We're Switching Curriculum! From AGF to Alveary - Come hear my first impressions & why we switched!

the title of this video may have come as a bit of a surprise to you but it is true we are switching from a gentle Feast to alvary for next [Music] year now before we dive in and I tell you my reasoning for the switch please be sure to hit like And subscribe to the channel if you find Value in the things that I share here you'll find a little bit of everything you'll find a lot of homeschooling content you'll find our podcast this devoted life on here as well a little bit of our life with Vlog Style type things uh some of the things that we do as a family particularly as a homeschooling family so be sure to like And subscribe to the channel and leave us a comment because I love interacting with you and it makes it so it's more fun for me to actually make these videos as well all right so let's talk about why we are making this switch now before I say anything this has nothing to do with the fact that a gentle Feast is like an inferior um curriculum and it is definitely not that the alvary is a superior curriculum the the reason that we are making this switch is plain and simple I've been using a gentle Feast for five years now and to be honest I just wanted to try something new I've never tried anything else um as a Charlotte Mason homeschooler I made the decision to go with a gentle Feast years ago because of the open and go style curriculum like you can flip this open take a look at a flatlay a two-page flatlay and it tells you everything that you need for the entire week for all four forms which was amazing for for me as a firsttime homeschooler and I have loved everything that Julie from a gentle Feast has put together you can tell that a lot of time and effort has been put into making a Charlotte Mason education accessible for a firsttime homeschooler or just anyone who's wanting a little bit of help putting together a Charlotte Mason style curriculum now with a Charlotte Mason education you don't even have to have a curriculum you can piece together the curriculum yourself using the principles that Charlotte Mason laid out she has given you the groundwork within her books to lay out a beautiful Feast for your children she has many volumes of writing that if you have read over them you can put together your own education for your children using her principles lots of living books lots of beautiful ideas just a broad Feast for your children just to be invited into to sample and to try and to just have this this beauty of an education so with it things like a gentle feast and the alvary and other curriculums that put together the pieces of a Charlotte Mason education that's exactly what they're doing is they are simply piecing it together for you you should never feel bound to a particular curriculum like even within a gentle Feast I was making changes every year if there was a book that we just weren't connecting with I made a change or if there was um just something that I thought maybe could be done better we did that as well uh like I did swap out some of the science and I actually talked to Julie about this and I just said you know form two science cuz she was asking me on my opinions on what we could what could be something that they could do a little better and form two science is one of those things where I thought you know I would like to see a bit of improvement in that area so last year we switched to Sabbath moods um science curriculums and I loved doing those alongside a gentle fee so never feel like you are stuck with whatever curriculum that you choose because you are the educator of your children and you should be able to make those changes as you see fit for your family and for um the values that you have in your home so I made the switch like I said it simply was because I wanted to try something new I had seen a lot of people trying uh or who have used the alvier in the past and to be totally honest when I first saw it it was six years ago when I was first looking at a Charlotte Mason education I had a friend who was currently doing it she logged in and let me take a look and my mind was like I cannot even wrap my brain around what they're doing here um that year six years ago they had from my understanding it was a big Excel spreadsheet and I took one look at it and I was like you literally have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and I was like my brain does not work that way and there is no way that I am going to be able to do that for my kids it just wasn't laid out in a way that made sense to my brain so over the past six years I've watched them take the um ideas from the people who were using their curriculum and each year it has gotten better and and better and better from what I've seen and they truly are laying out a beautiful Feast now for parents and children to do together so some of the differences between the alvary and a gentle Feast so a gentle Feast you can jump in in any cycle that you want to do whereas the alvary they only have one cycle that everyone is doing at one time now you could take that as a pro or a con because if you are wanting to study you know Columbus Conquest colonies which is um 1,00 to 1680 ad that was what this was for this past year that we did if you wanted to do that you could choose it or you could go and you could do like the American Revolution or you could do modern times whatever you wanted to do with a gentle Feast you could do that now the alvary has where everyone is doing the same thing which was a bit of a bummer for me because that means that we will actually be repeating the same cycle that we did last year but the cool thing about it is that there is not one repeated book not one we are repeating a similar cycle and there is not one book that will be repeated for any of my children that they did last year so even though we're studying the same time period there is going to be a completely new Feast laid out for them so like I said some people view the um everyone doing it at one time as a very positive