Mix It With Brains Part II
Personalizing AmblesideOnline
How much time should school take? That depends! The PUS schools spread the material over six days plus Sunday afternoons, so that’s always an option. I have never tried to use the PUS time tables as a guide. They are time tables for classrooms, not homes, and they changed regularly. They were based on more days per week than I want to use. The Scheduling page on the AO website does give you a lot of information about how the PUS schools scheduled work and how much time was allotted, if that would be helpful for you.
Remember that the PUS teachers didn’t find that the schedules always worked out even in their school setting. In a 1915 issue of the magazine for teachers, you can read a note, “For many simple and obvious reasons with which I scarcely like to burden you it is quite impossible in a school to take all the lessons at the set time and for the set period.” So please don’t feel bound by those PUS schedules.
I tried to keep Form I to under two hours, Form II to under four hours, and Form III up through high school to under six hours. That was an upper limit for me personally, and many times our days were shorter than that.
A particular student sometimes let his or her work drag on longer than that, but I tried to schedule so that the work should not require more time than that and hopefully even less. My own days, when I had multiple students who needed my help, were often much longer, but that can’t be helped.
Although I did not use times for scheduling, sometimes I did assign times to each section of work during my planning so I could see if what I was laying out could realistically be done in the time I hoped for. I never did this, but I know some people use the times for audio versions of the books to figure out how long each reading will take. That could be very useful for evaluating the load of the schedule you're working on.
The AO booklists and schedules are a huge help. I could not have homeschooled in this way if I had to create my own booklist and schedule for each year and each term. Most of the time, I was able to use the schedules as they were, just changing the formatting and layout to make assignments clear for us and adding in the tasks that weren't already there so that I could see what needed to be done. The workload in the base schedules was generally fine for most of my kids for most terms.
But sometimes we have to make big changes. You are free to make whatever changes you need to although you want to remember the principles, and you can always come to the AO forum to show people what you are considering and ask for advice.
If you add additional work, be judicious. It’s tempting to overload a capable child, but they need time to be themselves without scheduled work. If you cut back, don’t cut complete subjects. Pare down if you need to, but leave something on the schedule for that subject.
If I need to cut back because a particular student needs a lighter schedule, I do NOT cut subjects like artist, composer, poetry, handicrafts, nature study, hymn, folk song, and drawing. I keep those subjects short and simple, but I keep them in the schedule. These subjects and similar non-book subjects give variety to the day and rest to the brain. Even if you do artist study in under 5 minutes (as I do), you have brought beauty to that child and given the mind a rest from the other work.
We sing our hymn at breakfast, or maybe I just sing it in the morning as people are getting up and getting ready. We sing our folk songs in the car. For some kids, drawing might be dot-to-dots or mazes as they develop their fine motor skills. Composer might be played during supper. Handicrafts and nature study do not have to regularly take a lot of time to be valuable. In order to keep those subjects in the mix even when life was hectic, I plan before the term starts for exactly how we will do each of them, and I prepare any needed materials in advance. I am not a mom who can do prep on the weekend for the upcoming week!
As students got older, especially in Year 7 and up, I found I needed to make adjustments more often. A child who reads quickly and needs more mind-food might have two history slots a day into which I have included more of the AO resources than what the base schedule includes. A child who struggles with reading may have one history slot, and that one slot may have fewer books with those books broken up into shorter readings each day.
I only allowed one audio book per term per student. Usually I used audio, if I did at all, for the longest literature assignment. I absolutely had some late readers, and I have four children who are spaced two years apart, so I feel your pain when it comes to reading aloud multiple years. I think it’s better to cut back or combine than to use too many audio books, but that will definitely depend on your situation.
I generally did not combine, and my family never did a morning time or other similar group time. You might find combining helpful. If you combine, the nature lore or science books can work well for that. Sometimes literature can combine well too. In the early years, Parables from Nature and Shakespeare tales combine easily. Some people put Pilgrims Progress on rotation for all their students in Form I. In Form II and up, Shakespeare and Plutarch naturally combine well.
