Ambleside online

We are reading the Year 0 books with our 4.5 year old. I'm pleased with the selections overall. I'm planning on using ambleside for at least the next few years (blended with Waldorf and perhaps easing into more classical), and would like to hear from someone with older children who's drawing on it.

I'm about halfway through Karen Andreola's A Charlotte Mason Companion, and find the method as well as the view of children and childhood development very appealling. The yahoo groups linked on the Ambleside site are a great way to hear from mothers who are living it.

I am going to write the book titles for year one down tonight and stick them in with my Rainbow Resource order in June. Anyone else have thoughts on this website/method?

We're using another curriculum (sonlight) for our 'main' curriculum, but I do incorporate the art and music suggestions from Ambleside into our schooling. I've found that it's a good way to casually introduce my kids to fine arts.

Oh no, another style to research LOL. Looks interesting.

I love ambleside. Mostly because I love well written, beautifully illustrated books and cringe when we read crappy books - and their list takes the research out of it for me. I scan the list before we head to the library and when I see a book that was on the list I grab it.

Every book so far has been a huge hit with at least one of my kids.

We also use some of the links. My dd likes flowers so we clicked on the wildflower site and checked out some flowers. I love that they've put so much work and research into it, I know everything the recommend is great. We don't follow their schedule though.

Ooh! I just read the extra reading list. Many of those books I read as a child, I especially loved "The Water Babies" by Charles Kingsley, and "Swallows and Amazons".

For those of you interested in Charlotte Mason-style education I have also come across this site that has a lot to offer.

http://www.materamabilis.org/ Mater Amabilis, A Catholic Charlotte Mason Curriculum

Since the religious elements are separate from other segments you could easily adapt it to the religion of your choice or leave religion out altogether.

we are planing on starting next year. for the rest of this year we are easing into copywork and narration and lotsof reading of good books. they have started thier nature notbooks. otherwise we are just putzing along right now. the whole Chrlotte mason approach is very intuitive for us so we have been doing a lot of it all along. but next year we will start a more organized approach.

We plan on incorporating a lot of Charlotte Mason style into our homeschooling. For example, short lessons, nature walks, foreign languages (we've already started those), fine arts, etc. We also appreciate all the work that went into that site -- a lot of research has been done for us. (Though we are not Christian, and we'll heavily beef up the sciences..AO doesn't have much science in it).

Ambleside has a yahoo group, too, if you want to see it in action (so to speak). It's a pretty busy group -- I get the digest, and I get several of those each day.

I like that so many of the selections are online, including the actual CM books for the how-to background.

We toss a lot of the reading and music selections in with our other motley mix of methods.

Iknow I am dragging this out of the crypt but since there was one started and my otheroption was mopping my floor . . . .

I am having the hardest time finding the books. any good tips on where to find them. I hit a few on amazon and a few on ebay and fewer yet at the library. . . why are such great books out of print?

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Thanks! My oldest is only 3 1/2, but I am attracted to the CM method (minus the religious aspects).

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I have just spent two months acquiring most of year 1 and 2 books, it has been quite a journey and an expensive one at that! I have bought a quite a few on Amazon, but I have found great success with abebooks.com and alibris.com. Also http://www.homeschoolpublishers.com/ has several of the books -- they have especially printed the AO/HEO curriculum books, but they are very expensive -- between $48 and $58 a book! Many of the books are available online line (with links via the AO website). Anyway, if you let me know which books you are looking for, I can probably help you locate them. Here is a link to an AO page on where to buy books: http://www.amblesideonline.org/BuyBooks.shtml

I have made use of AO... I use their book lists as a guide to good books that will cover different areas. Mostly, I've used books that you can print up for free. I also like the artist and composer studies they put together.

Although I haven't read all of them myself, I would also recommend reading Charlotte Mason's books themselves, which they have available to print there. Really interesting stuff.

thanks for the link. I have been watching ebay but i have a list of about 30 books.

one specifically I am having trouble finding is trial and triumph , An Island Story, and 50 famous stories and nature Study which is used for all grade leves it looks like (or at least 1 and 4) and I can't find them anywhere.

I did notice after posting this that many of them are available online. I prefer real books (becuase I am a tactile/visual learning and comuter screen just doesn't do it for me) but if online is the only place I can find them then online it is.

I printed out Island Story a few pages at a time as we went along. I hole-punched it and put it in a binder. That way it wasn't so overwhelming.

thanks I found a couple of those with the link.

do you guys really think English history is really all that important? after looking at Island Story a little more I am not sure we will even dop that part. or do you think it is important?

We read it without doing any narration.

A lot of it ties into European history and US history, not to mention other areas the British colonized, so it was another look at some of those same characters and events.