Curriculum

Ambleside School of Brownwood curriculum is provided by Ambleside Schools International. This curriculum was developed by Maryellen St. Cyr, the founder of Ambleside School of Fredericksburg and ASI, now serving as the Director of Curriculum for Ambleside Schools International. 

The Ambleside Curriculum Coursework:

• A wide and varied course of study.
• Alternation between disciplinary and inspirational subjects for both the development of skills and the mastery of content without drudgery.
• An acquaintance with knowledge that reflects the good, true, and beautiful and is vital, fruitful, and connected with its forming ideas.
• The use of living books characterized as “the best thought of the best writers.”
• The use of materials that support understanding and exploration without the use of entertainment.

Students should 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 all his life he will not be able to fully explore.”

Narration is key to the basic methodology of Charlotte Mason education. Narration is an active retelling of what the student has seen, heard, and learned. Such a retelling requires the use of the child’s whole mind and demands careful attention to a single reading of the source, without review and repetitions. While most frequently oral, narration may also take the form of an essay, dramatization, or drawing. During narration a child assimilates the knowledge, makes it part of them, so they can then use it to express, analyze, compare, contrast and grow.

Ambleside students do the scholar’s work of reading primary sources that present inspiring ideas in all subjects. Never do materials include dry, predigested facts and textbooks. Their study also includes direct contact and observation of real objects from nature (plants, minerals, animals, the elements) art, music, and other resources. 

Here is a sample of subjects covered. Subjects vary slightly as grade levels progress:

Inspirational Subjects:

Bible
Citizenship
Music Appreciation
Literature
Nature Study
Picture Study
Poetry
Read Aloud
Science
World History