First Grade LA?

[poetic license]

I'm still hedging about 1st grade LA. Do you all think that FLL, WWE, and How to Teach Spelling is enough for 1st grade for a strong reader?

 

I'm not sure about the literature bit... is there any point to doing anything besides just having DS read good books and us chatting informally about them? I'm terrible about read alouds but he does do audiobooks. I'm thinking to focus on Charlotte's Web and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory since he's been listening to them for the past year and a half and reading them for the past few months.

 

Any other ideas or helpful suggestions?

[ALB]

I think that is a great combo for LA! We basically did just that (with SWO, and my own copy work), and it worked really well. We also do a lot of read alouds, and I occasionally have dd narrate and make a notebook page after reading (about twice a week).

[serendipitous journey]

I'm still hedging about 1st grade LA. Do you all think that FLL, WWE, and How to Teach Spelling is enough for 1st grade for a strong reader?

 

I'm not sure about the literature bit... is there any point to doing anything besides just having DS read good books and us chatting informally about them? I'm terrible about read alouds but he does do audiobooks. I'm thinking to focus on Charlotte's Web and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory since he's been listening to them for the past year and a half and reading them for the past few months.

 

Any other ideas or helpful suggestions?

 

I think this sounds good, too. It is my understanding from those who have been hsing for years that in K-4 the important thing is Reading, Writing, Math, and teaching the child to sit down and work hard for a bit when he'd rather be playing. :)

 

One thing to think about, if you haven't started using these programs yet, is maybe pinging around the web or the board for common problems so you have a sense of what to expect, and what reasonable backups are. Though you probably have a sense of that, which is why you picked them in the first place! Have you ever tried a scripted program with your little one? FLL is scripted, and trying it with Button was hilarious but also fruitless: looking back, it was silly of me to try a scripted program with a child who never, ever did what children are supposed to naturally do. I think it would be fine with my second.

 

WWE, if you haven't done something like it, can be a bit discouraging at first esp. if you are using the workbooks (because the selections occur in isolation, just two from a book and then onto a new set) and esp. if you are teaching a boy. There, the board consensus seems to be to be patient and hang in there, reading just a short bit of the selection at a time and then asking the relevant question(s), until the child can do the program as written.

 

Am not familiar with the spelling you've chosen. :)

 

Regarding literature, we are not also big on read-alouds here, but there were a couple of things that caught my attention. First, some books are really really fun for the little ones but if you miss the magical age, there's no point. So if you haven't already, you might want to get the My Father's Dragon series in his ears (the audiobook is very nice), and maybe Mr. Popper's Penguins which is not my pick for Fine Literature but is loved by the littles. We also had remarkable success with the Wizard of Oz and Wind in the Willows (a beautifully illustrated version) and since we liked Charlotte's Web, too, they might suit; but both could easily wait a year or two.

 

Lastly, regarding literature, you might want to start getting poetry into his ears regularly. I told Button it was for the baby :D and we do some every day (barring Disaster). The version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" illustrated by the Provensens has proved popular with both children; we have Lobel's Mother Goose courtesy of our fling with Sonlight, and it has been nice; you can get a Douglas Florian book to tie into your science (we did his Comets, Stars, the Moon and Mars but he has them for flora and fauna &c) and Button spent a while with his papa's childhood Shel Silverstein. This isn't a biggie for this year per se, but it seems that esp. with boys getting a poetry habit going early is helpful. -- we read them at snack or lunch.

 

:)