Somehow we’re at the end of another homeschool year. Ambleside Online Year 4 and Year 1 are definitely my favorite Years so far. There were many moments when we needed to step back and pivot. There were also moments in our homeschool days that felt like we got it right.
This page contains affiliate links which means at no additional cost to you when you click through a link and make a purchase, I might make a small commission. Thank you for supporting Our Cooper Nest!
What Worked & Didn’t Work In Our Schedule
At the beginning of our year, I tried to combine subjects like History, Geography, and Science between my two children. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to or would be able to keep up with two history streams and/or want to keep Geography and Science as independent studies. I liked the idea of having them as part of our family studies together, now that I have my youngest doing formal lessons too.
While I am sure we could have made it work better somehow, in the end, I decided to keep my two children in separate Years for our core AO (Ambleside Online) subjects. I believe we were able to do this a little more smoothly since my oldest is now reading almost all of her AO books independently. This allowed me time to better focus and read aloud all of the AO Year 1 books to my youngest and build on his habit of attention, and oral narrations.
We continued to keep doing subjects like our Bible reading, Poetry, Songs, Recitations, Nature Study, Shakespeare, and Artist study as a family in the mornings, and sometimes in the evenings.
Scaling Back: When Illness Hit
Right around the holidays, our entire household was repeatedly ill with a variety of everything that was going around. We were quite literally sick from the end of November through January on and off. Naturally, that threw us all off and it took so long to feel like ourselves again. I had to pause term 2 longer than I had planned, and when we decided to pick back up our books and math lessons, it was very minimal for a while.
For the sake of peace, healing, and perseverance, I chose to drop some subjects that we never picked back up through the rest of our year (the horror!). I was already struggling with introducing Plutarch and Latin to my oldest in Year 4, so when illness hit, those continued to stay off our schedule. We also dropped our family studies of anatomy and geography concepts altogether, only focusing on their independent mapwork and geological concepts through Paddle-to-the-Sea (Year 1) and Minn of the Mississippi (Year 4).
While I wish we could have kept everything on our schedule, lightening the load made it much easier to continue and finish our year well for us. Once we were all feeling better, it was already almost February (Yes, it took us that long to recover!). At that point, I decided we weren’t going to take a break between the end of term 2 and the beginning of term 3. This worked nicely, allowing us to be done with our year closely to what I had planned in April.
Final Thoughts For Year 4 and Year 1 (take two)
Year 4 Thoughts & Highlights: My daughter has come such a long way on our Charlotte Mason-Inspired homeschool journey. Ambleside Online continues to stretch her and me in ways I didn’t think possible. This year, my daughter was able to take on almost all of her Year 4 books independently. While we still follow along with an audio version of Age of Fable, she’s noticing a lot of similarities in her mythology book to movies and other stories she’s read over the years, and that’s been exciting for her since Age of Fable was once something she loathed.
(**Ambleside Online has updated their schedule this year to postpone Age of Fable until Year 5, so I may tweak our Year 5 Age of Fable schedule (since we’ve read the now current Year 5 Age of Fable schedule in Year 4) and replace it with the book they chose for Year 4’s mythology.**)
Starting an online Math curriculum last year was the best decision for her math education and she continues to flourish using CTCMath! We haven’t had tears (from her or myself) due to math in so long and that’s saying something.
I really wanted to make our Latin curriculum work, but in the end, it wasn’t the best fit for us, and we will be using something else, a little less teacher-intensive, for Year 5.
My daughter was doing a written narration (of any history, natural history, or literature book she chose) each week for the remaining 6 weeks of term 3 and I can tell it has stretched her comprehension even further than the oral narrations. She has a lot to say in her narrations, but putting it on paper is something she will get to learn and articulate in a readable way. Slow and steady.
Year 4 history was our favorite thus far, and my daughter made so many connections throughout her biographies and history books in the year! We came across a few government questions that I wish we had some general knowledge of alongside our readings more available, so this is something I’ve considered for her Year 5.
We’ve reached the end of The Hobbit as our family read aloud from this past year, and both the kids have loved it!
My daughter has flown through many of the free-reads from AO Year 4, and has repeatedly mentioned how much she loves the books they recommend! Her favorites this year were Pollyanna, Gone Away Lake, Ella Enchanted, The Farthest-Away Mountain, and The Twenty-One Balloons. Though it was part of the curriculum, The Incredible Journey had also made it on her top favorites list of Year 4. We’re looking forward to watching a couple of these for family movie night this Summer!
Year 1 (take two) Thoughts & Highlights: I decided to branch out on our ancient history for Year one outside of Our Island Story and 50 Famous Stories Retold and include stories from other parts of the world as well. For term 1, we focused on Ancient Egypt. Term 2 was a similar schedule to AO’s Year 1 history, focusing on Ancient Europe, but we excluded Viking Tales and read Leif the Lucky by d’Aulaire, along with a few stories from ancient Greek and Roman times. Term 3 we concluded our year with half the term reading about Ancient Asia, and the last half reading early American, and Native American tales, as well as introducing Columbus by d’Aularie. We had a lot of fun with our selections for Year 1 history! It is on my to-do list to get a couple of blog posts up for what exactly we read in Term 2 and Term 3.
Paddle-to-the-Sea was another hit in our homeschool with my second child! We loved following along the journey using our US map.
My son listened to The Burgess Bird Book on audio and would narrate to me here and there, but mostly his remembering of this book came out as we noticed birds in the yard or at a grandparent’s house when he talked about what the birds were doing, details about their nests, and the calls they make.
We wrapped up using Prenda Treasure Hunt Reading this year for his phonics/reading practice. I thought it was a worthy resource for what we needed, but definitely didn’t follow it exactly, nor did we watch the videos. My son is continuing to read daily more and more fluently. Reading still isn’t his “favorite”, but I’m hopeful that introducing him to more books and stories will change his mind someday.
Math was nearly effortless with my son, which caught me by a sweet surprise. He loves mental math and will often come to me in the day with a new math problem he solved on his own (30 + 30, how 30 + 30 equals a whole hour on a clock, 900+20, or skip counting longer than the last time he tried it). Numbers are often on his mind, and I love how his personhood is so different from my daughter’s or mine. When we weren’t using The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series Book 1, he would do math drills using the free app called Anton.
At the beginning of Year 1, my son had a difficult time sitting and focusing on our tasks. Even with our short lessons of 5-15 minutes a subject, it took us until the end of term 2 to get the hang of remaining attentive in the middle of lesson time. I don’t believe we have “arrived” at perfecting the habit of attention (does anyone?), but I’m beginning to see the habits taking root in his life, and I pray it sets us up for a great Year 2.
Year 5 and Year 2 are right around the corner & I’ll be sure to share our journey along the way!
Did you get a chance to read about our Year 5 and Year 2 curriculum plans? We start back up again in July!
Been following you for years and I love this update. I’m sorry for the challenges you faced this year, but this post was very encouraging. I think it’s amazing how you scaled back and simplified. It takes courage to do that, but it does give the kids (and us) the space to make the relationships Charlotte Mason so encourages. We are doing year 3 + 4 of AO next year. It will be our first official year following the schedule as closely as possible. I went back and forth on whether to start by 9/10 year old in 4 or 5, but after reading your beginning and ending blog on year 4, I feel confident to stick with the earlier year. Thanks for the tips on typing and piano!