Questions regarding first grade level

[Guest luvmysugarbug]

Hi, I am new to homeschooling and have a couple of questions and wanted to see what others were doing.

 

1) In using Spelling Workout A, how many lessons a week?

 

2) How to use FLL level 1 and WWE level 1 together? How often use FLL?

 

Does anyone have suggestions. I have a ds on first grade level and I don't want to do too much or not enough. We are also doing Singapore Math, SOTW, First Encyclopedia of Animals, and art or craft project once a week. (Haven't learned all the abbreviations:))

 

I would appreciate any input. Thanks!!

[Chris in VA]

Spelling Workout--

We did one "chapter" (word list) a week. We broke it up into 5 sessions, one every day. The first day, we read the little introduction together, read the words in the word list, and did the first exercise. The second day, we read the word list, and did the next two exercises. The third day, we did the proofreading (can't remember what A has--does it have proofreading?), spelled the words on the list outloud, and usually did some sort of extra work with the words. Sometimes we used stamps to spell the words out she was having trouble with, sometimes, we wrote them in salt in a box lid, sometimes we used different colored markers to write them, and sometimes she wrote them 3 times each on the board. Sometimes we did sentences with them, but I think that was more in SWO B and C. The fourth day I gave a pretest, then she wrote out the ones she missed. Test on the fifth day. As long as she got enough practice, she was fine. If she knew all the words right off the bat, or most of them, we'd scoot along faster. Sometimes it only took her 2 or 3 days to get them all right. We ended up going thru all of A and most of B in one year. We slowed down later.

[Reya]

Hi, I am new to homeschooling and have a couple of questions and wanted to see what others were doing.

 

1) In using Spelling Workout A, how many lessons a week?

 

2) How to use FLL level 1 and WWE level 1 together? How often use FLL?

 

Does anyone have suggestions. I have a ds on first grade level and I don't want to do too much or not enough. We are also doing Singapore Math, SOTW, First Encyclopedia of Animals, and art or craft project once a week. (Haven't learned all the abbreviations:))

 

I would appreciate any input. Thanks!!

 

We do a chapter of Spelling Workout A every 2 days. Day 1 is a posttest for last chapter's words plus 2 pages of the new lesson. Day 2 is the last two pages. Takes about 15 min. We skipped to Lesson 6, as the first 5 were particularly pointless.

 

Most people do this slower.

[dcjlkplus3]

Hi, I am new to homeschooling and have a couple of questions and wanted to see what others were doing.

 

1) In using Spelling Workout A, how many lessons a week?

 

2) How to use FLL level 1 and WWE level 1 together? How often use FLL?

 

Does anyone have suggestions. I have a ds on first grade level and I don't want to do too much or not enough. We are also doing Singapore Math, SOTW, First Encyclopedia of Animals, and art or craft project once a week. (Haven't learned all the abbreviations:))

 

I would appreciate any input. Thanks!!

 

 

I am not familiar with Spelling Workout.

If you use both FLL and WWE together you might want to skip the copywork in FLL (there is none for the first 50 lesson or so).

We do FLL 3x a week and work on the memory stuff 1 or 2 days a week.

[Narrow Gate Academy]

We've always done SWO 3 days a week doing 2 exercises each day for a total 1 1/2 lessons a week. It usually takes my girls less than 15 minutes. I've not used WWE, but when we used FLL with my oldest I believe we did it twice a week (alternating with SWO) and simply doubled up or skipped a few lessons here and there when it was easy to get through all 100 lessons in 36 weeks. HTH

[MeanestMomInMidwest]

We went right to Spelling Workout B for my 1st grader....I have to help him a tiny bit more, but the A seemed like K stuff. He does already have some reading skills, so that may make a difference. We also do one chapter/lesson per week, splitting the work up so that Friday is only a test of the list words (we do the same for my 3rd grader in a higher SW book). BTW, I wouldn't bother with the teacher's guide. You can figure out what to do from the workbook instructions.

All that said, I'm not sure I like it. I think I would prefer a more "rules oriented" spelling curriculum. However, it is nice to have something that is easy teach and my dc don't complain about spelling (maybe because they think its easy too). I think its an okay choice for my first year, but I may try to find something a bit more rigerous for successive years.

[mom2mea]

Hi, I am new to homeschooling and have a couple of questions and wanted to see what others were doing.

 

1) In using Spelling Workout A, how many lessons a week?

 

2) How to use FLL level 1 and WWE level 1 together? How often use FLL?

 

Does anyone have suggestions. I have a ds on first grade level and I don't want to do too much or not enough. We are also doing Singapore Math, SOTW, First Encyclopedia of Animals, and art or craft project once a week. (Haven't learned all the abbreviations:))

 

I would appreciate any input. Thanks!!

 

Hi there and welcome!

 

1) We do one lesson a week (3 days)

 

2) We use FLL and WWE together; FLL is 3 days - we only do the grammar portions and sometimes the narration.

