A Tweaked Version of Ambleside Online Year 9

We finished up AO Year 9  at the end of 2019. I made a few changes and omitted some things for various reasons. Australian titles were substituted in some areas and I've marked these with an *

Books written in black are from the Ambleside Online curriculum.

We only did one of Plutarch's Lives and two Shakespeare plays during the year.

An overseas trip during August and September, some additional family matters, and preparation for a Cello exam over the course of the year meant that we were a little stretched for time.

The following is basically what we did for Year 9:

Devotional/Theology/Apologetics

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

* The Flying Scotsman by Sally Magnusson - a biography of Eric Liddell

* Chariots of Fire - the movie of Liddell's life

Biography

* Captain Cook by Alistair Maclean (I've written about it here - scroll down) Enjoyed by everyone here.

* My Love Must Wait by Ernestine Hill - I really liked this (review) but it was a bit too descriptive/wordy in Moozle's opinion.

* Napoleon by Albert Marrin - a couple of my children have enjoyed this bio of Napoleon as well as  other books by the same author. A well-written & engaging book.

* Currency Lass by Margaret Reeson - all of my girls read and appreciated this book about a young woman growing up in the early days of Sydney.

Age of Revolution by Winston Churchill

* A Short History of Australia by Ernest Scott - I had books by modern historians (Geoffrey Blainey and Manning Clarke) but I prefer Scott for this time period.

* Personal, Career, and Financial Security by Richard J. Maybury 

Essays by Jane Haldimand Marcet

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason - we finished Book I

How to Read a Book - plodding along slowly with this one

Literature 

The History of English Literature for Girls and Boys by H.E. Marshall
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Science

Great Astronomers 
* Men, Microbes & Living Things by Katherine B. Shippen (Biology)
Napoleon's Buttons & Phineas Gage - both carried over from the year before

* A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - this has been a favourite book in Year 9. It is full of evolutionary content but Bryson has a light-hearted touch and is quick to point out holes in scientific thought and the quirks of scientists through the ages.
Cosmology, Biology, Geology, Physics, Chemistry...a broad sweep of what we have discovered about the Earth and what scientists have deduced from these discoveries; odd scientists, accidental discoveries and a good amount of humour sprinkled throughout. This has been a read aloud & discuss type of book and it has generated many good conversations, not to mention guffaws from my daughter, over some of the stuff that has gone on in the scientific world over the past two hundred or so years. The chapters are quite long so we'll be continuing this book in Term 1 of year 10.

Natural History/Nature Study

* All Things Bright & Beautiful by James Herriot - this is the second memoir in Herriot's series about his life as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the years just before WWII.
We visited this beautiful area on our 2019 overseas trip (which I wrote about here, here, and also here!)

* Nature Studies in Australia by William Gillies

* The Art of Poetry - I reviewed this here. This is an excellent resource but I think for some students it might be overkill. 

Plutarch: the Life of Demetrius
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice & Measure for Measure

The Arts by Van Loon

Free Reading

Rafael Sabatini re-reads of a number of his books. Scaramouche, * Seahawk, * Captain Blood, * The Gamester
* The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge
* Henrietta's House by Elizabeth Goudge   

* Murder Must Advertise & The Nine Tailors by D.L. Sayers
Agatha Christie - various
Ngaio Marsh - various
Margery Allingham - various

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren - I bought Moozle a lovely HB copy of this as she didn't have the book. it's written to a much younger age level but that didn't stop her enjoying it.

This Present Darkness & Piercing the Darkness by Frank Perretti - there are some excellent aspects touched on in both of these hard to put down books but there are also some negative aspects. I though this article explained things well and it was good to discuss those points. I read the books when they first came out and found them quite inspiring but I understand the concerns stated in the article.

Geography

Longitude by Dava Sobel
A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland by Samuel Johnson - we saved this for reading after we'd been over there.


Art & Music

For Picture Study we looked at works by John Everett Millais, Francisco Goya, and El Greco.
We've used YouTube videos to learn some art techniques and Pinterest for ideas at times but I wanted something more structured for Moozle to work through.
I bought the art course below just over a year ago in the Black Friday sales and it was very good so at the end of 2019 I bought the Pastels 101 for her to work through this year. With our low Aussie dollar everything from the USA seems exorbitant to us so a decent discount is always appreciated. At the time of my writing this they have a 40% off sale for the Art School Bundle which includes Drawing, Watercolour, Oils & Acrylics, and Pastels.
I added an account for Moozle on my Instagram so she can display her prodigious art work and various projects. It's missy_hudson05 if you want to have a peek.

