Getting Started with Ambleside Online Year One: Phonics, Math, and Handwriting

Welcome back for another coffee chat, friends.  Today we're finally going to dive in to what you've probably all really been waiting for – making sense of what you see when you open up the Year One curriculum page over on the AmblesideOnline site.   It's taken us awhile to get here – thank you for your patience – but I truly do believe that all that foundational stuff we have been talking about is just that – foundational, necessary.  Even a little bit of background knowledge of Charlotte Mason's philosophy will help you as you start to actually put her ideas into practice.  (By the way, I updated the Introduction post with links to all the posts so far in this series, if you want to go back and check them out.)

 

 

So…go ahead and take a minute to open up the AmblesideOnline Year One Curriculum page and keep that tab open next to you to refer to as you read through this post. 

 

The list looks a little bit long at first glance, but don't get overwhelmed.  I like to divide everything on the curriculum list into three categories – the skill subjects (for Year One, this would include phonics, math, and copywork – perhaps foreign language too if you are planning to include one.  We don't at this level – just the real meeting in the ideal in my home.), the booklist (covering the content areas like history, literature, natural history/science, and geography), and all the beautiful glorious rest (art, music, handicrafts, etc.).   My plan is to tackle one of these areas in each of the next three posts.

 

Today, let's talk about skill subjects.  As an aside, this is one of the things that I love most about the way the AO curriculum is set up.  Because they leave it to you to pick and choose the materials of your choice for these areas, it makes it very, very easy to customize for the needs and ability of your student.  Year One is perfectly appropriate for the brand-new reader starting from the beginning of phonics, for the emerging reader who can read easy readers but not the books scheduled on the reading list yet, or for the advanced reader who is ready to tackle reading some of their own schoolbooks.  I have three children who have all been in different places in reading….and different places in math for that matter…with relation to their AO Year and it has worked well with very little adaptation on my part.  This wouldn't be the case with a grade-leveled, all-inclusive boxed curriculum. 

 

Reading Instruction: You can see over on the Year One page several choices of reading curricula that the Advisory recommends.  We personally have used a combination of Charlotte Mason's methods, Ruch Beechick's methods, and Alphaphonics, depending on the needs of the child.  Plan for a 10-15 minute lesson each day, depending on the attention span of your student.  As your child gains reading confidence and no longer needs daily phonics instruction, you can begin having them read to you out loud daily from a reader.  We particularly have enjoyed the Reading-Literature readers by Harriette Taylor Treadwell for this purpose, and you can see some of our other favorite books for beginning readers here.  Once they have reached the chapter-book stage, I've started having them buddy-read (reading back and forth together, alternating paragraphs) some of the simpler school books with the eventual goal of gradually handing over the bulk of their school reading to them.  But this whole process will very likely take several years!  Don't expect to move through this whole sequence during Year One. J  Just keep moving along with short, consistent lessons at your child's pace.

 

Math: Again, you will see over on the Year One page a link to a list of various math options recommended by the Advisory, as well as links to various articles if you want to delve deeper into how Charlotte Mason taught math.  To be completely honest, this is one area I've not dug too deeply into.  We've simply applied some of Charlotte Mason's other ideas to our math lessons – things like short lessons (not more than 15-20 minutes for a Year One age student, and sometimes less) and using manipulatives to teach a concept and making sure they understand before letting the child loose with workbook exercises.   We tried several math programs (poor guinea pig first child!) before landing on Singapore which we've found to be a good fit for our family and intend to continue with through the elementary years at least. 

 

Copywork: You'll find copywork or penmanship listed under the daily work section on the AO Year One page, with a link to AO's Language Arts scope and sequence which I encourage you to read.   I don't schedule more than about 5 minutes for copywork at this age – even that is sometimes more than my very young students can handle.  Short, consistent lessons are the key to success in this area.  Start with letter formation, and don't expect the child to write more than they can do *well*, even if that means only one or two letters.  Requiring a child to fill a whole sheet with letters tends to lead to sloppy habits, whereas only asking them to do a few and taking their time to use their neatest possible handwriting reinforces the habit of slow, careful work.  All three of my children have used different resources to learn letter formation – so the only advice I have there is to choose a style that you like and go for it, keeping in mind the short lessons and careful work principles.  Once my children mastered basic letter formation, we did away with the handwriting curriculum and just started doing simple copywork – starting with single words, maybe familiar words like family names or words taken from a phonics lesson, and gradually moving to sentences chosen from our school books or poetry.  I've always limited it to the amount that they can do well in about 5 minutes or so and gauged my expectations accordingly rather than requiring a number of words or lines to be copied.

