Ravin Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I'm planning DD's first grade now, which we are going to officially start once we're done with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Our K for most of the year has consisted of a reading lesson and a worksheet or two of letters and math each from the Everything for Kindergarten workbook I got on clearance at Wal-mart. DD really likes worksheets for some reason. We also usually play some sort of game daily that uses math or reasoning, etc., and do read alouds. I want to be somewhat more structured for first grade, and have more curricula I plan to use, but I don't want to get carried away then find myself shucking half of it because it isn't working. DD has an October birthday so is young for her grade, and while academically I think she's soon going to be ready to start first, her attention span is a bit on the short side, in keeping with her age. So, how much time a day did you spend in first on seatwork, lessons, etc.? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laylamcb Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Hi, Ravin-- I think every child is different. (Duh, right? ;)) In our case, I've got a young'un like yours: A bright little sprite. I could make her sit there for a long, long time, but she wants to be romping among the flowers. And that's as it should be, IMHO. Everything depends on the particular skill we're working on at the time, of course, but generally speaking, I'd say we spent an hour to two hours a day at the MOST on "formal" first grade. That includes phonics, reading aloud to Mommy, math, Latin, composition, grammar, and "science" (which has only been nature studies and narrative science anyway). That doesn't include history and "religion" and other read-alouds; I probably spend close to 2 hours a day reading aloud, and my kids spend another 2 hours in their rooms in the afternoon ("quiet time") listening to high-quality audiobooks. The Charlotte Mason/AO rule of thumb is 15-minute lessons at this age. I try to stick to that as much as I can for everything but reading aloud. I know that Miss Mason would grumble with me, but my kids just LOVE listening. So I cave every time. We read and read and read and read.... HTH. And have fun planning! Leila Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tree House Academy Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I have a young 1st grader (he is 5 yr 5 mos) and we do seat work for about 1-1.5 hours a day. It doesn't both him to sit that long and we switch around what we are doing often enough that he doesn't get bored. We usually do calendar, handwriting, spelling, Phonics, geography, reading, Bible, math, and Language Arts all in on sitting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallory Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I try not to go over an hour per grade level for seatwork (up to a total of 5 hours or so by middle school). We also do another hour or so of reading and hands on projects or expiraments most days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laylamcb Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I have a young 1st grader (he is 5 yr 5 mos) and we do seat work for about 1-1.5 hours a day. It doesn't both him to sit that long and we switch around what we are doing often enough that he doesn't get bored. We usually do calendar, handwriting, spelling, Phonics, geography, reading, Bible, math, and Language Arts all in on sitting. Oh, good point: Rebecca. I didn't touch on that. My dd really CAN'T do all the work straight through. She has to get up and run around (literally: she runs a circuit around the main floor of the house) between each subject. Again with the each kid being different.... :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psm73 Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 For my dd we did 2 hours/day but she LOVED school and wanted to do it. She enjoyed sitting straight through until everything was completed. With my ds .... that's another story! We're doing kindergarten work right now but once he's ready for 1st, it will be closer to an hour a day with breaks for running every 10 minutes. It's honestly the only way I think we'll get through it. They definitely are all so, so different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 First grade lasted about 20-30 minutes a day with my oldest two, and I'm planning for that again this fall with my third. That's not accounting for lots of reading time and learning through play. :) My kids eagerly race through their small lessons at that age. We do it pretty similar to the way it's outlined in TWTM, but ignore the schedules. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Usually you say grade + 1 for time spent. But don't go by the grade level of material she is using, lol! That will trip you up when she's doing 3rd grade math in 1st grade or something. :) My dd has a late spring birthday, and I've found that she takes a big jump over the Christmas holiday, meaning around January things pick up a notch for us. You might find a pattern like that with your dd. Nothing says you have to take that step up on time exactly when you start 1st grade material or in the fall even. I usually KNOW when it's time to add in more stuff or spend longer, because all of a sudden things that were taking a long time start going really fast. She just has a spurt and is ready for more! That just happened to us this past week, where she went from her stuff taking hours to BOOM, 1 1/2 hours in her room, done, slam, closed, over. Go figure. Always blows my mind, and I've been doing this 5 years! So I'd keep her at the same time daily until you have the sense she is ready for more. And since she likes workbooks, which is so NOT my kid, make sure you find her things that play to that! (Don't blow it off and think lots of kids are like that, because wowsers they aren't, lol.) She might enjoy maze books, word searches, crosswords, things from Tin Man Press, lapbooks, book guides from VP or Progeny Press, etc. Have fun with it! That's the one thing I realized in looking back, that I was so stressed and worried in K5 and 1st, when it really is fun, that I failed to enjoy it fully and was treating it like it was hard, something I could mess up, or a higher grade with higher expectations. If you're having fun and she's learning the basics, it's enough! