How I Scheduled Year 6

This is my fifth time going through AmblesideOnline's Year 6 with a student, but the first time I've documented the Year 6 scheduling process. Year 6 is substantially different this time than it was the previous times, so I will have some decisions to make. I will mostly be scheduling Term 1 of Year 6 for this post, although if I make additions that affect the other terms I will usually go ahead and put those in so I don't forget them later. The first thing I do is download the Word format (.doc) chart from the AO website. I then open my Google Drive to the folder where I keep schedules, then choose Upload a File and load this Word document. Then I have to tell Google to save this as a Google Doc. Then I rename it to designate which school year and which child this schedule is for. Then I delete the .doc file from my Google Drive since now I have a Google Docs file instead. Next, I scan down the list of books on the left side of the chart, looking for any titles I don't plan to use. We aren't going to read the Sally Hemmings chapter in Answering the Cry, so I delete that row from the chart since that's the only chapter scheduled this term. We did all of Anatomy in Year 5, so I delete that row too. The Age of Fable schedule changed when we were at the end of Year 5, so we've already read what's assigned in Year 6 now, so I delete the Age of Fable assignments. I noticed that Geography assigns either Halliburton or Hillyer. We will read Halliburton, so I go ahead and delete the Hillyer assignments now. It's always a good idea to read the booklist footnotes while scheduling a year. I am going off to read those footnotes now. Having considered the information in the footnotes, I am ready to continue. I like to organize the readings into "units" or "sections" that each have four assignments per week. I'm going to start doing that so I can see where I have room for the books I need to add. I also use this process to see where I need to subtract or rearrange. As-is, the Bible section of the chart for Year 6 Term 1 has two weekly assignments except for a couple of weeks with three assignments (because of Trial and Triumph). So eventually, I will probably add some content to the Bible section, either by moving another book from elsewhere in the schedule or by adding a book or two. History has two assignments for the whole term and three assignments per week for half of the term. Geography only has one assignment per week, but Long's Geography isn't included in this part of the schedule. If I choose to assign those readings, a few weeks will have two geography assignments. Science has four books listed (since I removed the fifth, Anatomy) but they give us three assignments per week because The Elements and The Mystery of the Periodic Table alternate weeks. I have removed Age of Fable as I mentioned previously, so I only have one Literature book listed, The Hobbit, and that one has to go because this student has already read that book several times. Poetry happens daily, so it makes its own category. The next page of the schedule has subjects listed that don't have a specific Year 6 schedule. I am going to move these up into the other part of the schedule. Shakespeare is simple because it's literature, so I will move it up into the Literature section. I will divide this play up and put the weekly schedule into the cells in this row. (Please don't use AI for this. You can do it yourself more easily than you can check and edit what AI gives you.) I added a row under Literature and labeled it with the name of our Shakespeare play, and then I deleted the Shakespeare row from the section below. I added a row under History and labeled it with the name of our Plutarch's life that's scheduled for Term 1. Then I deleted the Plutarch row from below. All the Daily Work items will get their own row, alphabetized with the other categories, because they will themselves have four assignments per week so they don't need to fit into the other categories. I use a set of four 'O's in each cell in the row to give us a way to mark off these assignments as they are completed. Written Narration is listed as weekly work, but it will be a daily item for us. I am adding a section I'm calling Enrichment. This will get Artist/Composer, which share a row because I schedule each one every other week. I'll also include Drawing, Handicraft, and maybe Typing. It's a little flexible what goes into that category each term. We start school in July, so I will schedule the artist and composer from Term 3 of the current school year for Term 1 of this upcoming school year. I'm adding another section I'll call Written, although that label is fairly arbitrary. I'm going to put Timeline/Book of Centuries in there, along with Grammar and Dictation. Nature study can go in Geography. I'm also adding a row into which I'll put the suggested chapters from Long's Geography. I'll also add Map Drill to Geography. I don't schedule Hymn, Folk Song, or Free Reads. We sing the hymn in the morning at breakfast time, we sing the folk songs in the car, and we usually do a pretty good job of getting through most of the free reads without scheduling them. So we have cleared out all the daily and weekly work from that last page of the term schedule. I decided to schedule Huck Finn in place of The Hobbit. So I divided that book up fairly evenly across the twelve terms and put those assignments in the Hobbit row, which is now the Huck Finn row. I also moved Literature up so it's under Geography and above Science. I like to have my categories in alphabetical order. I will need more in Literature before I'm done since it has only two weekly assignments currently. I'm going to use the old schedule for The Sea Around Us, since I have the Young Readers Edition and we finished Anatomy last year. (I will add that schedule to all three terms so I don't have to come back to it later.) That gives me four weekly assignments for Science, so that category is complete. However, I don't have the book Einstein: Theory of Relativity that's on the schedule; I have Ordinary Genius, which is an alternate option that isn't listed on the chart. So I will manually change that row. (The Ordinary Genius schedule is on the Year 6 schedule page listed week by week.) Looking at Literature again, I decide to move Animal Farm from Term 2 to Term 1 and spread it over most of the term. We're going to read the full Odyssey in Terms 2 and 3 so I am happy to lighten Term 2. I still two assignments in most weeks for Bible. I'm going to add a book there that's helpful for puberty preparation. I'm also going to schedule another Christian book in that category. It's not an AO book, but it's a good one that this student should be ready for. It has 181 actual pages of text, so I'll divide that by 12 to see how many pages I am aiming for a week. I'll try to schedule chapters or portions of chapters to get us close to that amount each week. (If the weekly pages looks too high, I will spread the book over multiple terms.) I did remember at the last minute to leave two weeks free from one of the extra books to make room for the Trial and Triumph assignments. I'll look over this again to be sure things look balanced. I'll clean up formatting. But basically, this should be our schedule for AmblesideOnline Year 6 Term 1 this year. I'll work with my student to choose a poem, a Bible passage, and a Shakespeare passage to use for recitation. I'll put together a reusable checklist of daily and weekly work for the student to use. And I'll put together specific math, foreign language, and drawing assignments. I'll find the art prints. I'll make sure I have mp3s for all the folk songs. And then we should be done.

