What does your first grader do that is "fun"?

[plain jane]

What does your first grader do that is "fun" during school time? I don't mean playing (which I think is very important) but stuff that you count as sit down and work.

 

My first grader is doing a phonics workbook, WRTR, FLL1, Write Shop Primary, math workbook. These are going fine and I hear no complaints but I can't help but feel I should add in some more "fun" things. Lapbooks for picture books, maybe? Some Evan Moor Literature pockets? I am not very creative and am often very happy to get the basics done and let my little one play and be a kid, but I get that nagging feeling that there's more I could be doing.

 

Any suggestions or do you think I'm on the right track?

[Janell]

Check out Pinterest under the Education tab. There are TONS of ideas for fun things to do. Lots of hands on things as well. I have tons of things pinned for my Kindergarten.

[alisoncooks]

Hmmm, you could always just add seasonal crafts if you just want to have something like that.... (i.e. fall leaf collections, sponge painted fall trees, etc).

 

What my first grader is doing that I think is fun:

 

I think our math is pretty fun (Singapore usually has a game/"Enhancement" suggestion every lesson or 2). DD likes them a lot and it does break of the monotony of the lessons/workbook work. (I also just purchased the Right Start math games, to add in more "fun" math practice time.)

 

For Lit/History/Art, we're doing a year long Little House study. *I* think that's fun, haha. We read a bit, then do a related craft or experiment or something. 2-3x a week. This week we're making covered wagons from shoe boxes. :tongue_smilie:

 

Science is *somewhat* fun. We follow ACSI as an outline, but throw in dvds and library books and I try to add a craft/activity at least 1x a week. For example, this week's focus is BIRDS, so I have a dvd on birds and we're painting a robin picture from a footprint (found on pinterest :D).

 

FWIW, I personally did not care for any of the EM Literature Pockets I saw (I think we had Fairy Tales?) There are better (more creative and easy) ideas to be found online. For free. :)

[Aurelia]

Art was always enjoyed here, and I played classical music in the background while she was working on her project. Lollipop Logic was also a hit. Being read to, both with picture books and chapter books, is something I wish I had done more of. I tried to incorporate that a lot more last year (DD was second grade by age) and the effect on her vocabulary and reading skills was phenomenal.

[Arcadia]

My 1st grader does Art and Music as "fun". He also does puppet time for language arts when he wants to. He acts out using paper puppets what he is reading for us.

[jar7709]

My older is 2nd now and my younger is at that K/1st boundary, but both of them LOVE doing presentations. Instead of a writing or lapbooking-type project (we are not into lapbooks anyway) at the end of some science or history unit we've been working on, or to show off something they've learned or created, they do a little 5-10 minute talk that I record and throw up on youtube for grandparents and the odd interested friend to enjoy. My son is starting to get a tiny little following for his "science show" episodes. :001_smile: I have them introduce themselves and have a little outline of what they want to say in their head before they start. I'm counting it practice for public speaking down the road.

 

And many of the activities in my kids' MBTP turn out to be pretty fun, even though I know that curriculum is not a favorite on these boards. Today my younger learned fractions and studied worms in a couple lessons involving gummy worms. :)

[melbotoast]

DS sometimes enjoys playing with c-rods and doing FIAR, but he LOVES doing science. We're doing Elemental Science Intro to Science and highly recommend it.

[JessieC]

Some hits around here have been:

 

Five in a Row

 

Magic School Bus science kits

 

Animal Habitats (tons of easy animal crafts--they love to pick one out to make) http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Habitats-Learning-American-Williamson/dp/082496778X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1348618083&sr=8-2&keywords=animal+habitats

[Lucy the Valiant]

Snap Circuits (under my supervision).

 

He calls it "doing my scientist work" - he doesn't mind the other (more mundane) school work, but he LIVES for Snap Circuits.

 

(His "mundane" work = reading, Singapore math, calendar notebook, and WWE1. He cherry-picks history and science w/older sisters, and does read-aloud with us, and that's it.)

 

He also plays with his dog and takes care of chickens. :)

[blakereese]

Mark Kistler Online (she loves this!)

