My daughter is currently six. I’ve decided to use first grade curriculum with her instead of kindergarten. Mainly because her reading level is at the equivalent of fourth grade or more, and from what I can tell her math skills are at least first grade level. Last year was very informal for us, she was mainly allowed to follow her interests and play with occasional reading from mom. That makes this year our first planned year, even though the state we live doesn’t require us to register until the fall after she turns seven.
While I still have more to learn about Charlotte Mason’s philosophies and teaching method, I am trying to follow her style. Which is part of why I was so informal last year. I had tried to plan a bit of curriculum last year but it ended up falling to the wayside. This year when I needed to become more serious (particularly with my husband’s urging), I again tried to plan a curriculum but quickly felt overwhelmed with the variety of choices. And that was just following Charlotte Mason’s philosophies. Simply Charlotte Mason is a wonderful site with huge lists of ‘living books’ which can be search by subject and suggest grade levels. Unfortunately there were so many choices I was getting lost. Time was drawing near to when I should start classes, and I hadn’t picked anything more then the math books.
For our first few weeks I tried planning on my own, but quickly realized I needed something more concrete. While I was driving myself crazy, I found a very helpful post on Jimmie’s Collage site. It lists several different curricula based on living books. It’s a great post and lists many options, which I greatly appreciated. We needed something that wasn’t a complete single grade level, allowed me some flexibility without leaving me adrift, and something within our limited budget. With these things in mind I started looking at the listings of free curriculum based on public domain books. I was looking for something with a plan, that I could follow, and I ended up choosing Ambleside Online. I should mention not all the books in the booklist for Year 1 are public domain, but those that aren’t I have been able to find easily in our local library.