Planning your school year

Note: This is not AO specific.  This is also not just for planning a schoolyear, but also helpful to study before you go to a curriculum fair or open up any homeschool catalog or even visit a book sale!

I personally think that planning the school year or buying and choosing curriculum is a lot simpler if you set some things straight in your mind first. Basically, develop your philosophy of education, because once you do that, it's much easier to weed out stuff you don't need, stuff that will actually undermine your goals for your family.  Being clear on what you believe about learning will help you clearly see if any given resource or practice is a good fit for your family. Sometimes you've already done that work, but just need some reminders to refresh the soul.

Here are some things you might find encouraging and helpful.

Read this (here's just enough to give you a taste):

Natural knowledge is knowledge of things as they are. It's what we get first, but it's pre-verbal, so it's hard to measure and identify. But it's what humans love because it is personal and direct. Conventional knowledge is knowledge of what humans have come up with to record the knowledge of things as they are, or often to dissemble. In other words, names. People don't mind having this knowledge, but they don't value names for animals they don't play with. Let me explain that a little and see if I can connect it to your original question about inspiring children. When you and I think about knowledge, we almost always have in mind names for facts. For example, we think about the civil war in 1861-1865. The Civil War is a fact. That it took place in 1861 - 1865 is another fact. But if you think a little harder about it, you realize that in fact that "Civil War" is a [B]name[/B] that we give to an event that occurred in the past. The proof that it is a name and not the fact itself is that people can refer to it by other names, such as "The war between the states," or "the war of the northern aggression" etc. Hold on to that distinction between a fact and a name, and let me draw an analogy. If you tell your child that a dog in a picture is named Rex, do you think she would care or remember for very long? The answer, I would suggest, is, "It depends." So what does it depend on? More than anything, it depends on whether she knows the dog personally. If it is her own dog and she loves it, she'll remember. If it is her friends dog, she'll probably still remember. If it is a dog in a book like those Lewis describes at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ("of fat foreign children doing exercises" - ie of decontextualized factoids that give superficial contacts with irrelevant things), then she won't. Why not? Because she doesn't know the dog.

Think about this aspect of a Charlotte Mason education:

“The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”

Education is the Science of Relations; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we must train him upon physical exercises, nature, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books; for we know that our business is, not to teach him all about anything, but to help him make valid, as many as may be of

'Those first born affinities,
'That fit our new existence to existing things.'

And this one:

Children have Affinities and should have Relations.––I cannot stop here to gather any more of the instruction and edification contained in those two great educational books, The Prelude and Præterita. It is enough for the present if they have shown us in what manner children attach themselves to their proper affinities, given opportunity and liberty. Our part is to drop occasion freely in the way, whether in school or at home. Children should have relations with earth and water, should run and leap, ride and swim, should establish the relation of maker to material in as many kinds as may be; should have dear and intimate relations with persons, through present intercourse, through tale or poem, picture or statue; through flint arrow-head or modern motor-car: beast and bird, herb and tree, they must have familiar acquaintance with. Other peoples and their languages must not be strange to them. Above all they should find that most intimate and highest of all Relationships,––the fulfilment of their being.

This is not a bewildering programme, because, in all these and more directions, children have affinities; and a human being does not fill his place in the universe without putting out tendrils of attachment in the directions proper to him. We must get rid of the notion that to learn the 'three R's' or the Latin grammar well, a child should learn these and nothing else. It is as true for children as for ourselves that, the wider the range of interests, the more intelligent is the apprehension of each.
Education not Desultory.––But I am not preaching a gospel for the indolent and proclaiming that education is a casual and desultory matter. Many great authors have written at least one book devoted to education; and Waverley seems to me to be Scott's special contribution to our science.

And this:

But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,

Education is the Science of Relations.––The idea that vivifies teaching in the Parents' Union is that Education is the Science of Relations; by which phrase we mean that children come into the world with a natural 'appetency,' to use Coleridge's word, for, and affinity with, all the material of knowledge; for interest in the heroic past and in the age of myths; for a desire to know about everything that moves and lives, about strange places and strange peoples; for a wish to handle material and to make; a desire to run and ride and row and do whatever the law of gravitation permits. Therefore we do not feel it is lawful in the early days of a child's life to select certain subjects for his education to the exclusion of others; to say he shall not learn Latin, for example, or shall not learn Science; but we endeavour that he shall have relations of pleasure and intimacy established with as many as possible of the interests proper to him; not learning a slight or incomplete smattering about this or that subject, but plunging into vital knowledge, with a great field before him which in all his life he will not be able to explore. In this conception we get that 'touch of emotion' which vivifies knowledge, for it is probable that we feel only as we are brought into our proper vital relations.

Or this simple summation:

a system of education should have for its aim, not the mastery of certain 'subjects,' but the establishment of these relations in as many directions as circumstances will allow.

All quotes not directly attributed are from Charlotte Mason.  You can find them in context at AO's website.

Now, think about what you're doing, what you have planned, and what you want to do, and measure it by what you believe about education and how children learn. Keep these ideas in mind as you work out your schedule, and don't slot time and space for projects that undermine those goals.

Some subject specific resources:

A plain & simple template for selecting school subjects and loosely organizing them.

Memorization and the Soul: Why, What, and How by Brandy Vencel (link is for a purchase now)

You might find this free resource on the value of memorizing poems helpful.

Testing?  I believe that Schooling is about facts, but education is about ideas, and if you agree, I would suggest that you try to use materials that reflect that.  In this way, you would only care about "assessment tests" that  are based more on discussions with your students where you attempt to discern how much they care, if at all.

Nature STudy, Science, and Charlotte Mason

Pretty much everything you need to know about copywork and dictation