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.

Australian Natural History: Warrigal the Warrior by C.K. Thompson

Unfortunately C.K. Thompson's books are all out of print but we've been fortunate enough to pick up a few at secondhand book shops and Lifeline book sales. Our copy of Warrigal the Warrior was published in 1948 and is a wonderful story based on the Australian dingo.

Charlie Harrison was employed as a dingo-killer or 'dogger' and in his travels he came upon a young part-dingo pup who had been separated from his parents. Harrison's first reaction was to immediately shoot the animal, but when the young dingo showed no fear of the man and gazed up at him curiously, the usually tough dingo-killer couldn't bring himself to do the deed. When the dingo then approached Harrison, licked his hand and allowed himself to be picked up, he won his way into the dingo-killer's heart.

Harrison returned to his camp with the dog and not long afterwards two weary prospectors came along and were invited to share a meal.

When the visitors realised that Harrison had a dingo pup and intended to keep it they were surprised and tried to talk him into killing the dog but he refused:

"Don't do it, mate," said McPherson earnestly. "You'll have nothing but trouble if  you start that. I've known other fellows to try to rear dingoes as pets and every one of them regretted it. So will you. Apart from anything else, you'll never hold him. He might stay with you for years, but in the end he will go back to the wilds."

"I don't agree with that at all," said Harrison. "He is only a pup now. If I can keep him away from the dingo pack from now on, he will become domesticated - just the same as if he were a sheep dog or a cattle dog. Why should he want to return to the dingo pack?"

"Because the wild and primitive life is born in him, " said McPherson. "Sheep and cattle dogs have been bred under domestic conditions  for thousands of years. They are part and parcel of human life, yet sometimes they go wild. So what chance have you got with a dingo?"

Harrison eventually took Warrigal into town when he went to visit his sister and her husband. When he had to travel to the city, he asked them to care for the dog, and gave instructions that Warrigal should be kept tied up at all times. His brother-in-law, unaware that the dog was a dingo, took pity on the animal and started to let him off his chain at night.  The township became perplexed when they started to find chickens, sheep and other animals that had been killed during the night with no trace of a perpetrator. The riddle was solved when a boy who had teased Warrigal during the day when he was tied up to his kennel, was given detention after school for fighting in the playground and was required to write an essay on Australian wildlife:

Moodily he turned the pages and came across another animal. The dingo. Yes, a few bits about dingoes would go well in the essay.

But as the boy began to write from the book, his interest became aroused. He threw down his pen and gave himself up wholly to reading.

"Dingo or warrigal...the Australian wild dog," he mumbled aloud. "It has a sharp muzzle, ears short and erect...bushy tail...color varies between light reddish brown and black...unable to bark, but yelps...at night howls dismally...a silent hunter..."

This book was a fascinating insight into an animal that has been little understood. When C.K. Thompson wrote this book more than sixty years ago he said in the introduction that,

There is a new generation that knows little about the bush and the creatures that inhabit it.

The tragic Azaria Chamberlain case in the Northern Territory in 1980 highlighted this:

  "at the time, Australia wasn't able to believe that a wild dog could do such a thing."

And more recently an episode on Fraser Island, off the southern coast of Queensland that resulted in the death of a 9 year old boy.

I have not sought to glorify Warrigal, neither have I condemned him. 

I have just tried to present him as he really is, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.

He is as nature fashioned him.

C.K. Thompson

Warrigal the Warrior is 130 pages in length and is illustrated with black and white pictures. It makes a great read aloud and would be enjoyed by a wide range of ages.

Linking up this month with Brona's Books:

AusReading Month 2014 - For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Originally written as a monthly installment in 1870-1872 under the title His Natural Life, Marcus Clarke's classic was later published as a book in 1874 with the title, For the Term of His Natural Life. Some of the characters and events in Clarke's book are based upon real people and actual events which help to portray a realistic picture of convict life in Van Dieman's Land.

The story centres around the injustices, blunders and futility of the English system of transportation, which was used as a method of punishment at the time, by telling the tale of one man as he serves his sentence.

Richard Devine, a young Englishman, allows himself to be convicted of a crime he did not commit in order to protect his mother's reputation.

