Tell me about your experiences with year 1 Ambleside Online

[Michelle My Bell]

I am thinking about adding some of the AO year 1 to my sons schooling next year. We used parts of Memoria Press this year and really enjoyed it (LOVE the picture book selections, music, art prints), but I thought the history and science were lacking. I thought it might be fun to add in AO. I know there must be lesson plans or schedules that someone has put together out there. That would be helpful to see. So how did you use AO year 1? What did you think of the books? What did you skip or add? Tell me everything, lol!

[ksoika]

We followed year one as planned out by Ambleside Online. It was a lovely and fun year.... so we've stayed with it for year two!

 

We loved the book selections and didn't skip any, including the supplemental readings.

[VeritasMama]

We used Year One last year. My son loved it. This year we are doing Memoria Press along with the AO selections, and a few other things, so we are not strictly AO. I use a formal spelling curriculum, and we are also going to start a formal grammar curriculum next year.

 

For Year One, I skipped Trial and Triumph and Parables of Nature. We are Catholic, so we used some Catholic selections instead. My son LOVED Aesop, Fifty Famous stories retold, and Just So Stories, so those were must reads for us. He also really enjoyed James Herriott's Treasury for Children, and the Burgess book. All of the Burgess books and Holling C. Holling books are must reads in my book. My son also loved several of the free reads, including Pinnochio and Peter Pan. I used the free reads as read alouds after lunch, bedtime, and we also listened to some of the librivox recordings of the free reads in the car.

 

The AO site has a primer for getting ready for year one:

http://www.amblesideonline.org/Yr1Primer.shtml

 

Here are some bookmarks i made for Years One and Two:

https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B28GCpJbbzoQaDZ5b29GVkFPZkk/edit?pli=1

 

There are also a new AO forum that has a ton of links to the schedules and things that are also located in the Yahoo groups in the file sections.

www.amblesideonline.org/forum

 

This yahoo group has some nice copywork pages and info:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AmbleSide_Year1/

 

This group has schedules posted by users for every year in many different formats:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AO-Member-Schedules/files/

 

Here is another one that is worth a look:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AO_HEO_Schedules/

 

Here is a group that has the public domain readings for each week formatted in MS word. I printed these out and made a notebook for our AO readings, it was nice to have most of the weeks readings in one place, it made it easy for me to read ahead. It also has some nice schedules and other files. There is a group like this for years 1-6, but they haven't been updated yet with the changes that were made last year, though I'm sure Year 1 was not changed.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AO_Year01_Notebook/?yguid=155399373

 

Here is a copywork group that has copywork selections for each year and by book:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AOCopywork/

 

The advisory board has also compiled some nice books for the Kindle for year 1:

http://www.amazon.com/AmblesideOnline-Year-History-Tales-ebook/dp/B008CPBHWU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1359332442&sr=8-3&keywords=ambleside+online

http://www.amazon.com/AmblesideOnline-Poetry-Year-Selections-ebook/dp/B0066E11W0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1359332572&sr=8-2&keywords=ambleside+online

 

For the Burgess Bird book, make sure to check out the Satori smiles resources:

http://satorismiles.com/2010/03/08/burgess-bird-book-companion/

I also used the Burges Bird book montessori cards form this site, scroll down for the free download:

http://thatresourcesite.com/trs/modules/PDdownloads/singlefile.php?cid=30&lid=87

 

Here is a list of the AO books that are available on librivox.org, but the list needs to be updated, Parables of Nature is available now.

http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Recordings_of_Books_on_the_Ambleside_List

 

I find this blog really helpful, and this mom is also a moderator on the AO forum. She has great tips for organizing and homeschooling multiple children.

http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com/

 

This website has helpful advice and tips for implementing a CM style education, not AO but helpful:

http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/

 

HTH!

[Michelle My Bell]

We used Year One last year. My son loved it. This year we are doing Memoria Press along with the AO selections, and a few other things, so we are not strictly AO. I use a formal spelling curriculum, and we are also going to start a formal grammar curriculum next year.

