The Giant Curriculum Post: First Grade

So I think I'm done working on First Grade.

At least mentally.

I know what our plans are, what I'm willing to toss if it doesn't work, and what I'm not willing to give up on. I have a clear picture in my head of how our homeschool days worked last year and how I'd like them to work this year, and what kind of time it will take to make those plans reality.


The truth for our family is that I don't really care what we're learning in certain subject areas so long as we are always learning and growing. However, we need a little more structure than just hopping down whatever rabbit trails float our way, especially Ender. He does very well under a highly-structured set-up and I'm trying to provide some of that for him.

Math

We're going to use Singapore 1 this year. I've been really happy with Ender's progress using Montessori materials, but I love the way Singapore presents mental math and has some writing. Ender is definitely ready to write a bit more for math. I also think he will enjoy seeing progress through the workbook since he's a "check it off" kind of kid. We're still incorporating plenty of Montessori and hands-on work for math, but it's time to start putting pencil to paper a bit.

  

Language Arts

Lots of read alouds (Charlotte's Web is at the front of the list right now), lots of readers to keep working on fluency, and  First Language Lessons. FLL is on my list to hit about three times a week. If Ender proves unready for the curriculum we'll set it aside til next year. This is one of the books that I think he is ready for but won't be disappointed if he's not.

I also have Writing With Ease and like the look of it, but I'm really applying its principles of narration and copywork (especially using his own narrations as copywork on another day) to other subjects. FLL covers narration, poem memorization, and copywork as well, and I don't want to overwhelm.


For phonics we're sticking with what Ender asked for: Victory Drill Book. We've tried a few other things in the name of finding more fun with phonics, but my straight-forward kid really likes the lists. We do read through the columns as they are intended, but we spend the bulk of our phonics time playing games with the words in the columns, practicing them as spelling words verbally and with the moveable alphabet, putting 4 or 5 words in alphabetical order, etc.

And because handwriting falls under language arts in my brain, we are using Handwriting Without Tears this year. I haven't really pushed a lot of writing with the boys, but Ender did learn to form his letters correctly last year. The physical act of writing is *not* his favorite though, so we're going to go through the Kindergarten HWT book first and then maybe see about heading into the first grade book later in the year.

Science

We're going with a little Classical Ed/ Charlotte Mason combo here. We have three days a week of science planned- one day similar to what is described in the Well-Trained Mind, spending 20 weeks on animals, 10-ish weeks on the human body and 10-ish weeks on plant life reading and narrating each week on those topics. Our other two days are planned for exploration around a theme.

  

Our topics for this year are:

First quarter: Creeks and Ponds
Second Quarter: Night Sky
Third Quarter: Water Cycle and Weather
Fourth Quarter: One Small Square: Backyard

Some of our inspiration will come from the Handbook of Nature Study blog, but mostly we're just planning on getting out there and giving plenty of time to spend exploring, collecting, and observing before returning home to read up on our discoveries. I'm hoping for a first try at a nature journal as well. I'm leaving plenty of room to explore more specifically within our quarterly topic or explore something completely unrelated if we find an interest.

We also have Christian Liberty Nature Readers for K and 1st grade that we will read from together at first , and then later on in the year Ender may be able to read from some on his own.

History

I am planning a light journey through the Story of the World vol. 1. We may or may not make it all the way through this year. I'm not terribly concerned with speed, but we are planning to:

• Read in order
• Narrate 1 section per chapter
• Do the mapwork included
• Complete one project with each chapter

We might do more than one project and knowing us we will likely get more information from the library on whichever chapter we're reading, but this is our basic set up. I have no big plans for timing (as in 1 chapter per week or anything like that) because I want to leave room to stay on a topic for a few weeks if Ender is really interested in it.

Fine Arts

Ender started to play the violin last spring so he will continue this next year. I suppose that's one of the hazards of your mother being a violinist... I truly did start him with piano first, but he has wanted to play the violin for a long time, and when I finally let him it was love at first note.