How I Scheduled Year 5 (Another Version)

 

This year is my fifth time scheduling AmblesideOnline's Year 5.  I've previously blogged about the process I used for one of those instances.

When I schedule a year, I don't start with a previous version I've created for another child.  I start with a fresh copy of the latest official schedule chart.  Both the .doc and the .odt versions of the charts, available on the AmblesideOnline website, allow editing, so I download one of those.  I use OpenOffice on my computer, so I would download the .odt version if I planned to keep it on my computer.  However, I usually store my schedules in Google Drive, and the .doc version converts to Google Docs better than .odt does, so this time I am using the .doc version.

My first step is to download the .doc chart from AmblesideOnline.  That's available on the Year 5 Schedule page.

Now I log in to Google Drive and upload that chart to my Schedules folder.  When I open that file, Google converts it.  The first thing I do once it opens is change the title of the document so I know which student in what calendar year it was used.  Then I go to the menu at the top and choose File > Save as Google Docs.  Last, I go back to my Google Drive and delete the original upload of the .doc file so I just have the converted Google Docs file.

Then I look through the footnotes on the Booklist page for Year 5.  That lets me know what I need to keep in mind as I make the schedule.

I'm ready to dig in to the schedule!  I see that the first category, Bible, has two assignments each week, mostly.  I want to have four assignments each week in each category, so I'm going to adjust categories and move assignments.  For Bible, I can see that the New Testament reading sometimes has passages from two different gospels.  If those are long enough to justify separating them, I could create a new row and move one assignment from each of those weeks to the new row.  Looking over them, I do not think they are long enough to make this a good solution for this child.  So I am now looking over the entire first term schedule to see what else could be included in the grouping with the Bible assignments.  Trial and Triumph is a natural fit, so I move that row into the Bible section.  Answering the Cry doesn't fit topically, but the two assignments this term will fit neatly in between the Trial and Triumph assignments, if I shift Answering the Cry by one week.  So I add a row for Answering the Cry in the Bible section, and then I shift the Freeman assignments over to be weeks 6 and 7 so they don't overlap Trial and Triumph.  That gives me three assignments most weeks and two in some weeks in the Bible section.  For now, I'm going to leave that as it is.