 

For our family this seems to be working right now and it feels "just right" :001_smile:

 

HTH!

[Reya]

I think I would prefer a more "rules oriented" spelling curriculum.

 

A lot of users swear it's more "rules oriented" later on. I was definitely expecting something different, but like you said, it's easy and self-teaching, and I like the writing practice.

[magistramom]

We did one lesson per week books A - D. Two lessons per week books E and F.

 

In books A - D, we followed this schedule:

 

Monday:

read the first page and circle the bold words; discuss

look over the TIP box; discuss

take a pre-test

 

Tuesday:

complete page 1

complete 1/2 of page 2

 

Wednesday:

complete the other 1/2 of page 2

complete proofreading

study bonus words by writing them five times each

 

Thursday:

Write

study bonus words again

 

Friday:

Rewrite day if needed

Spelling test

 

HTHs!

[JABarney]

Welcome to the boards!

 

First Language Lessons: we read it at breakfast several mornings a week. For the enrichment activities or activities that require more than oral instruction we will do that later in the day. We seem to be covering about 5 lessons a week. Writing With Ease says if you are using the program with FLL, you may skip the writing exercises in FLL. We may or may not do that depending on how we are handling the material when we get there. Our current pace with FLL will have us finishing up early, however it may become more challenging as we progress.

 

Spelling Workout A: we are completing two lessons a week. (about 8 pages a week) We do one lesson (word list) on Mondays, another lesson (word list) on Weds. and then have a spelling test on Fridays for about 12 words altogether. My children are reading well, so for now, this pace is very easy. In The Well Trained Mind, Susan suggests not skipping Spelling Workout A because it covers important fundamentals. I personally find that it is building confidence, something they will need going in to Spelling Workout B later this year.

 

Remember the beauty of homeschooling is that we have the ability to speed up or slow down depending upon what the child needs. If you are not sure now what that is, try out a plan for a couple of weeks and observe what happens. He or she will let you know, usually in some completely age appropriate way, if it is working or not! Then, several months later, be prepared for it to change all over again. :001_smile:

 

HTH!

[jkwynn]

We are also in our first year of HS.

 

In SWO A - we do one lesson a week. Like someone else said, we skipped the first 6 or so lessons. I hope it becomes more "rule-oriented" as we go along, too...but for now, I'm not skipping it. It's definitely an 'easy' subject for him at this point.

 

We do it every day, unless we get behind on something, then we skip the 'extra' stuff we normally do. We usually do:

1 - read the first page, out loud (he reads it) then do the back of it.

2 - do the front of the second page

3 - do the back of the second page, minus the spelling superstar part that asks you to write something.

4 - spelling superstar, which we use as our handwriting lesson for the day, too...today he wrote about how to make a pb&j sandwich, hehe. He didn't use any list words, but did a good job (with a picture!) so I let it slide, lol.

5 - test - sometimes he does it orally, sometimes on the white board, and sometimes on regular paper

 

FLL we also do every day...but - we skip some of it. It's very redundant, so the parts I know we 'get' we sort of just brush up against and keep moving.

 

I am trying to work on two things more in-depth with him: narration and memorization.

 

We are just now getting serious with the narration and he tends to retell the WHOLE thing instead of the main points. He doesn't 'get' the idea of condensing it down to main points yet, lol. They're all important. :)

 

With the poetry, he memorizes them very quickly and loves to recite them for Dad, so I'm going to add in a few more as he can handle them. These are a great confidence builder and he's really improving the way he speaks when reciting them...he started out speaking to the floor, monotone, running words together, etc. But I'm really seeing him come out of his shy-shell with the poetry stuff. Yay!

 

We don't do WWE this year, though, so I have nothing to add there.

[fsunolefan]

This is also my first year homeschooling. I have a first and second grader. It is nice that I can see where I will be going next year with the first grader. It gives a little perspective. As far as FLL....My daughter finds it very repetitive so we combine lessons when we can. I always schedule for 5 days of lessons, but the book only recommends 3X a week. She enjoys the poems, but is really tired of hearing about nouns. I have to admit I find it a little tedious myself. As I am teaching both the 1st and 2nd grade portions at the same time, I can say that we will probably finish the entire book in 1st grade this year and use something else for 2nd next year.

 

As far as SWA - we read the first page of each lesson and take the pre-test. If she gets them all right, then she just has to do the worksheets and we are moving on to the next lesson. I am more concerned with getting her to listen to the phonetics of the words at this point. We dropped SWB for my second child because I had yet to encounter any rules in the lessons (14 lessons and she hadn't missed a word yet!). We switched to sequential spelling and she is loving it! My first grader is listening in on the lessons and has already improving her spelling. The girls get their phonics rules from our reading program. When they spell a word incorrectly I ask them to pronounce what they have written. Then I have them think of another way that they could spell it. Usually, they figure out their spelling mistakes on their own.

 

We are not doing WWE, so nothing to add there. I hope this helps.