We are also planning a composer study and artist study for this year, one composer and one artist for each quarter. I'm still finalizing exactly which artists I will include, but my composer list includes Bach, Handel, Beethoven and Brahms. I know, no 20th century guys on there, but I'm not a huge fan of that musical time period. It can wait another year or two.

For our art plans we are going to do what we've always done- a little bit of directed work (many awesome suggestions from Deep Space Sparkle and new to us: Draw, Write, Now book 1) but mostly giving access to the materials needed to create.

Bible

For Bible this year Ender is going to continue with the Awana program at our church and all the memorizing they do, but we will be focusing on the religious seasons as home- Advent, Lent, etc. Our reading will focus on a Psalm of praise each month as well as following our church's schedule of readings for the K-3 students.

Do you homeschool? What are your plans for next year?

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A Day With Dinosaurs

The boys have been interested in dinosaurs for a long time, so when a "Jurrasic Park" type display came to an area near us we took advantage of the opportunity to see them in person.

I don't think the boys have gone more than an hour without mentioning the trip a single day this week.

And as always the visit refreshed their interest and our weekly library trip was spent hunting dinosaur books and spending the week reading even more. It was difficult to not repeat dinosaur books we've checked out before on the topic since we've read so many, but we did pull a few old favorites along with "new to us" books.

Our dinosaur reads this week:

Yarn Along

More yarning with Ginny...

I'm still working on the yellow lace shawl Omelet this week, but now with just 10 rows left on the chart B repeats. We're going to be in the car a lot over the holiday weekend so I'm attempting to finish up chart B and maybe even chart C on the trip.


My reading stack? Packed full with first grade materials for the upcoming school year. Everything is either here or on its way to us, and Ender has been really excited as each box has come our way.  I've already divided everything into terms, but I still need to turn those divisions into lists for each week that are actually useful.


I've been struck this week by how differently homeschoolers can see different curriculum. I think Writing With Ease is going to prove to be just the pace I'm looking for to introduce Ender to writing- not too much writing to start out with, but steadily growing with time. A homeschooling family in the studio saw my copy out on the table and asked about it, noting that they used it for awhile but put it aside because they thought it too slow. Slow is exactly what we are looking for for my son who will be a fresh 6-year-old in the fall, but not such a good fit for other families. I'm so thankful for the variety of materials available now!


Hunger Games was in my stack last week but it went quickly and I really loved it! Now I'm waiting for the other two books in the trilogy to come my way from the library.

One More Week

This is the last week of the school year in the studio.

Then on to summer.

My mind is full right now...

My mother-in-law

School plans for next year

How unbelievable it is that it's only a few short weeks until Ezra turns FOUR.

Studio plans for summer AND next school year

And the next two after that if we're being really honest,

because my brain is a crazy place that doesn't shut down after just planning what needs to be planned.

And I have my own "big birthday" in just 3 weeks...

Yarn Along

Yarning along with Ginny...

I am on to reading The Hunger Games this week and it is going much faster than The Red Pyramid did! I'm still only reading a bit at night though. since my available reading time is crunched right now- just 10 more days and we'll be on our slimmed down summer schedule. It's such a difficult book to put down...


I'm also still reading John Adams a bit at a time and enjoying the history quite a bit. The biographies I've read in recent months have convinced me quite thoroughly to be sure to tie all of our homeschool history studies to actual people instead of simply the dates and basics of the big events like my husband and I (and I'm sure quite a lot of people) did in school.

The knit is still Omelet [Rav link] and I am almost as far as I'd hoped for last week... I am almost through the 4th repeat of the B chart, with the first 10 rows of chart B to go again after I finish this repeat. Then on to the next chart. Maybe I will be through chart C by next week? I'm secretly hoping to have this finished by the end of May, and that might be possible with the amount of time we've spent waiting in doctor's offices we've been to for my mother-in-law.


There is no real hurry though, and I try to remember that when I put self-imposed deadlines up.


Do you set knitting deadlines for yourself?