 

For Year One, I skipped Trial and Triumph and Parables of Nature. We are Catholic, so we used some Catholic selections instead. My son LOVED Aesop, Fifty Famous stories retold, and Just So Stories, so those were must reads for us. He also really enjoyed James Herriott's Treasury for Children, and the Burgess book. All of the Burgess books and Holling C. Holling books are must reads in my book. My son also loved several of the free reads, including Pinnochio and Peter Pan. I used the free reads as read alouds after lunch, bedtime, and we also listened to some of the librivox recordings of the free reads in the car.

 

The AO site has a primer for getting ready for year one:

http://www.ambleside...Yr1Primer.shtml

 

Here are some bookmarks i made for Years One and Two:

https://docs.google....PZkk/edit?pli=1

 

There are also a new AO forum that has a ton of links to the schedules and things that are also located in the Yahoo groups in the file sections.

www.amblesideonline.org/forum

 

This yahoo group has some nice copywork pages and info:

http://groups.yahoo....mbleSide_Year1/

 

This group has schedules posted by users for every year in many different formats:

http://groups.yahoo....chedules/files/

 

Here is another one that is worth a look:

http://groups.yahoo...._HEO_Schedules/

 

Here is a group that has the public domain readings for each week formatted in MS word. I printed these out and made a notebook for our AO readings, it was nice to have most of the weeks readings in one place, it made it easy for me to read ahead. It also has some nice schedules and other files. There is a group like this for years 1-6, but they haven't been updated yet with the changes that were made last year, though I'm sure Year 1 was not changed.

http://groups.yahoo....yguid=155399373

 

Here is a copywork group that has copywork selections for each year and by book:

http://groups.yahoo....oup/AOCopywork/

 

The advisory board has also compiled some nice books for the Kindle for year 1:

http://www.amazon.co...mbleside online

http://www.amazon.co...mbleside online

 

For the Burgess Bird book, make sure to check out the Satori smiles resources:

http://satorismiles....book-companion/

I also used the Burges Bird book montessori cards form this site, scroll down for the free download:

http://thatresources...p?cid=30&lid=87

 

Here is a list of the AO books that are available on librivox.org, but the list needs to be updated, Parables of Nature is available now.

http://wiki.librivox..._Ambleside_List

 

I find this blog really helpful, and this mom is also a moderator on the AO forum. She has great tips for organizing and homeschooling multiple children.

http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com/

 

This website has helpful advice and tips for implementing a CM style education, not AO but helpful:

http://www.charlotte...emasonhelp.com/w

 

HTH!

 

Wow ! Thank you so much! I will investigate all of this. Since you are combining MP and AO, I would love to hear about that as well. It is my plan to do the same. Thank you for the recommendations. Did you do activities with the books or just read and discuss? (Holling specifically)

[VeritasMama]

We actually live on the Great Lakes, so we were able to do some neat field trips and see some cool exhibits at local museums along with the book. This mom has some neat ideas for younger kids::

http://www.jessicaly...1-5-activities/

 

We also used the beautiful feet maps for our mapwork.

http://bfbooks.com/Geography-Map-Set

 

We used other maps as well as an atlas to identify the great lakes, but the Beautiful feet maps are beautiful, we used them for marking Paddle's journey and labeling various places. I know some of the moms also use the Beautiful Feet study guide for the Holling books to help get ideas for activities.

 

I know some other AO moms have used this google lit trip, we didn't since we had the opportunity to actually visit the lakes.

http://www.googlelit...cy_Holling.html

 

There is also a movie that some people watch at the end of the unit, we just didn't get to it.

 

 

I think that MP and AO mesh really well together in the early years. We do all of our MP work in the morning, but of course we skip the science and other optional activities and instead we do one or two AO subjects in the afternoon.