 

So, that's it for today.  Next time, on to the booklist!

Getting Started with AO Year One: Understanding Narration

Welcome back for another coffee chat, friends.

 

 

I hope that our last installment left you feeling encouraged that you CAN do this.  It's okay if you haven't read everything and don't know it all, and it's even okay if you don't do everything perfectly because none of us do.

 

That said…you do need to start somewhere.  Once you've gained a general overview of CM's ideas, you need to begin to deepening your understanding a little bit at a time.  In the next couple of posts in this series I'd like to suggest a couple of principles that would be good starting places for your further study.  Today let's talk about narration.

 

Very simply put, narration is the act of telling back (orally or, in the case of older students, in writing) what you have heard or read or experienced.  Sounds simple, right?  It is simple, but it is also profound.  In order to narrate, the child must attend to the reading, organize it in his own mind, and reformulate it in his own words.   I have reflected before that narration is akin to translation – translating the ideas of the author into one's own language.  It's harder work than you might think!  Some children take to it like ducks to water, and others really struggle with developing this skill.  Narration is frequently misunderstood and its power underestimated.   It is also absolutely essential to putting Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education into place in your homeschool.  This is why I'd like to suggest to you that deepening your understanding of what narration is, why it is important, and how to help your student develop narration skills is a foundational starting place for further study.

 

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I am going to leave you today with a collection of links that will send you well on your way to a deeper understanding of narration.  Take some time over the next few weeks to read and take notes and ponder.  Feel free to come back and leave your questions in the comments, or hop on over to the Ambleside Online Forum and join the conversation there.

 

Charlotte Mason's Own Words on Narration

Narration Helps from the Ambleside Online Advisory Board with LOTS of links for further study

Karen Glass on Narration

More from Karen Glass on "What's the Point of Narration"

Troubleshooting and Narration from Fisher Academy Part 1 and Part 2

Your Morning Basket Podcast on Narration with Sonya Shafer

The Mason Jar Podcast Interview with Karen Glass (not solely about narration, but she does make some good points with regard to narration to keep in mind)

Brandy Vencel on Narration vs. Discussion

Also, if you haven't already subscribed to Brandy's Newbie Tuesday newsletter, go do that now.  The first issue is all about narration, and I believe you get that immediately when you sign up.

 

Happy Reading, Friends!

 

PS – For those of you who may be looking for an online discussion group to go deeper with CM's principles, it looks like there is a group forming over on the AO Forum to go through Brandy's 20 Principles study beginning in April.  I did this study myself with a group of Forum ladies several years ago and I would say that that was the thing that really cemented my understanding of what CM is all about. I highly recommend this study to you, especially if you don't have access to a local CM study group.  Click here to get more information (you need to be registered on the Forum to access this link).

 

Kindergarten in our Home: Fall 2015

So Miss Elizabeth has finally officially joined our ranks as a kindergartener.  I don't think kindergarten is technically necessary....but when you are the youngest and are desperately wanting to be included in what is going on, and you have begged all spring to learn how to read and Mama has taken so long to get around to beginning reading lessons that you start asking your brother, and you cry on your fifth birthday when Mama says you can't start Year One until you turn six...you get the idea.

As with all of the curriculum posts I will be posting, please take them as DESCRIPTIVE of what is currently happening in my home with my particular students.  These lessons have been planned with their needs and abilities and our overall goals in mind.  I share to give you a peek inside of our home, just as I like to get a peek inside the homes of others from time to time. :)

Our kindergarten time takes 30-45 minutes each day.  You can see where it fits into our daily routine here.

