Ambleside Online Year 5 - with Australian Substitutes: Updated

What, then, have we to do for the child? Plainly we have not to develop the person; he is there already, with, possibly, every power that will serve him in his passage through life. Some day we shall be told that the very word education is a misnomer belonging to the stage of thought when the drawing forth of 'faculties' was supposed to be a teacher's business. We shall have some fit new word meaning, perhaps, 'applied wisdom,' for wisdom is the science of relations and the thing we have to do for a young human being is to put him in touch, so far as we can, with all the relations proper to him.

Charlotte Mason, Volume 3, pg 75

This is my (updated) plan for Moozle's Year 5 using Ambleside Online with some adaptions/substitutions to reflect our Australian situation. These are mostly for History and Biography, although I always add some Australian Natural History and don't usually follow the AO schedule for Composer, Artist, Folksongs and Hymns.
We schedule our year over three terms (Australian schools have four terms per year) and have breaks to fit in with whatever might be happenening regardless of where we are in the term. I've just found this to be the easiest way to make AO work for us.

AO Year 5 covers the time period from 1800 to 1914, the beginning of World War I. Books that we're  replacing with substitutes are:
This Country of Ours, Of Courage Undaunted (Moozle has read this before), and possibly George Washington Carver (may use it as a free read).
Otherwise we are primarily using the Year 5 schedule as linked above.


Term 1 (1800-1840's)

History of Australia by Manning Clark, Meredith Hooper and Susanne Ferrier - Chapters 8 to 14  (1995 edition). I started this in Year 4 and will continue to use it to cover Australian History until the end of Year 6.

Doctor Hunger & Captain Thirst: Stories of Australian Explorers by Meredith Hooper
Chapters 1 to 3

Margaret Catchpole (1762-1819) by Nance Donkin

Term 2 (1840-1860's)

History of Australia - Chapters 15 to 16

Doctor Hunger & Captain Thirst - Chapters 4 to 8

River Rivals by Ian Mudie

Term 3 (1860's-1914)

History of Australia - Chapters 17 to 21

Doctor Hunger & Captain Thirst - Chapters 9 to 15

The Singing Wire: The Story of the Overland Telegraph by Eve Pownall

Natural History

His parents know that the first step in intimacy is recognition; and they will measure his education, not solely by his progress in the 'three R's,' but by the number of living and growing things he knows by look, name, and habitat.

Charlotte Mason, Volume 3, pg 76

All my children have enjoyed the Ambleside Online selections for Natural History e.g. books by Ernest Seton Thompson and William Long so we keep these on the schedule and add in a couple of Australian titles. Tiger Cat by C.K.Thompson is one Moozle will be enjoying this year.

 

Read Alouds

A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey. We started this book a few months ago and are about a third of the way through. It's a wonderful autobiography of the author who was born in 1894 and grew up on the Kalgoorlie goldfields and in the wheat-belt of Western Australia. There are a few maps sprinkled throughout the book and we've been using these to cover the geography of Western Australia.

It cannot be too often said that information is not education. You may answer an examination question about the position of the Seychelles and the Comoro Islands without having been anywise nourished by the fact of these island groups existing in such and such latitudes and longitudes; but if you follow Bullen in The Cruise of the Cachelot (or in our case, the life and travels of Albert Facey) the names excite that little mental stir which indicates the reception of real knowledge.

Charlotte Mason, Volume 3, pg 169

Plutarch

Themistocles is the man whose life we have started to study. His is an interesting life to learn about as there are a few incidents in the story we already have some background knowledge on - Xerxes, The Battle of Thermopylae and King Leonidas, for example.

Shakespeare


We haven't started another Shakespeare play yet but I've been watching this Royal Shakespeare Company version myself - not suitable for Moozle but I may use it with Benj. As yet I'm undecided on whether to do Hamlet - a comedy would be a nice change after our stint with Macbeth.

Updated to add:

Our Sunburnt Country covers similar material to History of Australia. She reads it on her own:

Term 1 - chapters 6, 7 & 8
Term 2 - chapter 9
Term 3 - chapters 10, 11 & 12

I read History of Australia aloud as the content is a little more mature and will also be reading aloud Doctor Hunger & Captain Thirst. Most of the other books on the AO schedule will be read on her own, with the exception of Madame How & Lady Why.


Maths


Maths just seemed to click for Moozle when we started Singapore Maths 4B and she started to get into decimals. 4A and some of the previous books were a struggle and I was wondering how on earth we'd ever get through the Singapore books I'd bought, so I am relieved. This is the first time anyone in our family has found maths difficult in the earlier grades. There were some hiccups with highschool level maths from time to time but that wasn't any surprise.

I didn't want her to just get her work done and get it right, but to actually find some enjoyment in the process. I gave her this book to read a few weeks ago and today she read about a card game on positive and negative numbers which we ended up playing together.

Science Biography


Robert Boyle, 'The Father of Modern Chemistry.' Moozle read a chapter from one of the suggested online sources chapters for Isaac Newton and then I gave her this book on Robert Boyle to take her through the remainder of the first term:
 

This eight and a half minute video gives a short introduction to Robert Boyle & his times:





I will probably substitute The Story of Madame Curie by Alice Thorne a Signature Biography for George Washington Carver in third term.

We continue with Latin (usually only once a week); French and Dawn's free ebook 'a Biblical study of the underpinning ideas found in Charlotte Mason's motto, I Am, I Can, I Ought, I Will.'