through the stress, but now that all the major renovations have been done I am hoping I will be able to spend extra time and energy back in this space!
I think perhaps the biggest addition to our year is I have hired a “tutor” for science. I am thrilled at this addition and, while we are just at the very beginning of this relationship, I think it will be so good for the boys. He happens to be a neighbor, loves Jesus, loves science, he and his wife were both homeschooled, and they are homeschooling their own children. Could we have found a more perfect match?!
He meets with the boys once a week for an hour. Currently he is teaching them how to use a microscope and to prepare their own slides. Once he feels they’ve mastered that he’s just going to sit with them and let them talk about (narrate) their science readings, answer their questions, challenge their understanding of passages. Maybe direct proper science journal entries.
I believe so passionately the truth in Charlotte Mason’s saying; “What a child digs for becomes his own possession.” And yet I see the need for help in ensuring my children are digging correctly, discovering accurately, and processing all that is good, beautiful and true. Their “tutor” is not teaching them per say, but rather walking alongside them as they discover and take possession of their discoveries.
When my boys were little if I could have hired help for one thing it would have been someone to read to them on top of all the reading I did to them. Audiobooks didn’t really cut it because they don’t offer any interaction.
Now that they are older and competent with their own readings and there’s a little extra money in the budget to hire help, my top choice is someone that will talk with them as they process their readings and the world around them. I am so excited it is happening! And our boys really enjoy their science evenings.
The other “outside help” I have is Judah (year 8) is in a writing class and Wesley (year 7) is in an art class. These were their choices for classes taught at a local homeschool class. This is both to get them connected with other homeschoolers and to give them opportunities in areas of interest to them. In a year or two I will likely also have them in a foreign language class there, too. (…if the military still has us here …) Judah participated in the writing class last year and just blossomed under the care of a writing teacher that challenged and pushed him.
This means that AO’s Grammar recommendation is not being followed for my oldest (except that he does do written narrations) and the poetry exercises in Roar on the Other Side I have told him are optional. Judah loves writing and enjoys the companionship of a class of writers, so it is all a very good fit for him.
Wesley will be following AO’s Grammar and Composition schedule, albeit we are behind on it because I am not, can not, nor ever will be entirely on top of all the things all the time.
I think this is the danger of posts like this – it can very easily illuminate the things someone else is doing that you perhaps are not – while ignoring that the things you are doing, I may be struggling with! It is a constant balance of being diligent and knowing I can never do all the things. I can do some of the things, and those things I want to do well and with joy. But the older the boys get the more aware I am of the fact that in and of myself I am not capable of giving them everything they need, and so my priority is truly that they see my faith in Christ is real – that Him in me makes a difference in the small moments of our every day. Any educational oversight on my part can be made up when it is found to be deficient – but living with a miserable mom who claims to love Jesus and yet acts like she doesn’t know Him … that isn’t something I want to live out. (And when I mess up I say sorry!) Anyways, all that to say – it is truly freeing to come to a place where it’s not a matter of “what if I don’t give them everything they need” to “I know I can’t give them everything – what is my joyful, diligent best?”
The boys are also in karate this year, which has been an incredible experience for them over the last couple of months. They have a dad that challenges them physically (they’ve all signed up for the virtual Army 10 mile run this year, which is cool as it’s normally held in DC but due to Covid it’s the first virtual Army 10 miler!) but it’s been excellent to have other men challenge and push them to excellence in form and endurance.
They’re also slowly getting into mountain biking. They both need new bikes, which there is a shortage on affordable bikes so I’m not sure if we will find them new ones soon, but it’s fun to see their interests develop. 
Moving on to traditional subjects – last year for math we did Saxon along with the DIVE instructional videos. Over the summer I decided to try out Life of Fred, books we utilized in the younger elementary years and are now trying the middle school books, and they enjoyed it so much I am giving it a chance for this years math curriculum. We all thought we’d be sticking with Saxon and Dive as they enjoyed it, they just enjoy this so much more! So we will see how the year unfolds.
Everything else we are doing follows Amblesides recommendations pretty closely. Judah and I realized this week we had the wrong book by Samuel Morison on the life of Christopher Columbus. How it took us six weeks to figure that out I am not sure, but after looking through it and the comments on the AO forum about the proper book I decided to stick with what we have.
Above is a picture of the books Judah is reading in term one of year 8. Ambleside Online has these books scheduled out with weekly readings and we follow the schedule as it is written.