thing because now everyone who's doing the alvary can talk about the exact same thing because everyone is on the same cycle so that is kind of one of those things it depends on how you think whether you are going to view it as a positive or A negative I don't have any insight into that right now because I haven't personally experienced it yet what I do like is that they have the alvary has what they call the hive it is an online community where people can ask questions and you can sign up for particular um like segments within that community so I am signed up for form one students and for form two students which means that I'm able to talk to the parents who are currently doing the exact same thing and read about their questions and maybe answer some myself or I can ask questions and I'm not having to weed through all of the information that everyone is asking in everything so some of it is devoted to like the living page which is a book but it talks about um uh notebooking and you can ask specific questions about that so within that group it really does create a tight Community um for the AL people who are using the alvary and so far I have found that to be very valuable and I've really enjoyed that part of the curriculum so far uh one of the negatives that I found about the alvary already at least that I find is I like to plan early and so usually like March and April I do start to plan out our school year you can view the books that are going to be used for the upcoming year but you can't view the lesson plans until June 1st that's when they drop and that's when everyone gets the lesson plans so for me that's been a little bit different because usually I've had you know at least term one planned out for myself um before June 1st so it was a little bit different to me um not getting it until June 1st now once again it's a mindset thing so I have a friend who like I said been using this for a long time and she actually likes that they don't drop it until June 1st and she said her positive for that was it helped her to finish the school year strong that they were currently in rather than getting super excited about the next one and kind of petering out on the current school year and so she actually viewed that as a positive thing and so I loved her perspective on why she liked the June 1st drops with the lesson plans so let's look at the lesson plans and this is what won me over um with their lesson plans and made me want to try something just new um their lesson plans are very laid out for you which is really cool rather than just telling you hey you should be reading this book in these chapters they give you everything that they that you need to do it tells you what to prep there's an intro that you can read to your student or that your student can read to themselves then after they do that they have um this is the history one right here but they have a locate they show you a map resource they tell you which map to grab out what page it is on and they actually walk you through a geography study right within the history lessons which is just so cool to see how everything is pulled and tied together and then they have um a read narrate and discuss and they give you that narra narration question like this one says why do you think all cultures have some kind of myths about how the world was created or what happens after we die so that was just a narration question it was more than just tell me what you know it caused the child to think and I really appreciate that they have that all laid out for you within the lesson plans so there is just a wealth of knowledge in these lesson plans and when I say a wealth of knowledge what what I really loved is this year as I was looking just to see if maybe I wanted to make a switch was I watched what was called their book talks they put out book talk at the beginning of the year that talked through um their book choices why they chose them and as I watched these women talk about why they chose the books I loved that there was this Collective um working together it wasn't just one person picking out some books it was literally like a whole panel of people who were they specialized in particular areas and they were passionate about them and they brought that to the table and they were able to bring their skills their desire their um just their skill set and and to create these beautiful curriculums and to pick out these books which like I said were so different from anything that I had seen in a Charlotte Mason curriculum thus far so I really liked that they um you know collaborated on that and that there's a panel of people doing the alvary so while I'm watching these book talks one of the things that really drew me to it was I watched their science plans and I loved what I was seeing with that because they took a look at um biomes and they chose books that really Drew kids in um one of them that just made me super excited was one of the books that my form 2 student is going to be reading was um the wolves and moose of Isle Royale I might have gotten that backwards it might be moose and Wolves of Isle Royale but that's a local book for us because we're in Michigan Isle Royale is a state park in or a national park in Michigan um that we have not visited yet because it's a little Island Way up up north and so I was excited for my son to be able to study that I liked that in the lower years it wasn't just to Nature lore and going out and just being in nature they actually had some very specific lesson plans for form one students that we are reading about particular science um subjects and I liked that once again there was a little bit of the handholding with the lesson plans that helps you to connect these dots without actually connecting the dots for your child I want to be clear about that because that's something Charlotte Mason is very particular about is that you're not supposed to connect the dots for them but rather these beautiful open-ended questions and just giving a little bit of guidance to help your child see the broad picture where it's not just