The next section on the chart schedule is History.  It has four assignments each week already, since I moved two books out of it.  One of the books, the Bell/Curie biography, is not scheduled out.  I have to select the bio I will use and then schedule it.  Since this is my fifth time through, I already have a biography I have used and scheduled before.  If I did not, I would go look on the AO forum to see what others have recommended, or I'd post there to ask for reviews.  As it happens, the Year 5 schedule has had changes since I last used it, so I may need to create a new schedule for some of the science biographies.  I will come back to that.

I'm going to skip over Geography for now, because I'll need to add quite a bit to that or shuffle those items into other categories.

Science already has four assignments in each week, so I'm going to move on for now.

Literature has two assignments per week to start with.  The booklist also lists Plutarch and Shakespeare as literature, but on the chart those are in the separate page of daily and weekly work.  Moving those to Literature would give me four assignments each week in that category.  If I had a child who needed a lighter schedule, I might change the Arthur schedule to allow two weekly slots for each Arthur assignment and then cut either Shakespeare or Plutarch this term.  This particular child shouldn't need a lighter schedule, so I will leave all of that in.  I also need to decide which Arthur we are going to use.  Sometimes I let my kids choose between either Pyle or Green, but this year I'm choosing Green and will put Pyle on the free read shelf.  The chart has the schedule for Green already, so I don't need to make any changes to that row.  

I added two rows, one for Shakespeare and one for Plutarch, and I deleted those two rows from the daily/weekly section.  In the Plutarch row, I changed the label to the name of the person we'll be studying (from the Plutarch rotation) and then put numbers 1-12 in the weekly assignments.  For Shakespeare, I often switch things up based on interest and age appropriateness.  I looked at the Shakespeare rotation, but I also need to look at the schedules I made for the last year to see which plays we did (since I can't remember).  This year's assigned plays should work fine; we didn't read any of them last year, and none of them should be a problem for this child.  I'm actually going to go ahead and add those titles to the schedule in terms 2 and 3 also, right now, just to save the work later on.

Shakespeare has to be manually scheduled.  I usually list each scene number (I-1, I-2, and so on) on a sheet of paper, then count the pages in each scene and note them next to the scene number.  Then I schedule over 11 weeks, trying to keep each week roughly even but mostly read complete scenes.  In week 12, we plan to watch a movie version if possible.

Poetry is daily, so I put four O's in each block, two on top and two on bottom, so we can cross them off as it's done each week.

Now to the Daily Work list.  Copywork moves up in between Bible and History, and gets a row of four O's in each block because it's daily.  Recitation moves up between Geography and Science and also gets the row of O's.  I work down the Daily list, moving items up into the correct alphabetical placement in the main schedule page and adding the row of O's.  

While I'm at it, I also rearrange the rows in the main part of the Term 1 schedule so the categories are alphabetical.  I still haven't decided what to do with Geography, but for now I just move it to where it belongs.

If I needed to lighten the load, I might make Latin only once a week, or do the modern foreign language twice a week and Latin twice a week.  

I add a category that I call Enrichment.  It has artist and composer (which are each done every other week so they count together as one item per week), and then I add other odd tasks that are done once a week.  Exactly what goes in there changes from term to term.  For artist and composer, I'm scheduling a term behind because we start school in July, before the new selections are released for the year.  Now that all the rotations are basically done, I could stop doing that, but I still do it that way.  I will also include Drawing, Nature Study, and Handicraft in this category this term, I think.  Before the term begins, I will decide exactly what we will do for those three subjects.  I may even add specific assignments to the schedule for some of them.

The official schedule currently doesn't list Dictation, Written Narration, or Map Drill.  (It should, so I've posted in the Typos thread in the AO forum so that can be corrected.)  It does list Timeline, Geography, and Grammar, all of which still need to be added to the main part of my Term 1 schedule.  Timeline could fit under Bible, which only has three assignments at most each week right now.  Dictation, Written Narration, and Grammar could all go in one spot, but I actually want to schedule Written Narration daily for this particular student.  

I'm going to add a category called English which will include Dictation and Grammar.  I need to decide how often I will do each.  This student did Grammar frequently in the first two terms of Year 4, so I think maybe we will do it only once a week this term.  And since we're new to Dictation, once a week is probably good for that too.  And I think only have two assignments in this category each week will give us some flexibility to put them on days that are less busy.