Years 1-3 (what we call Form I) have fairly similar work loads. I would not actually add work in these years, but if a child needs more I would instead try to focus on doing more with nature study, handicrafts, foreign language, or other non-book subjects. Provide lots of meaty books for free reading for those kids. If you need to cut back in Years 1-3, look at using the Timothy Laurio audio downloads from the website for the Year 1 Parables from Nature, or read the paraphrase for that book. Try spreading one Parable across multiple weeks. This can also be helpful for Shakespeare tales or for the Blue Fairy Book. Pilgrims Progress can be read very slowly, or you can start with one of the suggested retellings like Little Pilgrim’s Progress. For those long readings, it sometimes helps to spread a chapter across two days in one week and two days in the next week.
Years 4-6 (what we call Form II) have a heavier load, but I also think they have more books that are shorter or easier to read than Years 1-3 have, so if your child struggles with reading, moving them down to Form I (Years 1-3) may not actually help. If Year 4 looks too heavy, don’t add the extra subjects that begin in Year 4. Wait until you have a term complete, then decide which of those subjects you might be ready to add. I have waited as much as two years to finally add all the subjects.
For things like Latin, some of mine did a full year of English from the Roots Up before beginning Latin, and one of mine only did English from the Roots Up and never moved to Latin. (None of them finished English from the Roots Up--we just worked slowly a bit each week until it didn't fit in our schedule anymore.) Maybe do just one Shakespeare play across the whole year when you start. Perhaps just one life from Plutarch that first year, whenever you are ready to start Plutarch.
Many kids won't need to cut back. Some may even need more. For some of my kids, I adjusted by adding a free read as a scheduled read, in addition to the other scheduled reads. A couple of mine got extra ancient history in Year 6 because I happen to have a set of Picturesque Tale of Progress books. Don’t neglect nature study. I have started including the John Muir Laws Nature Journal Connection videos as a weekly assignment and then including a separate nature journaling time on the schedule.
Form III, Years 7 and 8, probably looks overwhelming, and at first it may feel overwhelming. Year 7 especially has a lot of science, but when you get into the middle of it you’ll see that most of that science is really short and simple. Try to avoid cutting more than you absolutely have to at this level. Schedule a bit more than you think is realistic, and see how your student does. After a week or two, they may figure out how to make it work, especially if you can put most of the responsibility for managing their time on them. You can’t just suddenly make that shift, though, so for that to be successful you will have to have been gradually turning responsibility over to them for the past few years.
Be sure to start thinking about composition in the Form III years. The AmblesideOnline booklists for Years 7 and 8 recommend a grammar text and a writing handbook, but they don’t schedule out the handbook or tell you how to use it. That’s because how you need to use it will vary greatly based on your student. If your student isn’t narrating in writing fluently yet, that’s what you want to work on. Each term, re-evaluate, and try to be ready to work in a writing handbook by Year 9 at least. The AmblesideOnline forum is a great place to get concrete help with this too.
High school is when you really are encouraged to customize the schedule to hone in on your child's needs. You might hear the high school years referred to as a salad bar: take a little from here and a little from there to make your own plate. When I was scheduling the high school years, I discovered I had to do more of the scheduling work myself because there were more choices and because some of the books will require you to make the weekly schedule yourself.
In Years 9 and 10 I didn’t adjust much. By Year 11 my students generally had both dual credit classes and work commitments, in addition to any extra-curricular activities, so I had to be more choosy about what remained on the schedule. We need to respect our students’ time. Also, by high school I needed to include my student in the planning process. They didn’t have complete control over their assignments, but I asked for their preferences, and when a choice needed to be made I generally let them make it, especially towards the end.
Charlotte Mason has two chapters in Volume 6 about Continuation Schools. Those chapters are helpful to read before you start planning out high school years. They will help you know what she chose to include when school hours were quite limited, and that may guide you in the upper years when you may have to cut more than you expected.
