Ambleside Online Year One so far: Copywork

DS has always quite liked writing, more so than reading. He draws pictures and labels them (copying the words out of books) on his own initiative. The first writing I did with him was making an Alphabet book. We also did a calendar, following the ideas from Charlotte Mason Help.

Alphabet Book "O" 

Calendar

In June DS moved on to Penny Gardner's Beautiful Handwriting. It was a transition for him to have to form letters in the correct way, and he resisted somewhat. Funnily enough, we had a break over the summer and when we came back his writing had improved. I also bought a wipe clean alphabet board for easy practice. It works better if DS does it on his own without me hovering over him, so he does a few words a day independently, which is nice for me to be able to send him off to do that. I haven't worked out if it's better with a timer or a set amount of work. He can write quite nicely when he is really paying attention, which is of course a fundamental habit to establish. He is more likely to rush his work though at the moment.

Penny Gardner's Beautiful Handwriting

DS's finished the alphabet and individual words, so we are now on to sentences and copywork proper, which is another transition. There are a few sentences with Penny's programme, and then I will have to work out what to give him.

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Ambleside Online Year 1 so far: Artist Study

This has been going quite well. Following the Ambleside Curriculum schedule, I put the picture for the fortnight on the iPad home screen, and also print off some postcard size pictures of the work. These go up on the wall while we are studying the artist and then at the end of term they'll go into a photo album of all the artists and pictures we've done.

The first week the children would look at the picture for a time and then tell it back to me as best they could. I might also read something about the artist or picture. The second week we would get paints or another medium out and they would make a copy of it. These would go up on the wall. That's it! Very simple but pretty successful - we've really enjoyed this part of "school".