Phonics (10 minutes)
We follow the basic method outlined here and here.   Elizabeth is in the word-building phase at the moment.  We occasionally mix it up by reading a bit from Run, Bug, Run.  (I don't endorse the program associated with these readers by the way.  I have just appreciated the readers for a couple of mine who have stayed in the word-building phase for quite awhile.  They are sort of similar to the Bob books, but with nicer illustrations.)  I've been trying to take photos when we are doing reading lessons and someday hope to do a series on what reading lessons have looked like in our home.

Read-Alouds (10-15 minutes)
We read each day from:
The Real Mother Goose and The Children's Bible in 365 Stories and then one of the following that Elizabeth has chosen from her kindergarten shelf:

•  a Childhood of Famous Americans biography (currently Clara Barton)
•  Dooryard Stories (Pierson)
•  Faerie Gold (Hunsicker and Lindskoog)
• Chimney Corner Stories (Hutchinson)

I also still read to her from our selection of picture books or a chapter book of her choice after lunch while the big kids do lunch clean up.

Math (10 minutes)
We are using Singapore's Essential Math for Kindergarten.  I've not used this before (actually I've used something different for kindergarten with all of my kids!), but chose this for her since I am using Singapore with the older two and it seemed the simplest thing to do. :)  Each page has a simple hands-on suggestion at the bottom with an accompanying very simple workbook exercise (so far it's just been concepts like same, different, matching sets, etc).  This is her favorite 'school' thing to do with mom by far.  (She says it's because she likes coloring the pages when we're done.)

Handwriting (less than 5 minutes)
I have a little workbook for this, which I thought she would be ready for.  But in reality she is finding it frustrating.  She knows how to form a lot of her letters (she has been writing her name and trying to write other words for some time now).   So I think we will set it aside for now and work more on getting the strokes in the right order, etc, in a more free-form way - using a salt tray or whiteboard for now, and come back to the lined pages in the workbook later.

What Happens When the Boxes Don't All Get Checked

We didn't check off all the boxes on our school list last week.  

 

Now, there's a fairly good reason for that – we've all been fighting a pretty nasty sinus bug.  No one's really been 'lay in bed all day' sick, but no one's felt in top form either.  My love-to-check-the-boxes-self tried to push through anyhow - tried being the operative word.  It was a fail.  Those boxes still didn't get checked.  And there was stress and yelling and tension in our home.  Double fail.

 

That said, I can tell you a couple of things we did do.

 

We sat outside in the backyard on a blanket as still and quiet as we could to see if we might see any birds.  After a few minutes, we saw three crows (at least we think they were crows, it was too far away to know for sure) flying in the sky overhead, soaring and swooping gracefully.  Later we saw a sunbird gathering nectar from the flowers in the rose-apple tree.  Sunbirds are magnificent.  So are the flowers on the rose-apple tree.

 

We talked a little about what  it is exactly that makes a bird a bird anyhow.  It was the children who posed the question.  They haven't yet come up with any definitive answers.  They have wings – yes, but so do bats.  They fly – yes, but what about flamingos? Ostriches? Penguins?  The discussion is underway. 

 

Michelle read a section in a book about Leonardo da Vinci.  At the end of her narration she asked: "Did Leonardo da Vinci live before or after Christopher Columbus?"   "Why do you want to know?"  "Oh, I'm just curious about whether or not people knew the world was round or not yet when Leonardo was alive."   We looked it up after lunch: they were born only a year apart from each other.  Who knows if they ever met or not, but they were certainly men of the same age.  We added them both to the same century page in her timeline book.

 

Charlotte Mason tells us that education is the 'science of relations'….that learning takes place when connections are made….that it's not so much about how much we know, but how much we care.

 

We didn't check off all our boxes last week.   But we stopped and looked and wondered.  We related this week's reading to previous reading.  Connections were made.

 

Perhaps last week wasn't so much of a fail after all.

A Socratic Moment

"In a contest, David scored 101 points. Daniel scored 25 points short of 120 points.  How many points did they score in all?"

 

"That's easy," she said.  "That's adding.  But first I need to subtract…"   She began to work out 101-25 on her paper.