I'm going to add the Long's Home Geography assignments to the Geography category.  And then I'll include Map Drill there as well.  That category will only have two or three assignments each week, but that's ok.  It will also help make our weeks more flexible.  We have four assignments for Long's over the term, and I will try to put each of them into a week where we have only three Bible assignments.  They aren't in that category, but it will help balance the workload anyway.  I actually shifted some of the assignments for Answering the Cry and Trial and Triumph so that I could more evenly schedule Long's while still keeping the load balanced.  I could have put Long's under Bible officially, because these labels aren't that important, but I didn't bother.

I will go through in a bit and put specific assignments for some subjects like Shakespeare and the biography.  But otherwise, this schedule is done.  Oh, but it's not!  I just glanced at my shelf and noticed Physics Lab in a Housewares Store.  This is a book that's optional, and I forgot to add it.  I will add it, and I will decide how to schedule it.  I've scheduled it before, but I will check to see if I want to adjust that schedule, because some of those books that I first scheduled long ago have schedules I don't love anymore.  I'm going to put it in Geography, since Science is full and so is History (which could otherwise have taken Story of Inventions).

The Courage of Our Capacity

 

I am, I can, I ought, I will.

The motto of Charlotte Mason’s PNEU schools helped students and teachers focus on their own capabilities and responsibilities.  This is not a self-help motto though.  Behind these words lies an understanding of God at work in me and through me to make this possible.  

Because of God, I am. 
With God’s help, I can. 
For God’s glory, I ought.
By God’s grace, I will.

As homeschool parents, we often feel the weight of responsibility and inadequacy.  How can we possibly nurture, and teach, and civilize these tiny humans so that they reach all the potential God gave them?  Where do we find the courage to keep trying, day after day?  With God’s help, I can.

Homeschooling is a ministry to our families.  For some of us, it will be a lifelong ministry.  For others, it will be a season of ministry.  We can’t know in advance which it will be, either.  God has His own plans for us and for our families.  But as long as God calls us to this ministry, He equips us for it.  It takes courage for us to recognize our weakness and still believe that God can work in and through us to accomplish His purposes.  In Second Timothy, Paul encouraged Timothy to rekindle his faith, to renew his enthusiasm that came from God:  “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”  (II Timothy 1:7 KJV)  Evidently Timothy had become discouraged and disheartened, brought to tears by his work.  That’s relatable to homeschool moms.

Paul says that God did not give us a spirit of fear.  We all feel fear at times.  That spirit of fear tells us that we aren’t capable, that we are failing.  It points out every imperfection, real or imaginary.  The spirit of fear magnifies every setback.  It makes us feel like our low points will last forever.  But that spirit is not from God.  God has not given us a spirit of fear.  God has given us a Spirit “of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

If you have God’s Spirit, you have the power you need to do the work that God has given you to do.  It is not your own power; it is the power of the Holy Spirit in you.  You do not know all that you need to know.  You can’t do this in your own strength.  But once you agree to begin and to do the best that you can, you have Divine help.  In her first volume, Home Education, Charlotte says, “. . . we do not always make enough of the fact that Divine grace is exerted on the lines of enlightened human effort; that the parent, for instance, who takes the trouble to understand what he is about in educating his child, deserves, and assuredly gets, support from above; . . .”  (V1, p. 104)  Keep learning, so that when the need arises you are equipped to at least recognize the problem you’re facing and have some idea where to go for help.   Keep praying and listening to God, so that you can follow where He is leading you.  But trust that God has given you and will continue to give you the power you need to do the work that he’s given you to do.

God’s spirit teaches us to love:  to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.  In our own strength, we cannot love God or our neighbor, but Paul reminded Timothy that we have a Spirit of love, helping us to love when we cannot.   We need that help to love God when we can’t understand his purposes or feel his presence.  We need that help when we try to love these people in our home who thwart our plans and show us the aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to see.  In her fourth volume, Ourselves, Charlotte says that “Love, and the service of love, are the only things that count.”  (V4, Pt 2, p. 154)  All our accomplishments don’t really matter unless they are done in love and for love.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  (I Corinthians 13:3)  Our relationships with our children and our spouse, our relationships with the people and the world around us, our relationship with God, and their relationship with God matter more than what we can do.  When the schedule is shot and our expectations are crumbling, we have to stop and ask God to help us love the people in front of us.