During 2019 Moozle prepared for her Grade 8 Cello exam so we incorporated music by Haydn, Edward Elgar, and Ernest Bloch that she was studying into our Composer Study and read through sections of The Arts by Van Loon that were scheduled in AO 9.

A highlight of the musical side of the year was an 11p.m. orchestral performance Moozle was involved in just before Christmas for the launch of the latest Star Wars movie at a local cinema.

Clear Music Australia was recommended to me for sheet music about two years ago by one of Moozle's accompanists. A supplier we used closed down so I had to scour ebay and random internet stores to try to find what we needed and for an instrument like the cello it was really difficult. Clear Music has been excellent - great service, reasonable prices & everything arrives quickly and undamaged (!!) so I highly recommend them.


Architecture

I added this subject in Year 7 and have continued with it. The exciting thing was that in 2019 we travelled to the UK & Paris and saw some of this stuff first hand. The oldest building we have here (Elizabeth Farm) only dates back to the 1790's so it was incredible to walk through castles, churches, and ruins that have been standing for centuries, and in some cases, millennia.

Stirling Castle, Scotland

York Minster

Bath, England

Notre Dame, Paris, September 2019

Swimming in a competitive squad continues three to four times a week with a two week break over  Christmas. We're nearly at the end of that and she's itching to get back into training.

An example of a week's scheduling:

See here for other options for Australian homeschoolers.

A 14 Year Old's Commonplace Book

It is very helpful to read with a commonplace book or reading-diary, in which to put down any striking thought in your author, or your own impression of the work, or of any part of it; but not summaries of facts. Such a diary, carefully kept through life, should be exceedingly interesting as containing the intellectual history of the writer; besides, we never forget the book that we have made extracts from, and of which we have taken the trouble to write a short review.

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason 

I've written about my son's commonplace book (aka 'Reading Diary' or quotations book) here which he started when he was about 15 years of age. Moozle started keeping hers about 18 months ago when she was about 12 and a half.  As I wrote in the post just linked, I wanted these records of their reading to be something they would initiate, but as with many things, I started the ball rolling so to speak and encouraged them to continue. I listed it as part of their weekly schedule but I basically left it up to them to choose what they wanted to record.
Often they'd read something out to me that they found interesting or amusing and I'd sometimes suggest it would be a good thing to record it. This helped them begin a habit of keeping a diary of favourite passages.
Moozle also keeps a record of scriptures and hymn lyrics in a separate notebook but that's just something she keeps as a sort of devotional diary and isn't a part of her regular lesson work.

Some quotations that have found their way into my 14 year old girl’s Common Place Book lately:

‘Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.’

‘It is a very silly idea that We has in reading a book you must never ‘skip.’ All sensible people skip freely when they come to a chapter which they find is going to be no use to them.’
(Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis)

She liked this one, being a very fast reader! C.S. Lewis features regularly in her commonplace book. Mere Christianity is scheduled in Ambleside Online year 8 but we used another book for that year so we've added it to Year 9.

‘Lady Penelope looked at Lady Binks with as much regard as Balaam may have cast upon his ass when he discovered its capacity for holding an argument with him.’
(St. Ronan’s Well by Sir Walter Scott)

Moozle has read a number of Sir Walter Scott's books this past year. She has a love/hate relationship with his books but didn't mind this one. Redgauntlet was the best in her opinion.

‘What is worth beginning is worth finishing and what is worth doing is worth doing well.’
(Ourselves by Charlotte Mason)

I'm still reading Ourselves aloud to her. it's been a good book for discussion but I wouldn't say she particularly enjoyed it. She doesn't enjoy green vegetables either but they're a part of her 'eating schedule,' regardless.

‘One of the things I learned during my tenure at Washington is that the civics book picture of government in action is totally inaccurate. The idea that our elected officials take part in a careful decision-making process - monitoring events, reviewing options, responsibly selecting policies - has almost no connection with reality. A more accurate image would be that of a runaway train with the throttle stuck wide open - while the passengers and crew are living it up in the dining car.’
( - William Simon, former U.S. secretary, treasury)

The above quotation is from Uncle Eric Talks About Personal, Career, and Financial Security by Richard J. Maybury. I've scheduled this in place of the Richard Maybury book listed in AO Year 9 for Government & Economics because we already had this book & not the other. It's been a good fit for her this year.