 

"Wait a minute.  That's not right," I thought.  I resisted the urge to point this out to her directly.  "So why are you subtracting those numbers?" I asked aloud.

 

"Because I want to know how many points Daniel scored.  I need it to solve the problem."

 

"Right.  So, what is 101-25 going to tell you? Is it going to tell you what you want to know?"  

 

She looked at it for a minute, puzzled.  Then all of a sudden her face brightened up and she began scrubbing out 101-25 with her eraser.   "No!" she smiled.  "101 tells me about David's points.  I need to do 120-25 if I want to know Daniel's." 

 

"That's right, kiddo.  You've got it now."

---

This conversation took place between 9 year old Michelle and I the other day as we were working through a page of math problems.  Math has never been her strong subject, and problem solving especially not so.  We've actually gone through a couple of different math curricula trying to find a good fit with enough emphasis on teaching problem solving strategies since she isn't a naturally 'mathy' sort of thinker.  I've always been at a bit of a loss knowing how to help students with poor problem solving skills – this was as true in my classroom teaching days as it is with my own daughter.  I'm afraid that I often have the bad habit of jumping in and doing the thinking for her – telling her what she was doing wrong and what she needed to do to fix it.   I'm not even sure exactly what it was that stopped me from doing so this time and using thoughtful questions to help her realize and correct her own error instead.  But something did stop me, and after the fact I realized that I had successfully guided her using the Socratic mode of instruction.

 

Say what?!  Hang with me here for a few minutes.

 

The classical modes of instruction have come up a lot recently in my reading and listening.   Over on the Teaching page at Expanding Wisdom, Jennifer explains these three modes: narration, mimetic instruction, and Socratic instruction. (I encourage you to head over there if you want to read up on these in more depth as I don't have time to delve into that here.)   Narration – we use this all the time as it is a cornerstone of Charlotte Mason's methods, which we have followed more or less from the beginning of our homeschool journey.  No problem there.  Mimetic instruction makes sense to me – to teach by drawing on the student's prior knowledge, and then showing them examples of the new concept you want them to learn. Got it.  But Socratic instruction has often left me scratching my head.  It has always felt to me that the Socratic mode is something associated with big theoretical and philosophical ideas, and as such something difficult to wrap my mind around.  Maybe in a big literature discussion, probably with students older than mine are? But not something to be used in the nitty, gritty every day working-on-math-with-my-third-grader moments.

 

In her article on Socratic instruction, Jennifer offers some helpful distinctions about what the Socratic mode of instruction is not:

 

"True Socratic dialogue is not a literature discussion. It is not a predetermined set of questions used to analyze a text, and it is not a circle of students discussing a book or topic, these situations are simply discussions. They are good, beautiful, and valuable discussions and many times lead to situations where a Socratic dialogue is called for, but they are not Socratic dialogues.  In addition, a Socratic dialogue is not a planned lesson; one never knows when it will come up."

 

She goes on in the article to describe in detail what the Socratic mode really is – the ironic stage in which questions are employed to help a student understand they are making an error, the metanoia or "aha" moment when they realize it, and the maieutic stage where their minds are guided back towards truth. (Does that terminology intimidate you a little bit?  Yeah, me too.  Maybe another reason why the idea of the Socratic mode scared me?)

 

So, in other words, the Socratic mode of instruction involves the use of questions to help guide a student away from falsehood or error and back towards the Truth.

 

It's really that simple.  It's not that big complicated thing I had built it up to be in my mind.   And it is highly applicable to every kind of teaching situation, as I discovered when I unwittingly used it to guide my daughter in solving her math problem the other day.   It was natural – the questions I asked weren't the result of intense lesson preparation, they came to mind in the moment, suggested by the nature of the problem and the mistake she was making.   It was powerful – it put the onus of thinking through the problem squarely back on her, rather than her waiting for me to point out her error.  (Perhaps this is the key to our problem solving woes?)  And now that I've seen in played out in a simple, everyday situation I finally understand what the Socratic mode is supposed to look like so that I can begin to apply it elsewhere.

 

Who knew that a simple math lesson could be so profound?