A Homeschooling Year for a 9 year old Girl - Ambleside Online Year 3

Portrait by Berthe Morisot 1886

Moozle completed Ambleside Online's Year 3 which covers the late 1400's-1600's (Renaissance to Reformation) about two months ago. She was eight years old when we started Year 3 but turned nine a few months later.
The scheduled books and time period of Year 3 didn't require much adapting for our Australian context but I did do some substitutions, additions & subtractions which I'll share in this post.

History & Literature

We used some of the chapters from This Country of Ours, especially those scheduled in Term 2, because of their connection with British History eg. Sir Walter Raleigh, the Cavaliers and the Pilgrims.

We skipped American Tall Tales and didn't do Pilgrim's Progress because I'd already used it as a family read aloud the previous year.

Shakespeare and Plutarch

Moozle has been listening in when I've done both of these with her older siblings for some years and this year she decided to try doing her own written narrations. I wrote about that here.

Just be aware that she's a girl and an avid reader and that the three boys above her wouldn't have done this in a fit. It was a pleasant surprise to me to suddenly have another child who loved to write as it hadn't happened for quite a few years.

I also started studied dictation with her around the time she started to write and have seen some improvement in her spelling which used to be woeful.

Natural History

Warrigal the Warrior by C.K. Thompson - as a read aloud

Wonderland of Nature by Nuri Mass - for help with nature study. We also use The Handbook of Nature Study and participate in the Outdoor Hour (see link on side bar).

Bush Stories by Amy Mack - this is out of print but I found a copy in excellent condition in a secondhand Aussie bookshop which sells through Abebooks. The book I have was a reprint done in 1983.

I read aloud Pagoo & Secrets of the Woods - natural history is a favourite topic for this young lady and she's loved everything AO has scheduled plus our Australian selections.

Food & Nutrition

This eBook is quite a good introduction to food and nutrition for a child especially if you are familiar with Nourishing Traditions as the author shares a similar view to those expressed in that book. I bought my copy when the author was offering about 25% off - I don't think I would have paid the full price of $19.95. But then again, I haven't seen much else on food and nutrition for this age group. There are 15 short chapters with a colouring page, which we didn't use, plus a word puzzle at the end of each chapter (she loves these). We didn't start the book until about half way through the year so we're continuing with it in Year 4.

The Body Book for Younger Girls

I used this book as a framework for talking about puberty and the changes girls go through as they approach this time in their lives. The book is quite well done and is written for girls of 8 years and up to read on their own. I read it aloud and skipped bits and pieces that I didn't think were applicable - nothing inappropriate but just unnecessary for her at this stage (bras, boys, tampons, body image).

The book covers pre-puberty and puberty in a practical and sensible way. It has 109 well illustrated pages and I spread it out over a few months. 

 

Instrument - Cello

After having piano lessons for a couple of years, Moozle started cello lessons at the beginning of the year. She has always wanted to play this instrument and is doing well. We started off renting a cello but when she outgrew that one we decided to buy one secondhand. Hopefully, she won't outgrow this one too soon. This is one drawback to starting stringed instruments with younger children. We have four different sized violins that one of her older sisters went through. We didn't have to worry about that with our children who played the piano.

Highland dancing

Moozle entered her second competition a few weeks ago. At her first competition she knocked the swords as she danced. That instantly disqualifies you so she had to stand in 'first position of arms' until the other dancers had finished. This time she won first place in The Lilt and second place in The Swords, which delighted her no end.

Highland dancing competitions are quite challenging in that you gave a group of dancers on stage - there were six for most of the dances at this last competition. The dancers are in various levels so you could have a ten year old dancing alongside a 20 year old. They often have different steps to their dances and they are all dancing at the same time with a couple of judges watching their every move. They have to really concentrate on what they are meant to be doing - a good test of their attentiveness.

Timeline

 A very simple one:

We use an extra large spiral drawing book just to keep everything in the one place. At some stage I may pull the pages out and connect them all up in chronological order. She's marked in our Plutarch men in another section.

Geography

Charlotte Mason's Geography book. There is a link to it on the AO website.

Explore His Earth - Moozle loved this book and I posted our schedule, with videos and other things we used as we read through it here. (We skipped most of the activities suggested in the book.)

French

Free resources we used are here.

Music & Art Appreciation

As I've tended to do all along, we mostly studied different artists and composers to the AO term selections.

Moozle read Hildegard's Gift by Megan Hoyt and listened to a couple of Hildegard's compositions but we didn't spend a lot of time on her music.

We did spend a few months on some Spanish composers, which was wonderful and I chose some pieces that featured the cello and other stringed instruments.

Marc Chagall was an artist she enjoyed.

I posted some of the folksongs related to the Year 3 time period here.

Handicrafts

English paper piecing - this is the current project which might eventually turn into a cushion.

Another sewing project in the past year was this bag holder. 

She enjoyed trying her hand with some basic leather work & is keen to do some more projects.

Memory work

Scripture - we all do this together. Which reminds me - I need to update our list and put it up on my pages index at the top of the blog.

Poems -  Poetry is another area I often tweak to better suit our situation and interests. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, The Eagle by Tennyson and The Arrow & the Song by Longfellow were some that Moozle chose to memorise on her own. My Country by Dorothea Mackellar, an Australian poem, is one that she enjoyed also.

This is a poetic narration she did based on a story form The Jungle Book:

Some of the free reads that we don't have were substituted with Australian titles:

Verity of Sydney Town by Ruth C. Williams - this is a better fit for Year 5 historically but I added it because I thought Moozle would enjoy it more now than leaving it until later and the setting is an area we are familiar with.

Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner

The Australian Twins by Daphne Rook

The Bush Boys by James Tierney

Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery - I added this as a night-time read aloud because I love the story and Moozle kept asking me if she could read it. It's a wonderfully rich book and I'd always planned to read it aloud to her at some time as I'd done with her older siblings years ago.

