Thoughts on a first week

Well, i wanted to have a go at the Ambleside Curriculum and we have done a week. So far i am pleased – its not caused any friction, the kids have been happy all week with what they are doing, i suppose i mean Fran by that mostly, and i feel like something of worth has been added without spoiling what was already good. TBH, the “worksheety” element of the last fortnight has had more impact on her, but she is enjoying that too.

That said, we have probably only fitted in half the reading that it suggests in the 4 days we have attempted it. I had some good advice the other day, which was that 6 is fairly young to start, in terms of how the curriculum progresses and that a 6 year old doing yr1 of it, would be out of their depth doing yr3 at age 8. But given that we seem to have only manged half, i reckon i might jiggle it about myself a bit and try to do one “week” per fortnight, with perhaps a Our Island Story and a Bible bit every week. That way we can continue doing all the things we enjoy and if it takes double the length of time, who cares? We have plenty of time!

In actual fact, i didn’t do anything CM’y today with her – i intended to read the Just So story but it didn’t quite happen! However, she did play lots of RR Maths again and has now reached “First Mate” level for some areas, which is second to top. That included fractions of the “find 2/3 of this” when you only have a shape cut into 1/6’s to work with. She did really well with it. Moo spent a long time on Learning Ladder and was much more involved – i saw her listening to stories and playing a letter match game, so that’s good too.

A long time ago i made some worksheets for Fran and today i remembered about them and did them with Moo. They were way too easy for her but we sat together and she had fun. She certainly loved having a bank of something to work through. I was quite pleased though because her big/little less/more words and meanings have been nearly as jumbled as her he/she him/her ones in the past, but clearly she has sorted them out now. So that has inclined me to start finding a slot for something “sit down-ish” with her each day. Before i do that though, i am planning on reviving our Montessori materials and giving them both a good workout with them over the summer. I think they could work together now easily, which will help me organise it. Ammi still sleeps so that gives us a slot for it.

Today Fran got through
3 wordsearches
2x match up (her request again but done with no helping cards today)
the reading book mentioned below

and then last but not least, i printed her off a 100 square which has about 40% of the numbers missing. She filled it all in, completely on her own and worked so hard at her number formation – most impressively it got neater as she went on and by the end all the numbers were not only right, but the right way round and really quite neat and small. It was quite an achievement!

And at that point Ammi woke up so we went off to Tesco for a airmattress/ nappy buying session.

I’ve packed the kids clothes so i had better go and start organising a few other things. The weather looks blooming awful for tomorrow :~(