I do love the way MP has the poetry and music and picture books laid out, but I was already doing AO so I stuck with that. We do use the MP literature guides, but we use the AO literature selections as well, we simply narrate them. With the AO books, we just talk a bit about the last reading from the book, go over any vocab or concepts that I think we should cover before we read, then we read it together. My son orally narrates most of the books, sometimes I write down his narration and he illustrates it. This site has some links to free printables such as narration starters or a narration cube, it also has some fun ideas to help you with narrations:

 

http://www.squidoo.com/narration

 

Our AO schedule looks like this:

 

Monday: History readings (OIS, Fifty Famous Stories, and you could read Trial and Triumph)

Tuesday: Literature selections

Wednesday: History Biography (D'Ãulaire books) and Geography

Thursday: 2nd Aesop story, Natural history and science

Friday: finish any readings we didn't get to, nature study, we would also read any Shakespeare tales that were scheduled on Fridays

 

We read our poetry during snacks and during lunch. I just use the AO anthology for the Kindle, but they have a free pdf of the poetry anthology on their site to download as well, and the notebook groups I mentioned have the poetry selections divided up by week, which is nice.

 

I think that AO and MP work really well together for the first few years. I don't know if it will become too difficult to combine them next year, which will be 3rd grade for us. I think both MP and AO will have a bigger work load, and I may have to start tweaking more.

[Susie in MS]

I am thinking about adding some of the AO year 1 to my sons schooling next year. We used parts of Memoria Press this year and really enjoyed it (LOVE the picture book selections, music, art prints), but I thought the history and science were lacking. I thought it might be fun to add in AO. I know there must be lesson plans or schedules that someone has put together out there. That would be helpful to see. So how did you use AO year 1? What did you think of the books? What did you skip or add? Tell me everything, lol!

 

 

The only lesson plan that I use is the weekly reading schedule posted at the AO site. I printed the entire year's schedule and stapled it. I just select 1 long or 2 short readings each day and check them off as we do them. I printed up the copywork book based on the AO Y1 readings and had it bound, so it is ready to go each day for my dd. After my dd copies the passage she then illustrates it. My dd is 7 yo in Y1. When she was 6 we tried it and readings like Parables were too hard for her. Waiting a year has made a huge difference and we have skipped none of the books. We have enjoyed every one, including the free reads. I think the books are tops. They are interesting, teach morals, educational, beautiful vocab (enough to make me a book snob), and some of them are free downloads. We have enjoyed Y1 so much that I have collected almost every book for Y2. I have printed the book marks for Y1 and the BBB cards linked above. Getting ready for Y2 I have the Monarch cards printed. Next I work on the Animal cards and the copywork booklet. If we have time on the weekend we do a composer study and nature walk/observation. I have Impressionist Art Cards box w/booklet we use for art as the large art cards are not practical for our personal situation. Our memory work comes from either scripture or a poem.

 

AO has been our saving grace during this season in our lives. Things are topsy turvy for us, and when nothing else gets done, this does. I find the weekly schedule very flexible and doable. Easy to follow.

[happyhappyjoyjoy]

We used Year One last year. My son loved it. This year we are doing Memoria Press along with the AO selections, and a few other things, so we are not strictly AO. I use a formal spelling curriculum, and we are also going to start a formal grammar curriculum next year.

 

 

 

Here are some bookmarks i made for Years One and Two:

https://docs.google....PZkk/edit?pli=1

 

 

HTH!

 

 

Wow I love these bookmarks. I was going through AO's booklists recently. I love how much of it is on kindle.

[Mama2two]

We used Year One last year. My son loved it. This year we are doing Memoria Press along with the AO selections, and a few other things, so we are not strictly AO. I use a formal spelling curriculum, and we are also going to start a formal grammar curriculum next year.

 

For Year One, I skipped Trial and Triumph and Parables of Nature. We are Catholic, so we used some Catholic selections instead. My son LOVED Aesop, Fifty Famous stories retold, and Just So Stories, so those were must reads for us. He also really enjoyed James Herriott's Treasury for Children, and the Burgess book. All of the Burgess books and Holling C. Holling books are must reads in my book. My son also loved several of the free reads, including Pinnochio and Peter Pan. I used the free reads as read alouds after lunch, bedtime, and we also listened to some of the librivox recordings of the free reads in the car.

 

The AO site has a primer for getting ready for year one:

http://www.ambleside...Yr1Primer.shtml

 

Here are some bookmarks i made for Years One and Two:

https://docs.google....PZkk/edit?pli=1

 

There are also a new AO forum that has a ton of links to the schedules and things that are also located in the Yahoo groups in the file sections.

www.amblesideonline.org/forum

 

This yahoo group has some nice copywork pages and info:

http://groups.yahoo....mbleSide_Year1/

 

This group has schedules posted by users for every year in many different formats:

http://groups.yahoo....chedules/files/

 

Here is another one that is worth a look:

http://groups.yahoo...._HEO_Schedules/

 

Here is a group that has the public domain readings for each week formatted in MS word. I printed these out and made a notebook for our AO readings, it was nice to have most of the weeks readings in one place, it made it easy for me to read ahead. It also has some nice schedules and other files. There is a group like this for years 1-6, but they haven't been updated yet with the changes that were made last year, though I'm sure Year 1 was not changed.

http://groups.yahoo....yguid=155399373

 

Here is a copywork group that has copywork selections for each year and by book:

http://groups.yahoo....oup/AOCopywork/

 

The advisory board has also compiled some nice books for the Kindle for year 1:

http://www.amazon.co...mbleside online

http://www.amazon.co...mbleside online

 

For the Burgess Bird book, make sure to check out the Satori smiles resources:

http://satorismiles....book-companion/

I also used the Burges Bird book montessori cards form this site, scroll down for the free download:

http://thatresources...p?cid=30&lid=87

 

Here is a list of the AO books that are available on librivox.org, but the list needs to be updated, Parables of Nature is available now.

http://wiki.librivox..._Ambleside_List

 

I find this blog really helpful, and this mom is also a moderator on the AO forum. She has great tips for organizing and homeschooling multiple children.

http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com/

 

This website has helpful advice and tips for implementing a CM style education, not AO but helpful:

http://www.charlotte...emasonhelp.com/

 

HTH!

 

 

We are Catholic and did the exact same thing for Year 1. For 3^rd grade now, we are also doing a Memoria Press/ AO combo. We use MP for history, part of religion, part of science, writing, latin… We use AO for our read aloud literature

[jenL]

This thread is a goldmine! Thank you, ladies. I'm trying to fish out how I want to do year 1 with ds#2 who is a completely different learner than ds#1. This is an incredible help since I've been wondering if AO would be the right fit for him.

[Heidi]

The books in Year 1 are excellent, except Parables of Nature goes right over my kids' head.... still.

[Michelle My Bell]

We actually live on the Great Lakes, so we were able to do some neat field trips and see some cool exhibits at local museums along with the book. This mom has some neat ideas for younger kids::

http://www.jessicaly...1-5-activities/

 

We also used the beautiful feet maps for our mapwork.

http://bfbooks.com/Geography-Map-Set

 

We used other maps as well as an atlas to identify the great lakes, but the Beautiful feet maps are beautiful, we used them for marking Paddle's journey and labeling various places. I know some of the moms also use the Beautiful Feet study guide for the Holling books to help get ideas for activities.

 

I know some other AO moms have used this google lit trip, we didn't since we had the opportunity to actually visit the lakes.

http://www.googlelit...cy_Holling.html

 

There is also a movie that some people watch at the end of the unit, we just didn't get to it.

 

I think that MP and AO mesh really well together in the early years. We do all of our MP work in the morning, but of course we skip the science and other optional activities and instead we do one or two AO subjects in the afternoon.

I do love the way MP has the poetry and music and picture books laid out, but I was already doing AO so I stuck with that. We do use the MP literature guides, but we use the AO literature selections as well, we simply narrate them. With the AO books, we just talk a bit about the last reading from the book, go over any vocab or concepts that I think we should cover before we read, then we read it together. My son orally narrates most of the books, sometimes I write down his narration and he illustrates it. This site has some links to free printables such as narration starters or a narration cube, it also has some fun ideas to help you with narrations:

 

http://www.squidoo.com/narration

 

Our AO schedule looks like this:

 

Monday: History readings (OIS, Fifty Famous Stories, and you could read Trial and Triumph)

Tuesday: Literature selections

Wednesday: History Biography (D'Ãulaire books) and Geography

Thursday: 2nd Aesop story, Natural history and science

Friday: finish any readings we didn't get to, nature study, we would also read any Shakespeare tales that were scheduled on Fridays

 

We read our poetry during snacks and during lunch. I just use the AO anthology for the Kindle, but they have a free pdf of the poetry anthology on their site to download as well, and the notebook groups I mentioned have the poetry selections divided up by week, which is nice.

 

I think that AO and MP work really well together for the first few years. I don't know if it will become too difficult to combine them next year, which will be 3rd grade for us. I think both MP and AO will have a bigger work load, and I may have to start tweaking more.

 

I feel like this is exactly what I am supposed to do. My son will be 7 next year and the general consensus is that this is the perfect age for AO1. Strangely enough, we actually live by the Great Lakes as well. I am very excited about exploring the links and learning more about what others do. I am now anxious to be admitted to the forums. I registered yesterday and am waiting for the moderators! Thank you so much for all your comments. It is EXTREMELY helpful. Feel free to start a blog so I can follow you! lol

[VeritasMama]

 

I feel like this is exactly what I am supposed to do. My son will be 7 next year and the general consensus is that this is the perfect age for AO1. Strangely enough, we actually live by the Great Lakes as well. I am very excited about exploring the links and learning more about what others do. I am now anxious to be admitted to the forums. I registered yesterday and am waiting for the moderators! Thank you so much for all your comments. It is EXTREMELY helpful. Feel free to start a blog so I can follow you! lol

 

 

Thanks! I'm glad I can help. I was too overwhelmed with my older children to really switch to AO completely, it took me a while to really sort through all of the informaiton and get a handle on it. Once I did it seemed so easy, I wish I had just jumped in. My ds8 is the only one who has been using it from the beginning. I do think that 7 is the perfect age, that is what age my son was when we did Year 1. I think living on the lakes you will have a lot of fun with Paddle to the Sea, it was one of my favorite books last year.

 

I wish I had time to blog, I barely have time to comment on forums, lol!

[VeritasMama]

 

Wow I love these bookmarks. I was going through AO's booklists recently. I love how much of it is on kindle.

 

 

Thanks. I love using the Kindle as well, as it is easy to take on the go. I also use my ipod quite a bit in the car with audio books.

 

If you use the Kindle quite a bit, I would recommend Yesterday's Classics Kindle bundle, which includes 225 books for 49.95. You can see which books in the package are used in AO here. It includes most of the public domain books used in AO in years 1-6, and the Treadwell readers which AO recommends, so it was a good deal for me. The package also includes quite a few of the free reads, such as f Pinocchio and Peter Pan, though the list of AO books on their site only includes the books that are in the main curriculum. They also just added The Little Duke, though it isn't on the list either. I had several of the free books from amazon and project gutenburg, but I liked the table of contents and formatting on the YC books, and they have beautiful illustrations, unlike some of the other epub files I had downloaded.

 

I admit, it was hard to bring myself to spend the money on books I could get online for free, but it has been worth it.

[Michelle My Bell]

Thanks. I love using the Kindle as well, as it is easy to take on the go. I also use my ipod quite a bit in the car with audio books.

 

If you use the Kindle quite a bit, I would recommend Yesterday's Classics Kindle bundle, which includes 225 books for 49.95. You can see which books in the package are used in AO here. It includes most of the public domain books used in AO in years 1-6, and the Treadwell readers which AO recommends, so it was a good deal for me. The package also includes quite a few of the free reads, such as f Pinocchio and Peter Pan, though the list of AO books on their site only includes the books that are in the main curriculum. They also just added The Little Duke, though it isn't on the list either. I had several of the free books from amazon and project gutenburg, but I liked the table of contents and formatting on the YC books, and they have beautiful illustrations, unlike some of the other epub files I had downloaded.

 

I admit, it was hard to bring myself to spend the money on books I could get online for free, but it has been worth it.

 

 

I will be getting this. it is an extra good deal for me because we also use Heart of Dakota for my older kids.