"Ufda"..... as the North Dakotans in my life really do say. And "Good night!"for you southern friends. Homeschooling is tough.
We're finally nearing the end of first grade (first year at homeschool for both Isaiah and me) and I feel like I'm just now catching a vision of what I want first grade to be about for our next three learners.... I had a very shaky start for this first run at homeschool. I know now that I don't need to blow money on fanciful curriculum and I really don't want to sweat over comparing me, my kids, or the methods and resources I've chosen to anyone else any more.... It has been so sweet to have such a great boy to learn with for this scary, fantastic, wonderful first year!! (Yea... I really wish someone would have told me I did not need to buy any curriculum package for first grade or kindergarden!)
Because our boys are very close in age with their sisters just below them and because our family is majoring on building bilingual kids from these early years it seems to work well for us to have a ease-into kind of approach with first grade (perhaps especially for the boys). The girls may get this plan of first grade squished and distilled even further in the summer before they start since they will be doing more of the second grade material we'll use with the big boys. I'm so looking forward to Tapestry of Grace, solid classical Christian curriculum guide, and their structure which aims to make learning shareable between all ages in the family. Our girls will do a bit different than the boys, but more of second grade stuff than I will give our boys when they're in first grade. I'm imaging (hoping hard!) this will just work better for our crew...
1) Lots of reading. Review the Dolch lists and the top 300 Fry words from k12reader.com. Veritas Press primers and every primer we can get our hands on. I read aloud too... stories and biographies as a way of introducing history. We've read The Tanglewood Secret (5 star), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sword in the Tree, Kingdom Tales (most excellent!), and Mr. Popper's Penguins, plus a few more less noteworthy ones...
Language Arts. Skip the spelling lists and heavy on complete sentences for every answer. Learn spelling by way of reading and writing- complete sentences and narratives as much as possible. Again, k12reader has some great Cloze worksheets and reading comprehension worksheets that even introduce other great subjects (some of the second grade ones introduce timelines, natural resources, rural vs. urban...). Copywork and dictation: love the Charlotte Mason idea of primarily leaning on correct and beautiful English rather than teaching particular grammar rules and wrongs. Memorize or at least know well, at least 4 poems from this great list.
Cover these essential topics: Capitalization, Ending punctuation, Nouns (common and proper), Adjectives (more worksheets at k12reader), Verbs, plural and singular, An vs. A, and plural -s vs. possesive -'s. Title abbreviations Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr. Initials.
2) Learning about the world. The months and days of the week. The seasons and which months are in them. Continents and Oceans. Brief overview of major countries and cultures. Explore topics of interest- volcanos, jungles, snakes, solar system, theater...
3) Bible. We're very simple for this in homeschool because Matt leads the bulk of our Bible learning in our family devotions time several evenings a week (and I read a kiddo devotion at breakfast.) Besides that, we memorize Fighter Verses with the FV app which gives us a song to listen to for every verse, and a "typing game" as the kids call it (a quiz, actually). (And I'll be honest, we've skipped a few verses b/c the songs weren't something I could listen to 20x a day.) We also aim to make lunch time a prayer time for the world.... pray through Operation World, Operation China, our Compassion kids or orgs or churches or friends that we love... great learning here! How sweet too, to pray for current events around the world- tornados, elections, diseases, abortion...
I'm going to try to make a bit of a workbook for first grade for when I'm working with another learner and one child needs independent work. Some of the sites I'm printing worksheets from are here... (all are free to print):
www.k12reader.com I am really grateful for this site! Such helpful resources and all well organized and useable.
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2012/12/first-grade-sight-word-sentences.html lots of great links at the bottom of the post
http://shared.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/phonics/1sightwordsentences.pdf excellent for sight words!
http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-worksheets.html I like the homophones pages as a fun way to introduce new vocab
http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/firstgradeworksheets.html several basic ones...me/ I, plural/singular, nouns/ verbs...
www.worksheet.fun.com just a few useable ones here
fantastic page of free copywork and writing links
http://homeschoolfreestuff.wordpress.com/english/writinghandwritingcopywork/
Wow--- I found this site from the last link (fantastic CS Lewis copy work) and she's got a beautiful creative writing course here too... all free. I love her. http://www.walkingbytheway.com/blog/creative-writing-week-1/
Aug 2013 update: This is a biggie.... Marian has quite nearly turned the corner in her reading with these free online primers.... there's the fun appeal to them in they cute rhymes and looking for differences between pictures. A few of the short stories we've skipped for undesireableness but most all of them have been just what we needed! www.progressivephonics.com
4) I've got it sweet for Math b/c Isaiah's Chinese teacher who comes to our home 5 mornings a week teaches him Math using local workbooks (which costs 8Y = one dollar!) and I think it's excellent..... exercises that make him think! We also have and use as a backbone, Math Mammoth, which is very fine. And Isaiah's sweet teacher, Chen Laoshi, also reads aloud good literature and teaches him Hanzi (Chinese writing) and the Bible verse we memorize in English, in Chinese too.
That's it.
Nothing to sweat over but plenty to take joy in! Oh Lord make our learning journey sweet for your glory!