history it's also geography these people truly lived here's where they lived you know um science once again it's oh this is our home this is right around here this is what we can learn about this particular area why does it matter that type of thing so I really loved just the science plans and I wanted to see if that would fit us a little bit better now I was talking with a friend actually who did the alvary last year and I was kind of asking her opinion on different things and I told her I said as a first time impression so we have not done any of the curriculum yet none at all my first impression of the alvary was this I would not recommend it for a first-time homeschooler because as I've been diving through these lessons plans as beautiful as they are it is a little overwhelming because there is just so much to take in so maybe someone who has been doing a Charlotte maon education for a while or someone who has a really strong understanding of what it is prior to starting homeschooling I'm in a book club where there are some moms with like two and three-year-old kids who are studying Charlotte Mason and have a good understanding of her philosophy of education so I believe that they could probably jump in with alvier but for me if I had taken one look at this six years ago I would have been like oh my goodness this is overwhelming there is so many moving Parts um so I don't know if this would be something that I would recommend I would for sure recommend a gentle Feast to someone who is a first-time homeschooler because it is so laid out for you it is a great curriculum particularly if this is like your first time homeschooling and you just need someone to be like here this is what you need to do to start off your journey with a Charlotte Mason education now one more thing that Drew me to it and this is one thing that I'm so excited about so the alvary this year once again they took the advice from the people who have been using the curriculum and they created an online lesson plan for your children or not lesson plan but um planner for your children and it's called Syd and I have been spending the past two or three weeks really playing with that and have loved it so what they did was they preloaded all of the L and plans so all of like this single page right here ends up in this portal on Sy bird and you're able to click add history to my form for my form 2 student and it populates into their lesson plans and they can create a login they can click on today and just be like okay history for today click it opens up these lesson plans are right there with every link that you would need so um as they're reading through it if there was a link like down here it says image link wampum belt um your student has access to that they'll be able to click it and it'll pop up and show it to them right away so I loved the online planner that they created this year with um a partnership with Sy bird there is only one thing that I have found within it that has not worked well and that is if you um if you plan out a specific lesson uh or a specific subject if you decide to shift the date like your start date you can't shift it easily you would actually have to unsubscribe subscribe from it and resubscribe to that particular lesson for your start dat it's it was a little bit wonky but other than that I have been so impressed because you're able to uh plan out the entire year so when I say I add history it's not adding a particular lesson it's adding 36 weeks of lessons you go in and you can put in your particular uh vacation days and all it does is it puts a break there and bumps the lesson a week if your child doesn't get to Something in the week you literally just say hit hit reschedule and it will resched all of it it'll push everything by one week which I think is really cool or you don't have to do that you can double up if you wanted to um but I just thought that that was really neat it took a lot of the tediousness of planning out or using an online planner where you're put inputting everything yourself everything is right there word for word from the lesson plans with all of the links and that has been so cool to see it really is a beautiful thing and I'm very glad that they decided to do that this year and that I'm jumping in on this year when they've launched it for the first time so so I am very excited to try something new this year um just to kind of recap I think that a gentle Feast is still a beautiful curriculum there's no particular reason why I'm like yeah I'm leaving it it's more I just want to try something new and see if even something that's a better fit for us there's a chance maybe I'll go back to a gentle Feast next year I don't know but that's the beauty of homeschooling it allows us the freedom to do and try new things um the alvary so far I have been very pleased with everything that I have seen from them so far with their lesson plans um they don't have any printed manual where it's just like an add a glance that is one negative that I've seen there too but once again I think that Sila bird kind of makes up for all of that because it's just an add a glance right on there and um yeah overall I'm really excited about the alvary I'm excited to try something new I'm excited for the lesson plans that maybe help us to dive a little deeper than anything that we've been doing in the past I'm excited I hope you are too so hopefully I'll be able to give some updates mid year just to talk about our experience with the alvary what we're liking what we're disliking so hopefully this was a really great intro to why we're switching and my first impressions on the overall planning of the alvary and what I'm seeing so far and what I'm liking so like I said be sure to like And subscribe for more content like this [Music]

Channel: This Devoted Life

Views: 1,898

Keywords: Homeschool, Homeschooling, A Gentle feast, Alveary, Homeschool curriculum, Charlotte mason, Charlotte mason curriculum, Pros and cons, First impressions

Id: elP6x-cw0M0

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2024