A Little Artwork

Ezra is the resident artist of the drawing persuasion. He will turn 4 this summer and he spends about 90% of his time drawing. I'm pretty sure another 8% is spent cutting out some of his drawings, with the last 2% spent on snacking.

Ezra is also a ginormous Toy Story fan, and so he spends roughly half of his drawing time drawing toy story characters. He is an equal fan of the characters and spends time on all of them including the Little Green Men:

No character has too small of a part to be included in Ezra's artwork.

Most recently Jessie has been his fascination and he turned out this little drawing:

It's interesting to me how much Ezra has picked up from just listening in on the directed line drawings I've done with Ender this year. We haven't drawn anything amazing, but we have talked about drawing in pencil first, then going over that work with another medium like marker and then filling in with crayon or paint or something... and you can see all those steps. Ezra is included in those lessons as in "he's there" but he's not usually an active part of the lessons.

We just keep providing the paper and the markers, pencils, and crayons. There's no telling what he might make next.

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

{Pretty}

These blooms are gone now, but I find myself looking back through the photos often, loving that beautiful faint purple...

{Happy}

Ezra eating cotton candy at his first baseball game of the season.

Does it get much happier than that?

It was under 40F that day, plus a wicked wind, so we were bundled up tight.

{Funny}

Me, bundled up and wondering if my tombstone would read

"froze to death at a baseball game."

Because that's just embarrasing.

{Real}

Attempts to get my super straight/can't hold a curl for ANYTHING hair to

well...

hold a curl.

My husband has naturally super curly and super thick hair and he totally doesn't get my desire for curls. 

See more Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real photos at Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Yarn Along

Yarning along with Ginny again...

Yes, it's a giant stack of books this week. Is it bad that that's not even half of the stack at my bedside?


Somewhere in the last four-ish months I fell back into the habit of reading multiple books at once. I'm not sure if I think it's a bad idea to do so or not, but it's working for me lately. There are the knitting books, the fiction, the homeschooling, the sewing, and the books to assuage my general geekiness... and a few picture books I've been sharing with the boys before bed.


I'm so close to the end of the Red Pyramid I think I'll finish it in my next chance to read, and then fully into Hunger Games, which I have long heard about and had on my To Read list forEVER.


I finished The Well-Trained Mind and now that I've had a bit of a chance to process and think about it there are a few things we are going to try this fall. I was surprised to find so much similarity to Charlotte Mason, so I think there will be a happy balance there.


And John Adams... I think I am about 1/4th through. It's nice to have a read that I can just soak up a bit at a time.

And the knit is Omelet [Rav link] in Knitpicks Gloss Lace, which I'm really loving! It's my first time working with this yarn and it has really been lovely to work with. I just started the third repeat of chart B last night, and I'm hoping to finish the B chart repeats by next week.

The yellow is still doing wonders for my mood. Do you have a favorite color to knit with? I've always been partial to purples, but I'm certainly in a yellow mood lately.

Tuesday is the New Monday

Today we are meeting with the oncologist and a surgeon for my mother-in-law.

The cancer has spread; it is stage 4.

We're going to be discussing options, but it doesn't sound like there are very many for this particular cancer, especially now that it has spread.

You know how Mondays are supposed to be the hardest day of the week? We're coming to dread Tuesdays. For weeks now each Tuesday has been a day just like this- a meeting with one doctor or another that takes us one more large step down an increasingly worrisome road.

Now It's Official

Spring feels like it is really here now that baseball has started!

I know MLB started over a month ago, but it just doesn't quite seem like spring without little league games to go to, and this year it is Ender's turn!

Sitting on the bleachers though felt like we'd completely skipped spring and went directly to summer- about 89F degrees already in May...

 What a proud little guy though- two really great hits, running the bases, getting to a few balls...

Have You Met

Super Ez?

Making Sunshine

Sometimes when the sky is gray and gloomy...

And life seems a little down...

 

You have to make your own sunshine

Omelet [Rav link]

Knitting with yellow is like knitting strands of happiness.

Shur'tugal [Rav link]