Updated to add: I was intrigued by some references the author made to the sword Chrysaor and an Elizabethan poem and finally found out some things about them recently.

Ambleside Online Year 7 - Creative Narrations using Alliteration

Many children write verse as readily as prose, and the conciseness and power of bringing their subject matter to a point which this form of composition requires affords valuable mental training. One thing must be borne in mind. Exercises in scansion are as necessary in English as in Latin verse. Rhythm and accent on the other hand take care of themselves in proportion as a child is accustomed to read poetry.

A Philosophy of Education Pg. 193

Bengy is working through The Grammar of Poetry and I asked him to use write a narration based on the Battle of Bosworth (covered in AO Year 7) using alliteration:

Lesson 23 is on Alliterative Imitation and the student is asked to read some excerpts from Beowulf and then write an alliterative poem with a similar sound and feel. Bengy chose to base his poem on Ivanhoe.

We're not rushing through The Grammar of Poetry but it's been interesting to note that this is my son who would choose to do a poetic narration any day over any other kind of narration but he struggles with the more formalised presentation in this book. I have the older spiral edition which doesn't have a great deal of practice in some sections where it would have been helpful but there is a new version with additional aids that I haven't seen. The book does go in to quite a bit of technical detail on the different types of 'feet' which is probably the hardest part and there are numerous exercises in scansion. I like how the tropes or pictures such as similes, metaphors etc are presented but more ideas for practice would have been helpful. The book is easy to use and so far I haven't seen a book that includes both the writing of poetry and the appreciation of poetry that I like better.
Bengy says of the book: 'Some parts of it are interesting but some I find extremely boring.'

Pilgrim's Progress Notebook

Pilgrim's Progress is a wonderful read aloud which suits a broad range of ages. I read it to 4 of my children aged 7 to 17 years of age over a number of months and my 15 year old decided he'd do a pictorial narration. These are some of the notebook pages he did. It got out of order in the way I scanned it but it gives an idea of what he did.

 

 

Plutarch Narrations from a 9 Year Old

Moozle has been listening in on our Plutarch readings since she was about 7 years old and has often surprised me by jumping in and giving her version of the story. I've just started her on written narrations this week by asking her to write a sentence on something she's read or I've read aloud to her. She wrote a couple of sentences after I read Our Island Story but she really wanted to write a narration based on Plutarch's life of Nicias which we started a few weeks ago. One of her brothers chose to write his narration from the viewpoint of Cleon, the antagonist, and Moozle decided she'd do something similar:

Yesterday I had to go out for a while and when I returned she'd done the work I'd asked her to do under the supervision of one of my older children who was home holding the fort and then she produced three more narrations she decided to write while I was out. (Her enthusiasm was partly because I said she could write in a lecture notepad...)
Last night she showed them to her dad and he read them aloud with a dramatic flourish (keeping the niaces and afears etc. intact).

Today she was still on a roll and came up with this:

We take the child to the living sources of history - a child of seven is fully able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch's own words (translated), without any diluting and with little explanation.

Charlotte Mason, Volume II 

Written Narration Prompts for Reluctant Writers

These are some of the ideas I've used to get my reluctant writers writing. I've gathered ideas over a number of years and I can't remember which were from my head or someone else's so I apologise in advance if the idea was not mine.

Sometimes I let my children choose from the list and sometimes I give them something specific. I've found they each have their preferences eg. my 13 year old likes to write poetic narrations and would only do those if I let him but sometimes I'll ask them to choose a different way to narrate what they know.

I'll add to this list as I come across anything I haven't listed as I have a few lists tucked away on our computer that I can't locate at present. 

I'll start with the choices I think are easier for a reluctant writer to begin with. Sometimes the physical act of writing is difficult and discourages writing. I even found this with one of my teenage boys and found that doing a creative form of a narration was helpful. It was still a legitimate way for him to show what he'd learned.

• Draw a diagram with illustrations about what you've read - works well for science, geography and history.

•  Draw a map of the area you've been reading about.

• Draw a picture from a scene in our current Shakespeare play.

• Write an advertisement eg. to sell a famous building or ship you've been learning about or to get people to enlist for the war. 

• Write a newspaper article eg.a front page on the war they've been studying about in history. I give them some poetic licence with this as long as they include what they've actually been reading about.

• Write an obituary about the person studied eg. Winston Churchill or Captain Cook.

• Write a resume for eg. Napoleon, Hitler or Pericles. 

• Draw or paint the painting you've been looking at for Picture Study. 

• Write a quiz for dad (you have to know the answers to the questions you ask!) The boys enjoy doing this.

• Write five questions you would like to ask eg. Albert Einstein or Henry VIII. 

• Write a diary entry eg. a day in the life of Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven or William Wilberforce. 

•  Write a poetic narration using the rhythm of eg. The Destruction of Sennacherib. (Using an online rhyming dictionary is helpful for this)

• Write a description of a bird you've observed and draw it from memory.

• Write a letter eg. You are a sailor on board the Spanish Armada. Write a letter to your mother describing the condtions on board or write a letter from one character to another; you've just met eg. Oliver Cromwell. Write a letter to a friend describing what he is like.

• Write a song about a scene or event from eg. The Hobbit or The Battle of Hastings. You may use a tune from a well known folksong if you like.

• Write a play based on eg. a section of Plutarch, Shakespeare or an historical event.

• Write a conversation between eg. Captain Cook and a member of his crew. 

•  Re-write a poem as prose - an epic or narrative poem eg. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes or Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott. 

•  Re-write or paraphrase an historical essay or other piece of writing. The Essays by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) work well for high school aged students. Or see here for some other ideas.