‘I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.'

(From ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost, 1874-1963)

We've enjoyed the poetry selections in The Art of Poetry curriculum from Classical Academic Press, as well as the lessons. I reviewed it here.

‘...the painters always followed the full dinner pail. As soon as they got their chance, the musicians did likewise. They tucked their unpolished cantatas and sonatas under their arms. They left their unpaid bills behind them. They took the road that led to the north. For that was where the pot of gold awaited them at the end of the rainbow of their high C’s and their unlimited hope and ambitions. ‘ (The Arts by Hendrick Willem Van Loon)

Mr. Van Loon can be quite sarcastic at times...

Nature Notebook: Fungi Study

We've had ideal conditions for a study of fungi in the past month and we found some interesting specimens. The green and the black fungi were new to us but we see bracket fungi all the time in our area and the coral fungi pops up now and again.
This is Moozle's nature notebook entry for this past week.

We made some spore prints: turn the cap upside down so its gills sit on top of some white paper; cover with a glass jar or dish to keep out any draught and leave for about 24 hours.
We were able to confirm the name of one specimen we were unsure of by observing the colour of its imprint.

If you wanted to keep these imprints, the paper should be covered very thinly with egg white or an adhesive gum to hold the spores fast. Moozle just observed and drew them this time.

The new discovery...a friend (thanks Anna M!) suggested this might be Dermocybe austroveneta.

Resources:


Handbook of Nature Study, First Studies in Plant Life in Australasia, a guide to our local area's flora & fauna and for young children, Mushrooms & Molds by Robert Froman (out of print) is a good 'Let's Read and Find Out Science Book,' with some hands on activities. There's a preview of it here. 
The Wonderland of Nature by Nuri Mass has a good, basic section with some simple pen & ink drawings.




Online resources:


Fungimap & lichenised fungi

Australasian Mycological Society

Australian Fungi - Australian National Herbarium

An Australian Fungi Blog!

FungiOz

If you'd like a crime mystery with your fungi study, The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers centres around a fungi expert whose death was caused when he ingested a bowl of deadly mushrooms! This is the only mystery novel that I've read by Sayers where Lord Peter Wimsey is absent entirely. It's been a while since I've read it but it's probably best for around age 16 years and older.

Home Ed Highlights From the Month of June

'I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.'

- Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1956

In a similar vein, Charlotte Mason wrote in her book, Home Education, that it's possible to undervalue a child's ability to get knowledge using his senses. Her context was the Kindergarten as a place of education and her concern was that it was an artificially limited environment.
While a kindergarten can provide some exact ideas such as the difference between a rhomboid and a pentagon, or a primary and secondary colour, this is at the expense of much of the real knowledge of the outside world.
Although this sort of training provided by the Kindergarten/Preschool may be valuable, it shouldn't take the place of the wider training of the senses. This is something we can provide as we walk along the way, through our everyday lives.

Every Tuesday I go and pick up my granddaughter and take her to the park for an hour or so then bring her home to our place for the day. It had been raining when I picked her up the other week so we came straight home, but later in the day the weather cleared so Moozle and I took her on a nature walk with us for the first time. I thought she embodied the idea that Rachel Carson expressed above:

 '...it is not half so important to know as to feel.' 

We spent a bit of time listening to the creek as it ran over some rocks, which she found quite fascinating; touching wet leaves, and walking along the track obscured at times by overhanging branches weighed down by the recent rain. 

A rare sighting! We'd been hearing unusual bird sounds and then we found out what was making them. If you don't already know, lyrebirds are incredible mimics and imitate other birds as well as trains, chainsaws, and all sorts of other noises. This is the second time we've seen one on our property but we didn't get a great view of it the first time. This time I actually got quite close to it so I could get a decent photo with my phone. It's a very attractive, elegant bird.

Superb Lyrebird, Menura novaehollandiae

One day this month Benj had the morning off so we went for a bush bash. We went along our usual fire-trail walk but then detoured into some more rugged bush that had no track. Just as well he was with us as Moozle and I have no sense of direction and could have ended up anywhere. It was also helpful to have him give us shorter folk a hand up to the higher rocks. 

These two were leading the way and I heard them reciting 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' as they bashed their way through the bush. 'We can't go under it, we can't go over it. Oh, no! We've got to go through it!'

Hubby, Moozle & I had a road trip over the June long weekend up to Toowoomba in Queensland to see my husband's parents. This photo was looking from the top of The Great Dividing Range, also known as The Eastern Highland or The Eastern Cordillera, Australia's most extensive mountain range and the third longest land-based range in the world. It stretches more than 3,500 kilometres (2,175 miles) from north east Queensland, down the length of the eastern coastline through New South Wales and into Victoria.

Nature Studies in Australia by William Gillies & Robert Hall is a book I've scheduled in Year 9. Moozle generally reads a chapter per week and either narrates after reading or writes a notebook entry. We have a few books by Gillies and they're all very good. This one is a little like an Anna Comstock Handbook of Nature Study for Australians but written more to the student as opposed to the parent.

'Browning would sit quite still in a wood for an hour, and the birds would hop about his feet. Tennyson would spend an afternoon in watching how the lark rose into the air and dropped to the ground. Dr Fabre would sit on a sandy slope for a whole day to watch the ways of the solitary wasps. Nature will not give up her secrets to the man in a hurry.'

The Art of Poetry introduced us to this poem. Some poetry just reaches out and grabs at your heart and this was one that did that to me. It's melancholy and thoughtful and expresses well those things that one can so often take for granted. '...love's austere and lonely offices'! What an exquisite way to express this.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

By Robert Hayden (1966)

Watercolour & pencil by Moozle

Rural New South Wales

'These are a few of my favourite things...' watercolour and ink. Moozle did this for me & it does capture some of my most favourite things. She knows me well.

On Tuesdays we also have the pleasure of the company of this little fellow, my grandson, for a few hours. My daughter-in-law brings him over around midday and today he listened in as I read aloud to Moozle. I think he was trying to work out how to get the book off me and he ended up with it in his hot little hands. As one of his uncles remarked, 'A gentleman and a scholar.'

A highlight and privilege for me at the beginning of June was being one of the speakers at a Home Education seminar hosted by Michelle Morrow from Homeschooling Downunder. A common thread running through each of our talks was the idea of giving our children a broad and generous education; setting their feet in a large room, as Charlotte Mason so aptly put it and as Michelle said, not just giving them 'meat & potatoes.' There are videos of the talks available here.
It was so good to be a part of this and to meet such a wide variety of mothers, the common denominator being a love for their children and a desire to teach them well. A very enjoyable and fun day! I think Michelle is planning another one for next year so look out for it.


And now for something completely different...just joking, of course. We have a family WhatsApp account and this is the type of thing besides photos and smart comments that get posted there.

Review of The Art of Poetry: Classical Academic Press

My daughter turned 14 years of age earlier this year and as with many students in the high school years, her days are very full. Besides her lessons at home, she is studying the cello at a level which requires about 6 hours of practice per week and she swims in a competition squad for 8 hours a week. From what I've observed, many other home educated children are in similar circumstances with a variety of similar or other commitments.

So why include the study Poetry? What use is it? Isn't it one of those 'enrichment' subjects that aren't really necessary; just a fancy add on and reserved for those kids who are into that type of thing? 

Something to consider:

'…your days are long and crammed with obligation and information and technology. You are at risk for thinking that this is knowledge. Poetic knowledge insists that beauty and truth can’t be separated. It reminds us that the rational alone will not take us to full knowledge and that we should be astonished by what is true.'

The Art of Poetry is a Poetry Curriculum but what it also does admirably is to give a beautifully articulated defence for the need of poetry in our lives, no matter what our age.

‘Poetry acknowledges something deep within our nature...’

This curriculum was written for students in the 7th to 10th Grade and includes an anthology of 39 poems from well-known and lesser known poets.
There are 16 Chapters each having a short anthology of poems with a variety of discussions questions, followed by an activity section and quiz at the end of the chapter. The activity section has a wide scope of options for students. My daughter loves drawing and enjoyed some of the more creative ideas for mixing poetry with art. Students who prefer writing, reciting, or acting, will also find plenty of ideas here.

There are three main sections in the text:

1) Elements of Poetry - eight chapters discussing Images, Metaphor, Symbols, Word, Sound, Rhythm, Shape, and Tone.

2) The Formal History of Poetry - seven chapters covering  the History of Form, Verse Forms, Shaping Forms, A Case Study in Form, Open Verse, A Case Study in Open Verse, and Narrative Poems.