 

Playing with Bubber, we have ABC cookie cutters and she "makes words" :)

[Lucy the Valiant]

Oh, and the free Lego Club at Currclick.com! It's 1x/month (and they record it so you can do it whenever); he has "homework" to collect specific number of bricks (they publish a pdf which I print for him), and then he sits down and watches the class and does his "build." It's informative, and fun, and - I count it as "school."

[lea1]

The favorite fun thing at our house is the coloring pages for SOTW. My two sons love coloring these pages while I am reading. They really look forward to it. If it is a history day, the first question is "Is there a coloring page today?". If there is not, we find one on the Internet.

 

I am thankful my two enjoy coloring. I have found that when we do craft-type projects, including lapbooking-type activities, they get excited about it, participate for the first 15 or 20 minutes, and then leave me to finish it for them:glare:. Maybe they are just not old enough yet. They would rather finish quickly and get to their playing.

[blondeviolin]

The favorites here are history and science. She likes most of her schoolwork, but those two content subjects somehow feel like they are not schoolwork.

[Tracy]

Right now, dd7 has been doing a lot of coloring in her Medieval Fashions Coloring Book. She also likes historical paper doll figures (though I have to do all the cutting). We do FIAR with ds4, and dd7 does the art with us.

[WIS0320]

Last year, my then first grader always loved starting the day with the Tin Man Press Enrichment Packet activities. "Listen Up!" was her very favorite of all.

 

https://www.tinmanpress.com/node/1600

[Ritsumei]

We include SOTW in our 1st grade lineup, and Hero likes the hands-on projects from the activity guide quite a bit. We also do nature study (which is mostly going to the park and looking for "interesting things," though we're starting to include some sketch book stuff too). He likes it when I manage to pull off art projects, which I do at irregular intervals. Since I figure that any kind of writing = improving fine motor skills, we're trying out "drawing silly creatures" rather than doing letters once a week, and he likes that too. We sometimes will watch documentaries for both history and science and he periodically asks both for new ones and old ones. The one we found on YouTube about the Great Wall of China is a fan favorite, which he's asked to rewatch several times.

[Alice]

*Math games to review math facts: Math war, a new one called 7Ate9, some I made from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math, Math Dice, Right Start games, etc.

 

*My oldest loved science and anything science related was fun for him in 1st grade. My second likes science and thinks it is fun but then will want to move on. He loves art though so anything I can add for art is fun for him. H does art once a week with my husband and then at our co-op. I will also occasionally have him illustrate something (today it was the poem he is memorizing) or have him and his preschool sister paint together. He doesn’t like crafty/lapbook stuff as much but he loves painting, clay, pencils, drawing, etc.

 

*I’m surprised by this but he is really loving the Geography we are doing. It’s his favorite subject this year and he would say it’s fun.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

FLL1 we make a bit longer by making the lessons hands-on. Ds5.5 is a kinetic learner, and wasn't doing very well doing it just verbally. We have hand motions for the poems, I made a proper noun/common noun index card game, we extended the part about identifying people by their name vs. job title by studying six different jobs and printed out and colored paper dolls for each. For the nouns-places we've drawn blue-prints for a house, and a map for a town and a map for a country. We have a lot of fun, even though it takes longer than 10 minutes sometimes.

 

Reading is most fun here if we're doing it on the white board or using letter tiles. Ds5.5 loves getting to write the vowels for the words I'm putting on the white board. I also type out some of the stories from our OPGTR lesson and have him draw a picture for the story. He loves making "books" (paper folded like a card.)

 

We're doing Right Start for math and he loves it, so I don't need to add stuff.

 

SOTW is my favorite subject, and we've been doing a lot of the activities.

 

Science we're doing the Evan-Moor Learning about Animals to supplement the WTM animal study plan. We've done different "reports" as part of the animal studies. On crocodiles he made his own "book" and camels we made a paper diorama and he dictated a few facts that he read to dh.

 

ETA: Those links are for the corresponding posts on my blog.

Edited September 26, 2012 by theYoungerMrsWarde

[hmvaughan4]

DS loves Art Fraud Mystery.

[Dinsfamily]

My ds6 would consider SSL, Miquon math, Geography songs, Noeo science, and Sonlight fun. I also added in logic for him this year. He likes it, but not as much as Latin. We also do Mighty Mind Super Challenger some days.