Adopting the name Rufus Dawes, he gives up his true identity, and withholding information that would have gained his release, is sent to the Australian penal colony in Van Dieman's Land 'for the term of his natural life.'

Just under 500 pages long, the book is divided into four parts:

Book One: The Sea: 1827

The account of the sea journey from England where Rufus Dawes encounters the brutal lieutenant, Maurice Frere, his nemesis all through the story, and the lovely Sylvia, daughter of the Captain.

During the voyage a mutiny is planned by some of the the convicts and by chance the plot is overheard by Dawes who reports it to the Captain and the mutiny is squashed. However, the mutineers revenge themselves on Dawes by saying that he was the instigator of the plot.

Book Two: Macquarie Harbour: 1833

The mutineers' sentence is commuted to six years at the penal settlement of Macquarie Harbour on the desolate west coast of what is now Tasmania. Dawes is fettered and confined to a solitary area and attempts to kill himself by flinging himself into the sea. The shock of the ice cold water brings back his sense of self-preservation and a huge drifting log loosened from a nearby raft becomes his means of preservation. He gains land only to find the settlement has been abandoned and he is on his own.

But meanwhile there had been another mutiny and Dawes comes upon Lieutenant Frere, the Captain's wife and her daughter, Sylvia who had been abandoned by the prisoners. Dawes uses his knowledge and skills to keep them all alive and wins the affection of Sylvia who calls him, 'Good Mr. Dawes.' He eventually builds a vessel which enables them to escape but Sylvia falls into a delirium and is unable to recall what has happened and when they are picked up by an English vessel, Frere takes the credit for everything Dawes has done and Dawes is sent to Port Arthur to finish his sentence.

Book Three: Port Arthur: 1838

Sylvia, still unable to recall the part Dawes played in her deliverance and not knowing Frere's true character, agrees to marry him after a few years. Frere meanwhile lives under the constant threat of the truth being revealed and over time his brutal and crude nature come to the fore.

A group of convicts involved in the initial mutiny plan and execute another escape. One of them is John Rex who had once been employed by a man in England to discover the whereabouts of his stepson, who happened to be non other than Richard Devine. Rex had unravelled some of the mystery surrounding Dawes and  when he realises that he has found the missing stepson he plots to secure the fortune that was left to Devine upon the death of his stepfather.

Book Four: Norfolk Island: 1846

Rex escapes and finds his way to England. He impersonates Richard Devine, whom he greatly resembles, and lives in high style but his coarse ways and profligate life disgust Devines' mother who begins to doubt his legitimacy. Lady Devine confronts Rex and the mystery behind why her son allowed himself to be convicted in the first place is revealed. In a curious twist of fate Rex finds his own life so inextricably linked with the man he is trying to supplant.

Although For the Term of His Natural Life contains elements of Victorian melodrama and has some unbelievable twists and coincidences, Marcus Clarke drew upon official reports (documented in an appendix at the end of the book) to furnish his tale and spent time as a journalist in Tasmania studying the convict system.

The author's descriptions of the landscape are palpable. I've been to both Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur a few times and I thought he captured the atmosphere of both places well.

For the Term of His Natural Life is an Australian Classic and I kept thinking that I should read it at some stage. I put it off because I thought it would be too depressing. It is bleak but it has an ebb and flow to it that kept me reading, waiting to see if 'Good Mr. Dawes' was going to get justice. The story reminded me in some ways of Uncle Tom's Cabin - but it was a long time ago that I read that book and it was very a different setting - perhaps it was the suffering the main characters endured.

Age suitability:

I'd definitely pre-read and even then it would be a book I'd only recommend for mature readers in late high school and I'd want to discuss some of the content with them. Besides the brutality and allusions to cannibalism, the two Ministers of Religion in the book are presented as 1) a Pharisaical type, shallow, self-serving and ineffectual  2) a man with a conscience and compassion but who struggles with a hidden addiction to alcohol and his love for a married woman. 

 The picture below is from an out of print hardback copy of the book which I own but the image of the book I put at the top of this post is of an edition of the book that is in print.
The book is available as a free Kindle version here.

I'm linking this post to Brona's Books: