I'm thinking of going with AO for my 4th grader nxt yr.

[Daisy]

Anyone else use Ambleside Online? My soon to be 4th grader is a very strong reader. I'd probably start her in AO YR 3 though since everyone tells me YR 4 is a big jump. And I would still do...

R&S Math
R&S English
R&S Spelling
Greek

So AO would cover everything else. We enjoy best just reading great books for those other subjects and I'm really loving the looks of AO's book choices. Has anyone else done a mish-mash like this? Have any of you used AO Yr 3?

[Hathersage]

You might want to look at Ambleside's 3.5 Year as well..

http://www.amblesideonline.org/035bks.shtml

it covers the need an additional year to be ready for the more advanced pace of Year 4, to help the jump.

[Kfamily]

Hi! I am using a lot of the books from Year 3 with many adaptations.

We are using CHOW, Our Island Story and This Country of Our for our history spines.

These are the books we are reading or have read:

Leonardo Da Vinci (diff. from their title)
Bard of Avon
In the Days of Queen Elizabeth

Longfellow
Harp and Laurel Wreath (poetry)

American Tall Tales
Heroes
Tales From Shakespeare (selections)
The Princess and the Goblin
Children of the New Forest

From the Free Reading
Caddie Woodlawn
A Little Princess
On the Banks of Plum Creek
A Little White Horse

We also added Heidi and Seabird (for geography) and I, Juan de Pareja (for Velezquez artist study).

This is not everything but most of it. We add in R&S 5 for math, latin, french, ILL, WT2, dictation, narrations and handwriting.

This has been a great year! My dd has really liked her books this year and has enjoyed this time period in history.
HTH

[Daisy]

Wonderful. I'm glad to hear you are enjoying the year. I think my DD will really enjoy the book selections. We are going to use CHOW & Our Island Story as our spines also. I'm not going to use This Country of Ours just b/c we've done American History for the last 3 years. Uugh (she was in private school, then public and then homeschooled).

[prairiegirl]

We are doing AO Yr.3 this year. We do a mish mosh of different things so I don't use the schedule, we just read the books at our own pace. I also use books from other sources as well. The Yr. 3 books are wonderful. My dd just finished Princess and the Goblin and The Four Story Mistake. She loves those books. I think you will be happy with your decision.


Julia
mom of 3 (8,7,5)

[Violet]

Daisy, My fifth grade dd 11 is doing AO Year 3 this year. It is plenty challenging for her, and she is quite an advanced reader to begin with. It's a great time period in history, too. She has loved all the readings but for Parables of Nature. She is doing much better with Pilgrim's Progress than when she started the year. I think you are making a fabulous choice. We love AO. We used Rod and Staff for English last year. This year, we are using Junior Analytical Grammar. Because AO does copywork and narration (Charlotte Mason style language arts) for writing, we much prefer just having JAG and doing it only for grammar as opposed to doing Rod and Staff, which includes writing lessons. For spelling, we use Sequential Spelling. Ambleside is a wonderful and free option for homeschoolers. I feel so blessed to have found it and to be able to benefit from all the work others have put into creating AO. Honestly, if your daughter will be a young fourth grader next year, you could also do Year 2 and it would likely also be plenty challenging IMHO. You really can't compare AO years to grade levels. There are great AO Yahoo groups that you can join for more information.

Best,
Anita

[Daisy]

Thanks, Anita. My only reluctance with YR 2 is that my DD has read most of the literature selections already. To some extent we will be doing YR 2 as I just cannot start in the middle of Our Island Story or CHOW so we are just going to start at the beginning. LOL.

[Another Lynn]

Hi Daisy. I used AO somewhat for 1st and 2nd grade (years 1 and 2) and then departed from it for this year (3rd grade) and now regret it. (We did keep some things - Island Story, Princess and the Goblin). I'm getting ready to go back to it for the end of our year and for next. My ds is not ready for year 4, so I'm taking some of the suggestions for year 3.5 and then tweaking a bit for where we are in history. (We sped up to a 4 yr. cycle even though AO does a 6 year). I really love all the great things we were reading with AO and look forward to getting back to it in a couple weeks!