And these are Wesley’s year 7 books. I do the same with him, following what Ambleside Online has for the weekly scheduled readings. He started out the year wanting a notebook like last year but has recently asked for a travelers notebook like his brother, so the tutorial will be coming soon as I will be making him one and won’t have to dig back for all my old pictures when I promised one last year! Below is Judah’s travelers notebook from last year. Currently Wesley is just using the notebooks, waiting for me to make him a cover. These are the notebooks we use in the TN and you can see a post where I shared about the insides of the various notebooks here. 
Once the boys complete a single reading they narrate the reading to me or write out a narration. That is, they recount what they have read in their own words either orally or on paper. Sometimes they forget to come and narrate to me and either I will say “Hey, I haven’t heard anything about such and such a book lately, catch me up on it!” or they will sheepishly come and say “I just realized it’s been several readings since I filled you in …” so it is by no means perfectly executed, but it is warm and comfortable. If narrations are still a struggle in your home I would encourage you, as educator, to start narrating what you read to your spouse or older children. It is painful and hard! I think learning that process was very helpful in assisting my own children through it.
Neither of their stacks show it, but the AO readings have some brief speeches or other short works that are easy to access online. I forget if I found it in the forums or on the FB group, but someone compiled the readings and I printed and bound them for the boys for each year. I did the same with the art prints for the year. Other years I have utilized the binder of prints I was generously given, but I thought I would try printing one (via Barnes and Noble) and write observations in the margins.
As I did last year I have more of the Winston Churchill tea for my new year 7 son to enjoy while reading Winston Churchill’s book – it’s a silly little detail, but something we have enjoyed. We definitely enjoy our food and drinks!
As we have done other years the plan is to do our Feast for the Famous as we complete each term. I have always done this in place of doing exams, and I am considering doing both this year. At some point I want the boys comfortable with the concept of exam week because any college they attend will have them! But I haven’t decided if I will introduce them now or still wait.
You can read more about our Feast for the Famous here.
Our folk songs and composer are on Spotify playlists and the boys enjoy listening to them- at the beginning of the term I introduce the new composer, but it’s otherwise super laid back. We will play the music during chores or as background music during reading. Very simple.
We have had many mornings with company in the house over the last many weeks and sometimes they’ve joined the routine and sometimes we’ve neglected this; but ideally we will sit together after breakfast and read poetry, Plutarch, about our current nature focus, etc. Dictation is given out on Monday and tested on Friday. In past years I have had preplanned dictation, this year the boys will make suggestions and I will either approve one or pick something else. Haha. So far we’ve done poetry and Bible verses.
As a family we are trying to get out to adventure and explore more together. In years past we have done a bit of hammock camping when traveling, and a little bit of it for fun. As the weather cools here in the fall we are hoping to get out and do some hammock camping on the appalachian trail. As we consider what we want our sons taking with them when they leave home and venture out on their own, spending quality time outside is high on the list! And so we are shifting a bit to do more of that as we can.
I can’t think of anything else to share, other than I will post what I shared on instagram regarding how I plan for our week:
Every week I sit down with the boys written work from the previous week, their completed schedule, a blank schedule, all of their books for this school term, the amblesideonline printed pdf schedule and my own planner. I have the boy who’s work I am going over be in the room so I can ask any questions I might have.
Then I review the past weeks written narrations, math and anything else I may have not seen during the week, and also check to make sure they’ve checked off every reading from the past week.
Then I use the AO weekly schedule to fill out the boys daily schedule, adding notes in the margins if there are things of note (videos to watch, readings to be done with me, random “I love you”’s).
Then on the AO schedule I make note of anything memorable I might want to remember from my older boys experience for my younger son. (…like, it took my older son 8 weeks to get in to Ivanhoe. It’s good to have that written down to encourage my younger one thru it now.)
I add things of note to my own planner – like, the days we do things together such as timeline entries, Plutarch readings, or one on one readings. If I’m super on top of life I also make them a breakfast and lunch menu for the school days that they then make themselves. We do a lot of eggs for breakfast and add green smoothies, waffles, or fresh fruit with it. Lunches are usually left overs or corn tortillas with all the fixings, potatoes and sausage, heavy soups with corn chips, etc. It’s all pretty simple but this short planning session keeps our week running smoothly and peacefully. They know what to do and what is expected and, these days, there’s minimal to zero input from me during the week. Hard work does, indeed, start paying off. 💕
Nikki Smiley
Yay! Can’t wait for the travelers notebook tutorial!