History needs one or two history spines plus at least one biography and one primary source each week. You can do more than that, but that's probably the bare minimum. If this seems like too much, you can spread the readings out more, for instance spreading one biography over the whole year. Or you can choose shorter spines. The booklist includes several options for history spines, and the forum has other suggestions.
In high school, science should have at least one science reading every day. You might include a second or even a third daily science slot for a lab or reading. Do not replace the AO science in high school with textbooks. You may choose to use a textbook, but keep at least one of the AO science books too, and preferably all of them.
Literature should have a reading from at least one novel each week. If a novel is too long to read in one term, you might spread one novel across the year. You might read the novel once a week or a little every day. Read literature at least once a day. Besides the novel, fill in your literature space with the short stories, essays, and literary history that are already on the schedule.
For subjects such as government and economics, worldview, and philosophy, I try to include one reading a day at a minimum of something from that whole group.
Spiritual formation includes daily Bible reading, plus other spiritual formation readings. AO recommends a theology or apologetics book and a biography every term. This is an area where you should consider your specific child and adjust as needed. You may choose to read some spiritual formation books more quickly than AO schedules them, some more slowly, or replace some with something more suited to your student.
These spiritual formation schedules are fairly new and should be thought of as in beta testing, so don't be nervous about adjusting them. On the high school book lists, you'll see some titles listed as optional. Consider these if you're planning to add or substitute here. My students found those optional spiritual formation titles helpful. Avoid the temptation to squeeze in every apologetics book or theology book or other works that seem essential. Our students have their whole lives to keep reading and learning, and cramming in everything now will not improve the outcome. My goal here is for my student to know how to study the Bible and have a familiarity with theology, as well as to be familiar with some powerful stories of people of God.
Geography should be included at least once each week. AO has some great options on the booklist, and they have some other great options on a separate page on the website. You will find other options on the AO forum. You may have some options yourself. These books should be living books, usually by someone who is traveling to the places being discussed.
Life skills have to be chosen by you. In high school, I try to schedule four different life skills books per term so they read a different one every day. Those books might continue into multiple terms. Life skills is a broad category--cooking, cleaning, auto repair, finance, health, first aid. Think about the useful life information you'd like to cover before your child leaves home. Maybe you can't do all of it, but bit by bit you can do some.
At the high school level, composition needs to be planned. By the time they graduate, our teens should be able to write an essay of a couple of pages, one that has a clear structure and makes sense. All these years of oral narration followed by years of gradually increasing written narrations have laid a foundation for written composition. Very little formal writing instruction is really needed. Don’t overthink this or assign too much. But do make composition part of your weekly schedule. I usually drop grammar and dictation sometime during high school when I decide that we do not need more instruction in that area.
AO recommends using a writing handbook beginning in Year 7. Work through parts of the writing handbook, and keep the writing books AO schedules if you can. The books AO schedules are not step-by-step templates, but they are so helpful in guiding our students' writing rather than feeding them a formula. The writing handbook will give our students the structure. You can assign a couple of pages a week from the handbook, once your student is comfortable with written narrations, and then you can also assign your student to revise one written narration each week. After that's going well, you can assign an essay once a month or so. Slow and steady works in this area just as well as all the others.
If you need more help with this, you'll find experienced advisors on the AO forum. Karen Glass also has a new set of composition instruction books available from Simply Charlotte Mason. I found college Speech class to be an excellent introduction to formal writing or a transition to college level work. Some of my students already had written essays at home before they took a Speech class and some had not.
Every term of every year, pray throughout this scheduling process. Be humble, and recognize that what you want may not be what your students need. Review the principles regularly so that you will notice if you are straying and so that you can use them to guide your planning choices.
Education is a long process that doesn’t end when our children finish school. We do not have to rush or cram. Pray over the schedules before you make them, while you are making them, and every day that you are using them. God knows what our students need much better than we do.
There is no perfect schedule. All choices have consequences, and with God's help we can use our own ingenuity to choose between them. Do the best you can each term, and at the end of the term re-evaluate and try again. Repeat until you reach the end. Always mix it with brains!
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