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First Grade question


GaHadley
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Do (or did) you do science and history on the same day or did you rotate them? I'm wondering if I should alternate days or weeks or try to do them each every day?

 

btw, thank you all so much for answering all my questions - I have been loving the wealth of information here. My WTM book should be in the library this week, and I'm sure I'll have LOTS more questions :)

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I wouldn't do them every day - not even in second grade. We alternate Science with Social Studies unless we are doing a really big study on something. Like...this week is Leonardo Da Vinci week for us...so we'll do social studies every day this week (kinda unit study type thing).

 

However, typically, we'll alternate Soc Studies and Science and we also alternate Spelling and Handwriting.

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Yeah, it's really easy to get excited and overwhelm yourself when you first start a new book/piece of curriculum. I did that to myself this morning. :D

 

I think for K-2, the backbone should definitely be reading/LA/math. Everything else can kinda fill in later... For that age group, there's no way of knowing how long it's going to take them to do something also. :willy_nilly:

 

For example...right now...my 2nd and 1st grader are supposed to be doing WWE, but the 2nd grader suddenly morphed into a prehistoric lizard and the 1st grader is her "trainer". The 1st grader is leaving a trail of Doritos on the floor for the prehistoric lizard to follow back to its "habitat". When I wrote out my schedule this morning, I had no idea our living room was going to melt away into a Cretaceous rain forest and WWE would still be sitting on the table, untouched by the lizard and it's trainer.

 

:seeya: Sigh....

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We do them both every day. But, we do short lessons.

 

For history (SOTW), I read one segment from the text and then one or two books from the lists in the activity guide, depending on what is available. I start collecting resources for each chapter a couple weeks ahead of time, and then at the beginning of the week, I make a list of things to do. Then on a daily basis I look at the list and based on our energy level decide what we'll do that day. If we were doing any of the projects or cooking, we'd either do that last or integrate it into our day (like cooking the food - make it for a meal or something). We do one chapter in SOTW per week, which is 4 days for us.

 

For science, we are currently doing the human body with the Kingfisher Human Body Encyclopedia; with that, we just look at one two-page spread every day and it only takes five minutes. Occasionally I supplement with something else, depending on what I find at the library.

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We used to do them on alternate Days (from September to December). This was working very well in the beginning....... But with the Toddler (as he got older) - it was not working well for some reason..... so now we each each day; its been working well - We use the Baby's nap to do History and Science....

 

Kate..

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When I wrote out my schedule this morning, I had no idea our living room was going to melt away into a Cretaceous rain forest and WWE would still be sitting on the table, untouched by the lizard and it's trainer.

 

:seeya: Sigh....

:lol: Priceless! Thanks for the giggle!

 

This year (for K) we alternate with M/W for geography and T/H for science (Fridays are art and music; every day we do math and LA). I do like the alternating, especially for keeping the days a bit shorter; however, we have days like the above-referenced rain forest ones, and when that happens, we totally miss subjects, as we also alternate grammar and spelling for LA. I haven't decided yet if I'll continue alternating next year, or if we'll go ahead and do both some days, just to capitalize on the days when we're focused and allow for days to have some slack. I suspect we'll just keep alternating, as it allows us to dig a little deeper and spend more time rather than feeling rushed.

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When my oldest home schooler was a first grader, we liked to do everything every day and we just kept it short. History is our favorite subject--it's "dessert" so to speak after cranking through all that math, grammar, nuts and bolts stuff. It's a treat to do it every day.

 

Science now is 2 or 3 times a week. When we were doing a reading-focused curriculum (Noeo) it was easy to just read every day. Now we have more activities (Real Science Odyssey) and I find it easier for ME to just do 2 days, 3 if necessary.

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We do history T, W, Th and Science tends to be M, W, F. Ds LOVES science, so there's usually something involving science going on the other days: a chapter book he's reading independently or a video late in the afternoon when he wants to rest.

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