A Gentle Feast Cycle 3, Form 1
This will be our spine curriculum for History/Natural History, Geography, Language Arts, Foreign Language, and Music.
This is our second year using AGF and it’s the very first Charlotte Mason Curriculum I’ve been able to follow without falling behind. We all learned so much last year, and I’m excited to crack open the books again with my oldest in August!
Math:
The Good and the Beautiful along with both of the Math Facts That Stick Addition and Subtraction books by Kate Snow, and other math based games.
Reading/Phonics:
All About Reading Level 3 and why we aren’t using The Good and The Beautiful for Language Arts this year.
Between the Language Arts and Morning Time Guide from A Gentle Feast, I’ve been able to cover everything from poetry to hymns, bible, memorization selections, music/artist study, narration, composition, grammar, spelling, writing/copywork, and illustration prompts. I love it because the lessons are based around the time period and books that we’re reading throughout the year. I like how the spelling tests are done in a “French Dictation” style. I also really like how AGF takes spelling words from the copywork passages, and the copywork passages all come from what we are reading.
Why we switched from TGATB to All About Reading:
This is the biggest change I’ve made this year, and the one I’m the most nervous about. We’ve used TGATB Language Arts with my son for three years and we’re both very comfortable with it.
However, A Gentle Feast Language Arts is so thorough that found myself skipping over almost ALL of the lessons from TGATB. This left us with what felt like a few phonics lessons here or there.
What we really needed this year was a curriculum that only focuses on reading. Even though my son is becoming a confident reader, I want to make sure his phonics skills are strong. I know it will be beneficial for him in the future, especially when it comes to spelling.
AAR is very different for us and we are both getting used to it, but even after one lesson I can tell that it’s a much stronger reading curriculum that TGATB. I’m interested in seeing how it goes!