Until I became a mom, I did not question that I had a “sound mind.”  Now that I have five kids and have had four teenagers, I know that I do not have a sound mind.  “Sound mind” in Paul’s encouragement to Timothy is rendered differently by different translators because there’s not a good English equivalent.  The Amplified Bible says “sound judgment and personal discipline [abilities that result in a calm, well-balanced mind and self-control].”  Paul says that God has given us a Spirit that enables us to have this calm, well-balanced mind and self-control.  So when we are out of balance, out of calm, out of control, that too is not from God.  Rather than pressing on in the midst of our chaos, that’s a signal to stop and pray and look for what God wants us to do and be in that moment. This can be terribly humbling.  Our own judgment gets clouded by emotions and circumstances.  Our own discipline gets distracted by the crises of the moment or waylaid by our health or lack of rest.  God’s Spirit gives us unclouded judgment and focused discipline when we acknowledge our own need and wait for Him.

All believers in Christ have this Spirit “of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”, but we must accept this help; we must ask for it and look for it and recognize our need for it. In Ourselves, Charlotte Mason reminds us, “Help comes to those who endeavor and who ask.”  (V4, Pt 2, p. 135)  It’s not enough to endeavor without asking, and it’s not enough to ask without making any effort.  When we fall down, we ask for help and get back up and try again.  Jesus told the disciples, when they had tried and failed, “’This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’”  (Mark 9:29 ESV) When our situation seems hopeless, when a problem seems intractable, prayer is our first and best resort.  In fact, it’s best if we resort to prayer before we reach an impasse.  “Pray without ceasing.”  Pray first, pray last, pray in celebration and in grief, in success and in failure.

In Ourselves, Charlotte Mason describes the different types of courage each person needs to draw upon.  The courage of our capacity is “the courage which assures us that we can do the particular work which comes in our way, and will not lend an ear to the craven fear which reminds us of failures in the past and unfitness in the present.”  (Ourselves Book I p. 117)  The courage of our capacity tells us that we have God’s Spirit within us, helping us all the time.  The courage of our capacity reminds us to go to God, believing that he will give us His Spirit of power and love and a sound mind.

Paul tells the Corinthians, “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,  so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”  (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

Your external qualifications are not important.  Your sense of your skill as a teacher is not important.  Your background, your monetary resources, your academic achievements don’t affect this.  God calls whom He calls, and He equips us for the work He gives us, so that when we boast, we can only boast in the Lord.

Face each day with Joshua’s admonition:  (Joshua 1:9) “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Immunity Brew

 I love this recipe from Gwen's Nest for Cold and Flu Brew. When I make it, I adjust a bit.

Pour one jar of cranberry juice into the pot.

Fill that empty jar with apple cider, then pour into the pot.

Do that again.

Add a large can of frozen orange juice.

Add 5 or 6 sticks of cinnamon.

Add some cloves and star anise.

Simmer for as long as you're willing to wait.

How I Scheduled Year 4

 

This is my fifth time scheduling AmblesideOnline's Year 4, but Year 4 is a bit different this time than it was the other four times I've been through it.  Also, it's been several years since I've looked closely at Year 4, so this is almost a fresh look at the year.

This particular Year 4 student will be on the older end of the range because of a fall birthday.  Also, this student has great reading and writing, so that will impact some of my scheduling choices.  Other times I have scheduled Year 4 have looked different based on the needs of those students.

To begin, I visit the AmblesideOnline website (amblesideonline.org), found Year 4 on the By Year menu, clicked through to the Year 4 schedule, then clicked on DOC in the list next to Choose a Format.  This downloads a chart version of the Year 4 schedule in Microsoft Word (.doc) format.  I think this format loads into Google Drive more smoothly than the Open Office (.odt) format does (although Open Office is actually what I use on my own computer).  

Since I like to edit my schedules in Google Drive (merely for convenience and because all the other schedules are out there), I went to Google Drive and uploaded the downloaded file to the folder where I store my schedules.  It uploaded as a .doc, so I went to the file menu and chose Save as Google Docs.  Once that version of the chart saved, I deleted the .doc version from my Google Drive.  

