U are the best 😍💖

Love this! This year we’ve also started doing a song for a month. You’re right, it’s been great and easier to learn the words better that way!

Good for you making changes that suit y’all’s family. This year we’ve found a much more peaceful way to still do AO but cut back. We are combining a few literature books with year 4&5 family style (like King Arthur and Kim) which means not getting to all of them from all years but I’m ok with that. It brings back the family read time I miss and lightens the schedule a bit. We’ve also just made peace with slashing a few books when needed. Having each in their own history year has been awesome as they become independent readers…they’re doing those books on their own more and more and not waiting on me to read. Hope y’all have a great year and enjoy the books you picked!

I think I could do a video soon for you on how we’ve made changes and edited the schedule a bit. I bet there’s a few others wondering the same! I don’t digitally edit the schedules provided on AO website, though there’s an editable version on there you could download. I just do it for now on the paper. I color in the readings we do as we go. For records, I’ve never lived in a state that required them, but we do keep the colored in schedule sheets as record of what we’ve done, and I want to get back to what we used to do for recording which is just writing down what we’ve done that day (besides readings) in a cheap planner. It’s called reverse planning and is where I could jot down family read alouds, timeline entry, crafts, etc. Hope that helps a little bit and congrats on your baby!!

You’ll still use the teachers guide to tell you what to do for the ‘together’ page. It’s not always obvious what to do without the guide. But I do feel like level 3 (and level 4) use the first page to give you more visuals for explaining, as well as a few problems to practice together. Overall, there’s fewer manipulatives to pull out it seems. For example, maybe instead of you setting down cards and reading the teachers guide for what to say, the first page now would have a picture of the cards and you’d still read the teacher’s guide for what to say, if that makes sense.

I agree on the home instructors guide. I have sat there for 15 mins confused at to how to go about explaining the concept and I will eventually get it but it does feel like I’m losing precious time. It’s very frustrating and it’s 1st grade! It shouldn’t be this confusing I think.

Two of my younger kids have loved Math with Confidence at level 1! You might like some of my other Math with Confidence videos if you’re considering using it. We’ve never used Math Mammoth for younger years though. If you’re not loving Singapore it’s a good time to switch while he’s young!

Yes! So technically you could just own one ‘make your own card’ and replace what’s on it. We do that all the time.

Too bad support has been sub par. Sorry to hear. I also cannot for the life of me remember my kids usernames and passwords (they assign very strange usernames too!), so we end up getting to their accounts by first logging in through my parent account and then I’ll choose one of their profiles to go to.

Hmm, good q. There’s no advantage of store bought story cards I’m aware of other than they’re ready to go. But you can’t ever remove the content on them, and sometimes stories are the abridged versions. I like that MYO cards can have content added and deleted. MYO cards are so customizable and easy to change content on, and I find it functional to own fewer physical cards and just swap out stories as needed. If you have the capability to buy the audio files of stories in another language, you’d for sure want the MYO cards. Hope that helps!

I think year 2 and 4 sounds like a good plan! You’ll probably be reading 100% of the year 2 books out loud, and possibly a good chunk of the year 4 books (at least initially, until you find you can slowly start handing certain ones over to your 10 year old to read). Our first year doing AO was also our 1st year doing the Charlotte Mason method of narration. We held off doing any written narrations that first year with my year 4, and only did oral narrations (till the last few weeks of school). This took off the pressure of writing until narrations were normal to us and easy to do orally. I got that advice to from Karen Glass in Know and Tell, and found it to be spot on. Def read her whole book before starting as narration is a cornerstone of this curriculum and way of learning! Also, jump into whatever history year they’re in, don’t go back and try to fill in extra because it’ll overwhelm them with too much info. They’ll start making connections with the people in their books in whatever year they’re in. Also, don’t be afraid to postpone some subjects for the first term, or even first year if you need. We ditched Plutarch and foreign language for my sanity of figuring out this new way of doing school. Or, you could aim for doing less of a subject (example one Shakespeare play per year instead of 1 per term). Good luck and be sure to check out my year 4 book stack video to see what books are covered! You got this.

@ thank you so much. This is comforting and helpful. Will def check that one out as well.

O I bet a Rosemary wreath will be beautiful! And it must smell amazing.

@@LizBlueandHazel Thanks! The Rosemary wreath is more fragrant when you touch it. I believe it would have more aroma if the house was closed and the heater was running. I would send you a picture but not sure how to do it on here!

Awesome, glad it helped! They need better online samples of what’s in each. Glad you found this video!

We just have the “new” color version for level 3, but if the level 1 new version is the same there’s a teacher’s manual that’s reusable and a student book that is consumable. There’s been some “optional” cut and paste type activities inside as well as a few worksheet pages. Glad AAR is going well!

It’s always the part to connect it I have to bite the band to do then it just falls apart then I just get so maddddd after 10 minssssss of doing it😊

Did not mean to put the face to to ere

This will vary a ton depending on how many days a week you want to do the program, and how easily spelling comes to your child. A 4th grader could get through level 1,2,&3 if you’re doing 15-20 min of spelling around 4 days a week. We do about 2 days a week so it’ll take us longer. Higher levels take longer to finish I’ve heard, and have noticed my kids flying through level 1, going slightly slower at level 2 & 3. Some families drop or don’t find a need to finish all 7 levels. So many variables, but my guess is starting older you could finish 7 levels within 4-5 years. I’d love if some other families who are farther along in the program comment on this too! Here’s a thread I found on someone asking a similar question: forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/451528-all-about-spelling-time-daily-long-term/