blondeviolin Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 This is what we're hoping to move towards: LA - daily - an hour total? Reading - Readers and other things. 15 min Spelling - HTTS Workbook 1 15-20 min Grammar - FLL 10 min? Writing - WWE another 10 min? Math - daily - an hour We'll continue on with MEP and then probably move into SM 1B. MEP 1B is doing her awesomely, though, so we'll probably continue to mesh SM, MEP and Miquon. This one I know an hour is the max time we'll do. SOTW with AG - 2/3 days a week - an hour? RSO or BFSU (Uh...I have both but I'm not sure which we'll end up going with.) - 2/3 days a week - an hour? Art/Music as pulled from the CK books So I'm look at 3 hours a day. I've never used a lot of this curric so these are just ballpark figures. Is 3 hours a day too much with a first-grader? Even a first-grader who doesn't think of science as school and is currently fascinated with Ancient Egypt (so excited to get her going in SOTW for that reason). *back to my cave of planning and pretending like I know what I'm doing* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
missmoe Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I think 1 hour for math is a lot for 1st grade. If you are using three programs, you may want to alternate programs instead of using all three every day. I think the rest of the plan looks good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ByGrace3 Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Looks very similar to what we do. I think if it works for your dc it is fine. My dd can handle it, not always thrilled about it ;) but that is the time it takes to get it done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NanceXToo Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 (edited) Can you make LA and math each take more like 30 min instead of 60 for 2 hours a day instead of 3? Definitely at least the math! Edited January 19, 2012 by NanceXToo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 LA - daily - an hour total? Reading - Readers and other things. 15 min Spelling - HTTS Workbook 1 15-20 min Grammar - FLL 10 min? Writing - WWE another 10 min? Timing looks good. Just realize that these don't all get done every day. :) Grammar is 3 days a week. Are you using FLL1 or 2? FLL1 is especially fast. When we sped through it second semester of first grade, we literally did 5 lessons in 10 minutes some days. But he already had a good grasp of common vs. proper nouns and generally picks up grammar very easily. I should have started with FLL2 (or even 3, but writing would have been a road block there, so that was probably best in 2nd grade for him). WWE is 4 days a week, though you can combine the first 2 days easily, since one day is narration only and the other day is copywork. That makes it not any different from day 4 (narration and copywork combined). We did it 4 days a week in first grade, since I didn't get the idea to combine those two days until we started WWE2 in second grade. Math - daily - an hour We'll continue on with MEP and then probably move into SM 1B. MEP 1B is doing her awesomely, though, so we'll probably continue to mesh SM, MEP and Miquon. This one I know an hour is the max time we'll do. I would recommend 30 minutes as a goal for 1st grade. If she wants to go longer, that's fine. We spent 30 minutes (using MM) that year, then this year we're doing 45 minutes usually, sometimes an hour. Just depends on the topic and how much fun we're having. ;) SOTW with AG - 2/3 days a week - an hour? I don't think we've ever spent more than 30 minutes, but you may do more of the projects and reading aloud than I do. I typically don't do projects, and DS reads everything himself and is a fast reader. So SOTW usually takes us 15-30 minutes, including oral narration (per AG) and him reading extra library books on his own. In the beginning, we did reading Monday and Wednesday, then project on Friday, and that still didn't take more than 30 minutes each day. Now we just do one section of SOTW (reading, narration questions, notebooking) per day, 3 days a week. I haven't done a project in a while, as I'm in an anti-project mood right now. :tongue_smilie: History is DS's favorite subject, and he LOVES SOTW. He carries it around with him everywhere (all 4 volumes). He's on his 2nd pass through SOTW4 while we're doing SOTW2 for school. :) RSO or BFSU (Uh...I have both but I'm not sure which we'll end up going with.) - 2/3 days a week - an hour? We did the sample of RSO E&S, and that didn't take an hour either... probably 30 minutes, tops. I could see you expanding it to an hour though, especially if you use BFSU. :) Is 3 hours a day too much with a first-grader? I think for many it is, and it would have been for mine, BUT... I think you can do the curriculum you have chosen in less than 3 hours a day. You're pretty much doing something similar to what I did, and we spent 1.5-2 hours a day in first grade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommee & Baba Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 SOTW takes us no longer than 35 minutes most days. And we do this twice a week. Math I usually have the children do 45 minutes most days. No longer though as I get whiney fussy children and then it's pointless to continue pushing them to do anymore. So 45 minutes is our limit each day. Spelling is anywhere from 15 minutes - 35 minutes, depending on how ambitious my dc is feeling. But minimum of 15 minutes. Her penmanship is 10 minutes twice a week. Her writing with ease is 10-15 minutes 4 days a week. Her language arts is 10 minutes most days and we do that 4 times a week. My 1st grader usually has 2 solid hours of school lessons per day. We split it up and she gets 2- 15 minute breaks. However somedays we'll spill into the afternoon because I am homeschooling a totboy and a 3rd grader too. Her reading lessons right now are 60 minutes, which is a STRUGGLE! BUT she has to do 2 reading eggs lessons each day until she's back on track...she was sick for 3 weeks this year :( But she does the lessons GREAT. But as soon as she's back on par with her reading she'll be back to 30 minutes per day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloggermom Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 In 1st grade Language Arts is the bulk of our homeschooling. Getting those reading skills down is first priority. Second is starting him in his writing abilities (we are using WWE1 for that). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blondeviolin Posted January 19, 2012 Author Share Posted January 19, 2012 I think 1 hour for math is a lot for 1st grade. If you are using three programs, you may want to alternate programs instead of using all three every day. I think the rest of the plan looks good. I guess I should have said that she is a bit of a dawdler. It's not school-related, it's just how she is. (I send her in to get dressed and when I check on her in twenty minutes, she has her underwear and one sock on and is either reading a book or pretending she is a princess trapped in a tower on her bed or any other imaginative play.) Even now, I "schedule" an hour for math. It's currently a MEP 1B lesson, so the worksheet and any enrichment activities it has. Our deal is that she gets a whole hour to complete it. Whatever time she is left over with, she gets to spend on the iPad or a 3DS playing educational games. Typically she can complete it in 15-20 min. All of my times are overshot because of this "deal." I have the three math programs because I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with MEP or SM. She completed SM 1A, but I don't believe she's developmentally ready for SM 1B so we jumped to MEP 1B where she is doing awesomely. I was thinking on M-Th we'll do MEP or SM (whichever we're working through or what-have-you). Then on Friday, we'll do Miquon. LA - daily - an hour total?Reading - Readers and other things. 15 min Spelling - HTTS Workbook 1 15-20 min Grammar - FLL 10 min? Writing - WWE another 10 min? Timing looks good. Just realize that these don't all get done every day. :) Grammar is 3 days a week. Are you using FLL1 or 2? FLL1 is especially fast. When we sped through it second semester of first grade, we literally did 5 lessons in 10 minutes some days. But he already had a good grasp of common vs. proper nouns and generally picks up grammar very easily. I should have started with FLL2 (or even 3, but writing would have been a road block there, so that was probably best in 2nd grade for him). WWE is 4 days a week, though you can combine the first 2 days easily, since one day is narration only and the other day is copywork. That makes it not any different from day 4 (narration and copywork combined). We did it 4 days a week in first grade, since I didn't get the idea to combine those two days until we started WWE2 in second grade. Well that makes a big difference! So we'll probably do FLL three times a week and WWE three or four. Thanks for the input ladies! I'm still planning and trying to figure out if I should schedule these out or just kind of fly by the seat of our pants and do the next thing. :001_huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathryn Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I don't time out individual subjects, but we spend on average 2-3 hours a day for first grade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 *back to my cave of planning and pretending like I know what I'm doing* It won't do any good. The children can still find you there...:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I guess I should have said that she is a bit of a dawdler. It's not school-related, it's just how she is. (I send her in to get dressed and when I check on her in twenty minutes, she has her underwear and one sock on and is either reading a book or pretending she is a princess trapped in a tower on her bed or any other imaginative play.) I have one of those (DS2). :glare: Though amazingly, the other night when going to a friend's house, which he LOVES going to because they have wooden Thomas train sets (we have Geotrax, so that friend loves coming to our house for the trains he doesn't have :lol:), I went out to the van after getting everyone ready, and this child was already in the van, buckled in and everything! I about had a heart attack! :D My oldest is a dawdler when left to do independent things. That's just his age. Working with him the whole time is what keeps him going. I like Singapore in that it gets us discussing math at the white board for a while. I do have him go off and do his workbook on his own, but I stay close to monitor and prod him if he's starting to daydream. ;) When we were doing MM, I had to sit there and do the "buddy math" thing, which also worked well. I do find that the dawdling is much less when a) the material is new and interesting, and b) the presentation is interesting to him. We had a lot more dawdling in 1st-2nd grade math - there is only so much you can do to vary addition and subtraction. Now, he's more likely to work harder at it because it's more fun, with so many different math topics we can do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blondeviolin Posted January 19, 2012 Author Share Posted January 19, 2012 It won't do any good. The children can still find you there...:D Haha! Or worse, they make messes while I am! :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ByGrace3 Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Thanks for the input ladies! I'm still planning and trying to figure out if I should schedule these out or just kind of fly by the seat of our pants and do the next thing. :001_huh: If it helps,this is how we do it: Bible (30 minutes) M-F Math (45 minutes, 1hour if we add in RS games) M-F Reading (20 minutes aloud) M-F WWE (M-R) 10 min FLL (M, W, F) 5-7 min AAS (M-R) 15-20 min LUNCH SOTW 30-40 min (M,W, F) ES Biology 30 min (T/R) Read aloud before bed This schedule feels "light" since we already finished phonics and handwriting this year so we are down about 40 minutes a day and I haven't felt the need to replace them yet. Fridays are light days because we have weekly "fun friday" activities with out homeschool group and we usually do our SOTW project then as well as any science experiment that didn't get done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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