AO5 Schedule

Hello Lovies.  I'm so sorry I've been absent without leave.  Jemimah and I have been beavering away on school in order to get AO5 Term 2 finished by the end of this week.  We've managed it too.  Hurrah!

For the first time in our homeschool journey we're not taking a break between terms, but are instead moving straight into Term 3 next week.  Before you harass me for being a bad mumma, however, let me remind you that we did take  a three week holiday to SE Asia midway through this term, and so we haven't really been working 12 weeks straight without a break.  I would not like to be thought of as harsh and uncaring.

We're hoping to make a head start on Term 3 because in only a few short weeks I'm off to Europe with my mum, leaving Mr PD with sole parental responsibility for our daughter for almost a month.  Jemimah and both agree that it is much more desirable for her to take a couple of weeks holidays then, since independent work for four weeks would be quite a strain otherwise.

The good side of all this is that it has forced me to actually finalise our AO5 schedule.  I've posted it here for those of you who like to follow along with us.
Year 5 Schedule

AO5 Term 3 covers the period of time between Federation up to and including WWI.  It is not a very busy time in Australia's history, this 20 year period, providing us with the opportunity to add in not one but two books on the war.  One of these, of course, has to be Elyne Mitchell's novel about my grandfather, The Lighthorsemen, but the other is a fascinating little novel by Methodist minister, Joseph Bowes, called The Aussie Crusaders.  Bowes, a minister in NSW and Queensland for almost fifty years, was a prolific writer of books for boys, including a number of war stories.  In this one, Major Jack Smith and Sergeant Jock M'Thirst are captured by Bedouins and then Turks and are present at the fall of Gaza and Jerusalem.  It is a thrillingly exciting book with much apparent accurate research.  I'll write a review once we've read it.

Other highlights include biographies of Beatrix Potter and George Washington Carver, along with the conclusion of our bio of John G Paton.  Literature includes Kim by Rudyard Kipling, Goodbye Mr Chips and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Every term of Ambleside Online is a goodie, but this one is shaping up to be extra fine indeed.

There is a happy jig happening here.