3) Application - a section on growing your interest in poetry with suggestions such as starting a poetry group, finding mentors, and a range of other ideas.

Three Apendices include short biographies of the poets covered in The Art of Poetry; planning ideas, a glossary of terms, bibliography, timeline, and quizzes.

A few timetable options are suggested: an intense month long unit; spreading the curriculum out over the year - two sections per month; or expanding it out over several years.

‘Poetry fundamentally changes our relationship to language - we can no longer see words

 as merely serviceable vehicles.’

The complete curriculum for The Art of Poetry includes a Student Text, a Teacher’s Edition, and a set of 7 DVD’s with over 15 hours of material.

The DVD’s aren’t essential but I found them helpful and Miss 14 enjoyed the discussions between Christine Perrin and her four students. The students were of a similar age to my girl, and the banter between them added a nice dynamic.

At the beginning of each chapter, the author reads from sections of the text and then has a group discussion. At the end of this, she chooses one or two of the activities and demonstrates it.

One of our favourites was a free writing exercise. I thought I knew what this meant but as the author talked through it and then went ahead and modelled it, I realised I didn’t! For five minutes we wrote about images from one of the four seasons - no planning, just writing anything that came to our minds during that time, without stopping. I was pleasantly surprised with both of our efforts. This is a great exercise for those who tend to overthink things or get mental blocks when faced with a blank page.

Other activities included:

An exercise in Ekphrasis - a poem written in response to a visual piece of art. Moozle observed Pieter Bruegel's work, The Land of Cockaigne, and wrote this in response to it:

From the section on Metaphors:

‘Draw a picture of the bird of hope as you imagine it from Dickinson’s poem...

Will you ever see a bird now without considering the way in which its miraculous wings defy gravity and lift into the air? This is how poetry begins to live with us each day and in the scenes we encounter.’

Moozle chose to draw a blue wren, a tiny, beautiful, Australian native bird, as a metaphor for hope:

'Poetry remind us that the metaphor is the basic way of knowing the unknown and that we often describe one thing in terms of another. Poetry gives us images to cherish and to invigorate 

our daily experience.'

If you were planning to use the course with a group or needed some guidance in how to teach poetry in general, the DVD's would be a good resource. Or if like me you're using the curriculum with only one student, seeing other kids getting involved in a poetry discussion helps facilitate your own. 

The Teacher’s Edition includes the text from the Student Edition along with suggestions for discussion questions, answers to discussion questions for the poems, and answers to quizzes. It is arranged in such a way that you could use the Teacher’s Edition for the Student as the discussion answer guides are found tucked away at the end of the chapters.

The answers to the quizzes are sometimes on the opposite page so you could either cover them up or give the questions orally.

The Student Edition has the same content as the Teacher’s Edition minus the answer keys.

'Educating the imagination is an important aspect of studying poems.'

Pros

* A good variety of poems are studied
* The chapter introductions are just beautifully written (the quotations in this post were taken from the text)
* There is an emphasis on reciting and memorisation
* The activities have a mixture of analytical and creative suggestions
* The course is taught by a poet who obviously loves her subject
* It is very adaptable and could also be used for Mother Culture!

Cons

* There is so much content in this curriculum that it could overwhelm at first sight. In fact, the author specifically says in her introduction not to let it do this.

* Depending on the student, they may not be ready for the more analytical aspects of the curriculum.
If a student hasn't had much exposure to poetry before, I'd concentrate more on appreciating the various poems the author presents, reading them aloud, and covering the section 'The Elements of Poetry.'

The author reminds us that poetry can communicate before it is understood. Keeping that in mind takes the pressure off so that we can enjoy studying aspects of poetry and return to a lesson later on to look at it in a more analytical way. 
Appendix C has a simplified plan on Page 252 that summarize some practices to help initiate you into the world of poetry. 

For those following a Charlotte Mason method of education, I'm using this in Year 9 of Ambleside Online.

'…Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; 

for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.'

 T.S. Eliot

Classical Academic Press kindly provided me with a free copy of The Art of Poetry Curriculum for review purposes and what I wrote above is my honest opinion.
They are also offering a 20% discount for the Art of Poetry Program (discount won’t apply to individual texts). Discount code “AOP2019” can be applied at checkout for the 20% off. 
The discount will run through until the 31st May 2019.



For further information:

Art of Poetry samples at Classical Academic Press

http://artofpoetry.us/