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1st Grade Boy "Exciting" Curriculum Suggestions


learningmama
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DS will be in first grade this fall. He is an "older" kindergarten student and he knows all the basics, but still is a total boy and loves to play and is very active. He actually does not mind some worksheets (he loves R&S A-J series), but I would love suggestions for "fun" more advanced stuff we can do in the fall. He learns totally different from his older sister, so I probably will not be using the same stuff I already have.

 

I think I'm basically looking for Language Arts/Reading/Phonics suggestions. Math/Science are taken care of and we use SOTW for history. Any good unit studies or literature-based studies that would be useful for his age?

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DS will be in first grade this fall. He is an "older" kindergarten student and he knows all the basics, but still is a total boy and loves to play and is very active. He actually does not mind some worksheets (he loves R&S A-J series), but I would love suggestions for "fun" more advanced stuff we can do in the fall. He learns totally different from his older sister, so I probably will not be using the same stuff I already have.

 

I think I'm basically looking for Language Arts/Reading/Phonics suggestions. Math/Science are taken care of and we use SOTW for history. Any good unit studies or literature-based studies that would be useful for his age?

 

Classical House of Learning offers a language arts plan (literature lists, and resources for narration/questions/writing esp. in the higher grades) tied to STOW. Just the booklist is a great resource; I've linked to her grammar years.

 

This is a list I came across on these boards, and really liked many of the selections, also tied to ancients.

 

Just a start ...

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Five in a Row for literature

 

All About Reading for phonics or All About Spelling with the AAR L1 Readers

 

R&S 2nd Edition Grade 1 Math (it doesn't sound exciting but my 7 and 6 yr old sons love the short lessons and the ducks. I also skipped most of the first lessons on counting)

 

Right Start Math--lots of games here. I do not have personal experience with it.

 

lots of art, nature walks, etc..

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We had a great time with phonics here. I used I See Sam and then a hands on Orton Gillingham method for phonograms along with Progressive Phonics readers. I'm going to copy and paste another post I made about what we did specifically:

 

I used I See Sam (links in this post for free ones to print/use) and/or Progressive Phonics (free too) for a really fun way to learn to read. My boys loved the characters and silly stories. Both are phonics based and 100% decodable (in the case of progressive phonics the student read parts are 100% and for I See Sam the entire thing is 100%). So they are strong phonics based readers. I also found a great free program to teach the phonograms (and spelling) in a multi-sensory/orton-gillingham based way I used I'll link in next.

 

I did the first two sets of I See Sam first. We loved those books and got a great start. Then I taught the phonograms in a multisensory way using this free program to do it well--it includes K-2nd reading and spelling (orton-gillingham style like AAS). I used it to teach the phonograms up front though--concentrating on reading first and then going back for spelling after we were reading well.

 

Basically I used the free program methods but I switched the presentation order of those phonograms a little to match up with the progressive phonics order of presentation. So we would learn the phonogram using their multi-sensory techniques and then use progressive phonics as fun and decodable reading practice with the new phonogram and the previously learned phonograms. It was so effective. You don't have to do I See Sam first but we really loved those books and I think it's a great way to start.

 

Baltimore curriculum has some (also free) nice literature plans here (click the lit sections under 1st grade). They are based on the Core Knowledge Curriculum standards. They aren't all active but still you might find them a good fit. There are some other free CK based plans here that are, if I recall, sometimes more active but sometimes harder to adapt to just a child or two. The literature choices are nice.

 

Five in a Row books are great. I wasn't as impressed with the activity guides but I know often people just take off and do their own fun things with those books.

 

I think, honestly, for this age I prefer to just read engaging literature rather than do formal studies.

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