Our eldest daughter and first AO graduate joins for a frank discussion of her 12 years of AO. Hear her perspective as she reflects on her homeschool experience.
As a mom with young ones just starting our HS journey, I enjoyed this so much. I could see the care and loved that you put into your daughter's education. I hope my children will be as wise to say that they want to bring honour to God through their work as your daughter did.
I really appreciate your interviews. I came across your daughter #2 interviews first, which m then led me to this. All three of you are blessed and beautiful people and so encouraging to us as we are just starting AO. I have only one and he is doing Y1 even though he is really in third grade because I just couldn’t pass up the history and some of the beautiful options (at some point I need to figure out how to catch that up!) It’s so refreshing to hear that is enough. Even though I am confident in Charlotte Mason and the lovely ladies who created AO it is nice to see and hear the anecdotal evidence and stories, and just to see how well composed, educated, and poised your daughters have become. Thank you!
Revisiting your videos again as we prep for our year. I’m so curious how things have been going for your kids since this video was posted 3 years ago. My husband and I both work in healthcare. I am sure your daughter is going to be an excellent clinician ❤
Thanks so much! She is scheduled to take the MCAT in September and apply to med school. She hopes to be a family physician in a rural area. She's had a great three years in college and has enjoyed many extracurriculars and found a wonderful church home. It's been such a joy to see her grow!
Thank you so much for sharing this! I'm the mom who is always worried "that it's not enough", and this is so encouraging. Your daughter is lovely and you have done a wonderful job.
The way you two giggle together makes my heart so happy! I love the questions you ask and her answers! My oldest is in Y8 now. This is so great. Thank you both!
I just love both of your name picks - I love Cair Paravel Academy and Ambleside Classical School. They both seem so appropriate... I might just use them too! That’s really so good. I have been reading and thinking some recently about how Charlotte Mason method is different than the prevalent contemporary classical options, but how the trivium had not been segregated by age until after Dorothy Sayers... so really Charlotte Mason is in the classical tradition, just a different kind of classical education than what is mostly done and known today. And that makes so much sense to me, now as I’m just a few years into learning about education types and how I was first drawn to classical.
I love seeing your relationship and genuine question and answers. You also covered some things I've been wondering about, and the feedback was very encouraging. Thank you for doing this!
Getting ready for Year 1. Had a lot of reservations about AO when I first heard of it. But as time got closer to starting, I just couldn't think of a better 1st grade year. I'm assuming we will be doing AO for quite a while :). I hope more AO graduates get to share their experiences soon! I really appreciated this.
I also have a house of daughters and my oldest is only in middle school but watching this had my crying... I so feel your mother’s heart. 🥰 Thank you for sharing these videos! Well done to your graduate and well done mom, clearly! 💖
I'm so glad this showed up in my recommended videos! I would love to see another video once your daughter has been in college and I would love to hear more details from your daughter's perspective on the type of writing assignments she did for Ambleside and how she feels that had compared to/prepared her for college writing. I'm not familiar at all with the highschool writing assignments in Ambleside and would love a breakdown of that. Do you write essays in Ambleside? If so, which type?
Yes, she felt well prepared for college writing, and earned an A in her Brit Lit class. AO uses oral narration in the younger years, then written narration, then essays in high school. The book Know and Tell by Karen Glass is a wonderful resource for language arts in the CM tradition. I'll ask Elizabeth if she'd like to do an "update" video :) She had a fabulous freshman year (4.0 and selected for several campus leadership positions)
This was so nice to hear I am so in love with Charlotte Masons philosophy and we use a lot of Charlotte Mason inspired things but I really want to go and jump in all the way but so worried mine won't get it or it won't be enough
I'm sorry I'm just now seeing this! Please don't worry about your kids not getting it or it not being enough. The beauty of CM is we spread a feast of beautiful ideas and our kids take what they can digest at the time. It will look different for everyone, and we might not see the results for a while, but as CM says our minds feed on ideas, so it is not wasted effort!
Ahhh what a blessing! Please, when you have a moment..what Science curriculum did your daughter use in the coop that she attended? Thank you so much in advance. (=
Her teachers chose from a variety of textbooks and curricula. Apologia was popular with a few classes, but some of the teachers pulled from various sources. They were experts and able to do that much better than I could have!
Maybe! She has the attitude that we've always had, taking things year by year and child by child. She's certainly open to the idea, and appreciates her education.
Until 8th grade, we just used AO's living books and nature study. We use our local co-op for lab sciences starting in 8th grade, but I do assign some of AO's living science books as well and we try to continue nature study. My two eldest are going into STEM fields.
In the younger years, how would you implement individual history? All of my kids are 2 years apart, eventually I'll have a year 1, year 3, year 5 and year 7. Did each kid have their specific history day during the week?
We had everyone in her own AO year, so they each had their own history. We didn't do a specific day for history, though in the younger years when you just have one or two history readings I guess you could. We just spread things out trying to vary the difficulty. Another good option is to start with AO for Groups, so anyone ages 6-9 could be in Form 1, and then let them have their own year starting with yr 4. This cuts down on reading aloud time for mom in those early years with lots of siblings. Hope that helps!
We started hs in grade 6 and plan to hs through graduation. We are transitioning to a more CM approach using living books from Ambleside & SCM. Do you have some tips on implementing CM for a new homeschooler in middle school (especially since we are nearing high school)?
I'm sorry I am so late seeing this! Have you read Karen Glass's Know and Tell? It has a section on starting narration with older children which you may find helpful. Also, the AO site has lots of info for the upper years. Lots of people have asked about AO in high school so I hope to get a video together about that soon. Blessings!
I have a 13 year old I am thinking of putting into Y 5 or 6. This is the first time we use AO. Would it matter that he is in one of these levels for 8th grade? Especially since this way he wont finish the years?
I think yr 6 or 7 might be a better fit, and both are good starting points, as yr 6 starts the history cycle over and yr 7 gets into more high school level work. But the most important thing is to place him in a year that will challenge him but not overwhelm him. Many AO graduates finish high school after yr 10 and are prepared for anything that they choose to do next.
Thank you so much. AO makes me nervous 😂 if you don’t mind me asking one last question.. will he miss out on anything beginning AO in Y6? It all looks so good I want to take AO from the beginning just to read it all ❤️
@@mytreasuredlife4993 of course it's all good, and it's hard to miss out on anything, but if year 6 is the one that challenges him best just start there. You can look at the "Pre-7" list on the AO website to see some books that the advisory thought were most important from years 1-6 and maybe add some of them to his free reads if you want.