The All-in-One Room Schoolhouse Curriculum (AIO) is a free, secular, online curriculum for grades one through twelve. It covers the core subjects except for math, using ten “living” books for each of its 12 levels in a Charlotte Mason fashion. Rather than mirroring content covered in government schools, AIO relies on interesting books, many of them fiction and many that cover academic topics. As described on the program’s website, this is a “minimalist, easy-to-use curriculum….”
Students move at their own pace, although all students start at Level 1. The online Start Guide says, “Before starting Level 1, students need to know how to read using phonics.” So even at Level 1, there is no instruction in phonics or reading skills, and you’ll probably need to add a reading program if students are not yet proficient readers. Since math isn’t included, the AIO website recommends a few free math programs, but you can use whatever you want.
The living books are a mix of fiction, historical fiction, biography, autobiography, tales, science fiction, and nonfiction—many that would be recommended for a classical approach to education. History is learned through books like Viking Tales by Jennie Hall, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle, An Island Story (or Our Island Story about England) by H.E. Marshall, Men of Iron by Howard Pyle, Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat (the English Civil War), The Story of the Greeks by H.A. Guerber, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, Ben Hur by Lew Wallace, To Have and to Hold: A Tale of Providence and Perseverance in Colonial Jamestown by Mary Johnston, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin, The Life of Black Hawk by Black Hawk, Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Plutarch: Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch, and The Iliad by Homer.
I listed many of them so you can see the types of books as well as the selective nature of historical coverage students will get. Also, note that the books are not read in chronological order but appear at levels where students are likely to find them readable or interesting.
Science is learned through books like The Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess, The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess, Great Inventors and Their Inventions by Frank P. Bachman, The Great Astronomers by Robert S. Ball, Wild Animals at Home by Ernest Thompson Seton, My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir, and A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis by Glen W. Watson (chemistry). The largest concentration on one scientific discipline seems to be at Level 12 where three of the ten books relate to physics, and they are likely challenging to read. (I haven’t read any of them.) Those books are Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (physics), Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency by Nikola Tesla, and Ancient and Modern Physics by Thomas Edgar Wilson.
The reading is lighter in the early levels, as you can see from the following list of books for Level 1. But note that none of the required books are written at a first-grade reading level, so parents read them aloud or have students listen to audiobooks.
Level 1 books:
- Old Mother West Wind by Thornton W. Burgess
- Holidays and Happy-Days by Hamish Hendry
- Among the Meadow People by Clara Dillingham Pierson
- Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- Viking Tales by Jennie Hall
- Beatrix Potter Treasury by Beatrix Potter (selected stories)
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
- Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
- Louisa May Alcott Reader by Louisa May Alcott
Note the preponderance of fiction at this level, and while both the level of difficulty and academic orientation gradually increase through the levels, it is not in a smooth progression. The Level 9 list below clearly includes much more difficult books and more that are related to history.
Level 9 books:
- Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace
- In the Days of Queen Elizabeth by Eva March Tappan
- The Land of Little Rainby Mary Austin
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- To Have and to Hold: A Tale of Providence and Perseverance in Colonial Jamestown by Mary Johnston
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The required books are all out-of-print and available free from websites such as Project Gutenberg, Open Library, and LibriVox, and sometimes as audiobooks. AIO includes links to recommended print editions for those who prefer to purchase printed books.
While this is called a secular curriculum, many of the books express opinions, beliefs, and attitudes with which you might disagree. For instance, among those likely to raise eyebrows might be Anthem by Ayn Rand, which teaches an Objectivist/Libertarian philosophy (Level 9), and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which presents a philosophy based on a search for enlightenment, reincarnation, and other ideas associated with eastern religions (Level 11). You can use such books to provoke fruitful discussions, but some parents might prefer the time be spent on other books.
Personally, I would expand the number of books to include more on history and science, skip a few like Peter Pan and Siddhartha, read just a few short stories from the collections listed for some levels (collections of several short stories are one of the ten books), and add more short stories by other authors. Unless I had a student likely to do advanced studies in physics, I might skip the Einstein and Tesla books in favor of others on science. Once you understand how the program works, it’s easy to substitute or add books, and the program’s creator, Hannah Ward says in the Start Guide, “As the parent, you assign each reading based on your family’s personal standards and your child’s needs.”
How It Works
The format for using the curriculum is very simple. Learning happens through interaction with books rather than textbooks and workbooks. Once you have downloaded or acquired the books, the program does not rely on the internet. (Of course, students can also read books online if you wish.) If students have printed books, they won’t need screens at all. However, you will probably want to have older students use a computer for some activities, such as writing narrations and researching intriguing topics they encounter in their reading.
The Level 1 Guide explains the work students do:
After each chapter students will complete a formative assessment. They will complete copy work after each chapter. This means they copy a passage, letter by letter, under your example. Write the passage on the line above, leaving space on the next line for your child to copy. This way they can learn spelling, grammar, and punctuation directly from what they’re reading. They’ll pick a passage they like from the reading and copy 1-3 sentences per assignment. After copying the passage, have them read it out loud. They’ll also provide oral narrations, retelling the reading in their own words, using visual aids if desired…. Finally, they will select 1 vocabulary word from each chapter. Have them write down the vocabulary word, look up and write down the definition, and then use the word to write a sentence….
In addition to this work for each chapter, students provide their own narration after completing a book. They will also write about it in response to a prompt included in the online booklist. For example, the prompt for The Boxcar Children asks, “What creative ways were the children able to survive on their own?" (Level 1). A suggested schedule gives you an idea of how much time to spend on tasks each day.
Parents need to be heavily involved, reading the required books a step ahead of students, reading aloud to children, discussing the books, listening to student narrations, creating copywork, and evaluating student work.
AIO is not for parents who feel the need to check off objectives that align with educational standards. Many of those will be met and exceeded, but some will be skipped. AIO is likely to work best for families that prioritize having their children learn to read and think well using time-tested literature rather than for those who want their children to learn what other students are taught in most schools.
Sherlock Homeschooling also has a free preschool-kindergarten program that you might want to consider.
Summary
All-in-One Room Schoolhouse Curriculum offers a very streamlined approach to learning compared to just about everything else I’ve reviewed. (The Robinson curriculum is the closest comparison.) Parents must devote a lot of time to make it work, but investing time in reading the books might expand their own education while preparing them to interact with their children over important literary works.