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Governess Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I'm doing K right now with my dd and we do about 2-3 hours of school per day, 3 days per week (sometimes 4 if we don't have a lot of other stuff going on), including read-alouds. For first grade, which we'll start next January, I'm planning on 1.5-2 hours in the mornings to cover math, phonics, grammar, writing, foreign language, and music, then another 1-2 hours in the afternoon for read-alouds, art, science experiments, and projects. But we're only doing school 4 days a week, so we'll probably end up doing about 12-15 hours a week including everything. This is for a child who love seatwork and is a visual learner... we are using a lot of workbooks, notebooks, and flashcards over here. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narrow Gate Academy Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Usually you say grade + 1 for time spent. :iagree: This is what we try to do as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KristenS Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 We do about three hours of school, but that's seatwork plus science experiments plus run-around recesses, and so on. I like to start around 9 and be absolutely done by noon, unless we go to storytime or some other event. So far so good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravin Posted April 1, 2009 Author Share Posted April 1, 2009 Thanks for all of the input! I totally get the thing about spurts. DD HATED Hooked on Phonics, and trying to do lessons in that with her was a drag, then we got 100 Easy Lessons, and she's gone through phases with that where she just zips through them and where it takes us a couple of days just to get one lesson done because she hits a mental block. Our plan for First: Noble Knights of Knowledge math, possibly with some supplemental workbooks or living math suggestions for things like money and time that it doesn't cover, though she's picking those up pretty well on her own. We'll start that as soon as she finishes the School Zone K-1st bridge math workbook I picked up for her last week. Song School Latin, which we'll start once she's done with the phonics lessons. A handwriting workbook from the same publisher as the K workbook she's so enjoyed this year Copywork, to alternate with handwriting worksheets Read-alouds from phonics readers Weekly lessons in: Geography, using Dover sticker books and library books History using How Children Lived as a topic spine, supplemented with a timeline and library books Science, with the Kingfisher First Animal and Body encyclopedias, plus Dover coloring books and zoo trips/nature study and library books Heathen Studies, using the Kinder Edda, the Havamal from the Poetic Edda, and D'Aulaire's Norse myths Classical studies using (I think it's) Kingfisher's First Book of Greek Myths (?) Grimm's Fairy Tales and Kipling for literature. We'll also do memory work that will come from the Havamal and possibly Kipling or the Random House Book of Poetry for Children. See what I mean about not wanting to get carried away? I'm hoping that by only doing core subjects daily and the rest weekly, we can keep things from getting out of hand time-wise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homeschooltoone Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 your plan looks good. I would put a break here or there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garga Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 DS6 is in 1st grade now. Here's what we do everyday. Whenever possible, my ds4 does the same things with ds6 (like when we re-create a famous painting by an artist--they both try to paint the painting.) It takes us about 3-4 hours a day for first grade and preschool (for ds 4). Reading the bible chapters actually is what takes the longest each day, so you can see that the lessons are pretty short, when you think about how little time it takes to read one chapter in the bible. Here's what we do, in the same order every day: Pray Bible: Read a story to ds4 from his bible storybook. Read 1-2 chapters from the actual bible for ds6 (living bible translation--very easy for a kid to understand) Preschool: DS4 and I do activities in a Sesame Street magazine. DS6 plays Math: Rod and Staff curriculum, part 1 (We don't do the extra worksheets they give.) History The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. We do the mapwork, coloring pages, review questions, narrations and at least one activity, usually two, spread out during the week. Every five weeks we have a week of review where I'll re-read the 5 previous chapters. Reading: He reads a book to me. (Or just a chapter in a book, like in the "Frog and Toad" books.) Poetry I read a poem to him and we talk about it and write the title, author's name and whether or not we liked it on a piece of paper and keep it in a folder. Preschool DS4 does a "Cut and Paste" workbook with me, DS6 plays. Art Appreciation On Monday I show them a painting by a famous artist (stick with the same artist for a few weeks) I hang the picture on the fridge all week. Tuesday we try to re-create the painting W-F we read just a page or so about the author's life in books found at the library. Handwriting: Draw-Write-Now curriculum. M-Th we do one sentence a day until all 4 are done. We draw the accompanying picture a little bit more each day until the picture is done. Preschool DS4 "composes" a story and draws pictures or uses stickers to illustrate it with me. DS6 plays. Math: Rod and Staff curriculum part 2 (they recommend breaking math into two parts each day. Science Monday and Wed. Science has been hit or miss--having trouble settling on what works for us. Currently it's a LOT of nature walks and exploring all the new things growing this spring. We'll be planting a garden soon. American History Tues and Thurs We read a page or two about famous Americans. (It was Ben Franklin for about 2 months, and now it's George Washington.) Literature: Every night I read part of a book out loud to him (Currently is one of the Little House on the Prairie books.) Music Appreciation: Before bed we put on a famous piece of music and let him jump around pretending to conduct it. Same piece of music for a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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