I don't see anything in Bible that needs changing.  In History, the first issue I notice is that several readings are scattered around amongst the weeks, with gaps in between.  I want, if possible, to spread these scattered readings so that no two of them are scheduled in the same week.  CHOW and Answering the Cry for Freedom already don't overlap, so I can move the Trial and Triumph readings slightly to achieve my objective.  I shift them into Weeks 2, 6, and 11, and now I have no doubled-up assignments each week between CHOW, Answering the Cry, and Trial and Triumph.

I now have three assignments each week in the Bible category and three (or two some weeks) each week in History.

Storybook of Science has two chapters per week.  I insert a new row under that one and separate those assignments so each cell has only one chapter.  If I spread out the Gregor Mendel picture book over the whole term, that gives me four assignments per week in that section.  However, I don't think I need to spread the Mendel book over the term, so I will look for something else that could also fit there.  I decided to move Minn of the Mississippi down to Natural History, then spread out Mendel over a few weeks in the spaces where Minn isn't schedule.  That gives me four assignments most weeks (and three in some) in that category.

In Literature, I'm adding a row so that one chapter from Robinson Crusoe can go in each cell; it has two rows per week now.  For Shakespeare, I'm going to schedule Midsummer Night's Dream.  I generally start my Year 4 student in that play.  Some of my new Year 4 students don't do Shakespeare at all.  This one should be able to handle it, but we'll start with Midsummer because it's short and fun and not too complicated.  I will fill in exact assignments by Act and Scene.

In the Poetry row, I will put four 'O's in each cell.  That let's us color in an 'O' each day we complete that task.

I'll insert a row above Natural History for Math, and I'll put the 'O's in the cells instead of listing assignments.

I'll insert a row above History for Copywork, and I'll put 'O's in the cells there too.

(I'm working my way down the Daily/Weekly list, putting items in the main part of the schedule and deleting them from this part.)

Foreign language has been Spanish, and we'll keep that.  I need to think about how long we should spend on Foreign Language each day before I decide how to schedule my students's Spanish and Latin (which will be new for us this year).

Plutarch will fit nicely in History, giving us four assignments in almost every week.

I've added a new section called Enrichment.  In it, I've put Artist/Composer, Drawing, Sloyd, and Crochet/Sewing.  

It looks like the extra Geography readings take about 5 weeks.  There are exactly five weeks when Minn is not scheduled, so those Geography readings would fit neatly there.  But that means I have to find somewhere else to put Gregor Mendel.  The History section has some weeks with only three assignments right now.  I'm going to move Mendel up there, spread over three weeks.  That fills in my History section so all weeks but one have four assignments.

Now I'll add two rows to Natural History, one labeled CM's Geography and one labeled Long's Geography.  I will fill in cells with the chapter titles, inserted into weeks that don't have Minn assignments.

Only a few items are left on that second page.  I created a category called Miscellaneous and put Grammar, Map Drill, Nature Study, and Timeline in it.  Recitation will get its own row with four 'O's in each cell because we do Recitation every day.

Now I just have to add our Spanish and Latin work.  Oh, and select recitation passages.  I will work with my student to select a Bible passage, poem (from our term's poet), and a passage from our Shakespeare play.

Done!

After sitting with this for a few days, I'm making some changes.  I remembered that we needed Typing practice at least weekly so that eventually we can type the written narrations.  Also, we needed to have Written Narration as an item.  I cut out Crochet and made Sloyd/Sew our handicraft.  (We sometimes have sewing club, so on those weeks that's our handicraft.  Otherwise, it will be Sloyd.)  I originally thought I would put Typing into that Enrichment section, but then I noticed that Nature Study was in Miscellaneous.  Nature Study is a much more robust activity than the other work in Miscellaneous, so I moved it to Enrichment and put Typing in Miscellaneous.  Now I need to see how to include Written Narration, which I originally forgot.

The only category at this point that has fewer than four assignments per week is Bible, which has three most weeks and two in some weeks.  So that's the natural place to add Written Narration as a weekly assignment. 

Now, a couple of weeks later, I'm revisiting this schedule.  The additional subjects that are added in Year 4, such as Latin, Plutarch, Shakespeare, and Grammar, each require attention.  I am weighing cutting back on some of that so we aren't adding all of those in Term 1.  I think for my oldest I may have added them all at once, but my other kids eased in more gradually.  I am going to mull over this current schedule and decide how much to leave in for the first term.  

Looking over the schedule, I think I have spaced things out pretty well across our four-day week.  The only subject that appears to be a big addition is Latin, which I've scheduled daily.  Because of this particular child's bent, I don't expect Plutarch and Shakespeare to be terribly hard to add in, but we will see when we get there.  I think instead of cutting anything, I'm going to keep my expectations low.  For Spanish and Latin, we will strive to get to them daily, but just do very short lessons.  I may just do Mad Libs for Grammar in the first term.  This may be enough of an adjustment to allow us to ease into these new subjects.

You can see the first few weeks of our Term 1 here.

How I Use Ray's Primary Arithmetic

Ray's Arithmetic was one of the first books I bought when I decided to homeschoool.  Really, it's a set of books, and I bought the reprinted box set on ebay, determined to give my kids a good start in math using time-tested materials.  The box set comes with a teacher guide from Ruth Beechick, and that's the guide I used to get an idea how the books should work.  Immediately I ran into difficulties, though, because the prescribed sequence didn't match my child's needs.  I think I was a member of a Yahoo group that discussed Ray's specifically or maybe a broader category that included Ray's, and that's where I found out about the original teacher guide for Ray's.  That changed everything!

If you're planning to use Ray's Arithmetic to teach math, sit down and read that teacher guide.  You'll see more clearly how the books are meant to work together.  In fact, you'll see that you don't even need to use a book for quite awhile, since you'll be working with counters to develop number sense.

When I start a young child learning math formally, we start with counters, just doing short lessons.  I set out some objects and ask how many that is.  I try to keep the number small enough that the child can tell me how many without counting.  Once we have the number established, then I take one away and set it to the side.  "Now how many are there?"  We repeat this process for all the various combinations that make up that number.  And the lesson is done.

When the child is pretty comfortable with 1-10 this way I often will start adding counters sometimes instead of just subtracting them.  I think Ray's actually recommends working on number sense up to 20, which is probably much better.  I just get impatient.

At this point, I may actually get out the Primary Arithmetic book and start asking questions from the addition or subtraction section, just using the word problems.  At first, we'll do problems only for one number family and only in order, not mixed up.  Once that's pretty comfortable or if the child notices the pattern, I will ask the questions out of order, but still staying on one page.  If we need more practice, I will use a deck of cards with only the number cards.  As I turn a card face up, the child has to add that number to the number we're working with that day.  If the answer is wrong or slow in coming, the card goes back into the deck so we can encounter it again.  This provides lots of quick practice and is much easier to use than traditional flashcards.

It's important to realize that this stage of math learning may take a long time.  This is foundational and should be solid before moving on.  There's no rush!

Once basic addition and subtraction are solid, you can progress to the more complicated exercises in the book, using your judgment about what to introduce.  Refer to the teacher guide for guidance too.

Don't move on to multiplication and division until you see that addition and subtraction are well understood.  At that point, I go back to the counters and start slowing building a multiplication table, on paper, with the child.  Once we have a number family added to the multiplication table, we will do the word problems for that family from Primary, using the table as a reference.  We'll keep practicing one number family at a time until the child is comfortable with that.  If we need more practice, I will make up word problems.  Peggy Kaye's Games for Math can be helpful at this stage too.  Eventually we'll use the playing cards as flashcards in a similar manner to the way we used them with addition and subtraction.

Slow and steady is key.  Don't move on until you see that the understanding is solid.  When basic addition and subtraction are firm, you can do the more advanced addition and subtraction work in the Primary book, but you don't have to do every bit of it.  When basic multiplication and division are firm, you can do the more advanced multiplication and division work in the Primary book, but you don't have to do every bit of it.  You decide what is needed.

Scheduling Signs and Seasons

AmblesideOnline uses Signs and Seasons in Years 7-9.  The official schedules for those years include broad ranges of the book for each term.  It's up to each family to decide how to spread that work across the term.  Here's one way of doing that.  There's no magic to this, so consider this just an example.  You could divide up the work vastly differently and have it still be as good or better as this arrangement.

Each column in the table is one week.  In each week, you'll have one passage to read (except where that week has dashes) and two field activities.  Generally, you want to keep a record of the field activities in your field notebook or journal.

Sample Signs and Seasons Schedule