Getting Ready For 1st Grade- Help!

[MaggieFrances]

First off I am a newbie (so be gentle ;)) so hello to everyone!

 

A friend sent me TWTM about 3 years ago and I fell in love. I did "shop around" for other curriculum ideas and view our supposed style (yet to be really established) as eclectic. Anywho after these few years of reading TWTM and thinking on our family's curriculum the time has come for my oldest to start first grade and I am feeling overwhelmed and lost. I don't want to do too much and I don't want to do too little. Besides that I'm not sure what I want to do with regards to Math and Science. Here are my thoughts so far for first grade. Please let me know what you think! (please keep in mind we are on a tight budget)

History:

SOTW1 w/AG

Story books to go along with The Ancients (Aesop's Fabels, Greek/Roman/Egyptian myths for kids, etc)

LA:

First Language Lessons

Explore the Code

The Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading *continued from use now*

Math:

???

Science:

???- I would like to find something about the human body and basic nature study. Nothing too complex.

Litterature:

We do a lot of reading together (me and all of the kiddos). This year on our list of books is: The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Heidi, etc and any books we didn't get to from this year's wish list (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to name two)

[Amber in AUS]

Hello and welcome!

 

I am not a seasoned HSer but will also have a DD starting 1st in September. Sounds like you have a fair bit planned and your hands are going to be full with twins on the way. I wouldn't try to be too ambitions.

 

I would try and get LA and math done daily. Right start is excellent but I know you are budget concious (sp??) so maybe Singapore would be a good fit. Very rigorous and most people who use it are pleased with it. OPGTR and ETC are good choices, don't feel that you have to cover FLL in first, I am delaying grammar until 3rd but if you feel you need/want it I don't think it takes long each day.

 

For science perhaps you would be better not to do anything full on or formal this year or next, and wait for your oldest 2 to be school age and combine them, then the twins will be a little older. You could hit the library and get books on animals for 12 weeks, the human body for the next 12 and then plants for the final 12 weeks (assuming 36 weeks of school). You could do some narration and/or notebooking pages from those books. It would give her good exposure but doesn't have to be really formal.

 

Sounds like you have history and lit covered. Again tho don't feel like you have to do everything. Put your focus on LA and Math the rest is gravy if you don't cover it in first their life isn't over.

[kls126s]

We're just finishing first grade - this looks good to me! And kudos to your for not going overboard on first grade like so many of us have in our first year. ;) (I'm including myself in that list...)

 

We did SOTW 1 with the AG this year and loved it! We did basically the same for LA too, although at different times. My daughter was already reading well before we started 1st grade, but we did use OPGTR earlier and enjoyed it. I'm planning to start it with my son this coming year.

 

Math is a quandary for everyone, it seems. We started with Saxon but ended up switching to Horizons Math. It's not one that appears on this board very often (at least that I've noticed) but it's one that Sonlight recommends and it's been working very well for us. I'm sure others will have lots of advice on this subject.

 

As for first grade science - I didn't buy a packaged curriculum. I just wrote my own following the WTM guidelines for first year science. I'd be happy to send it to you if you are interested.

 

Other affordable options include Elemental Science (written by fellow board member Paige) or plans by Trivium Academy. You might also look at Easy Classical, although it's not as cheap.

 

FWIW - I think we are going to do Christian Kids Explore for science this coming school year. Your kids are still a bit young for that, though.

Edited April 13, 2009 by kls126s

[Spy Car]

You may want to consider the version of Singapore Math series called "Primary Mathematics Standards Edition". This version will keep you on scope with the California school system, plus it has some added elements added to it that aren't in the US Edition.

 

If your child seems "mathy" and you are prepared to add something a unconventional, and intellectually challenging (for you), the "Mathematics Enrichment Programme" (MEP) is a very interesting adaptation by a British University of a highly esteemed Hungarian math program.

 

MEP is available to down-load as PDFs without charge (other than the cost of printing). I love the "critical thinking" aspects of MEP, and we will be doing it along with Singapore. MEP may not be everyones cuppa, but those of us who like it, love it!

 

Bill

[MaggieFrances]

Thanks for the replies!

 

Amber~ you are right in having my hands full with twins. That's another reason I am looking to take nibbles instead of bitting off more than I can chew.

 

Keri~ I am in awe you managed to write your own 1st grade science curric! I would love to take a peak.

 

Bill~ I will look into that Singapore math suggestion. As for MEP I am already shaking in the knees from your description! "Mathy" I am not and if one or more of my kids are I am considering passing them on to someone who isn't going to hold them back like I am afraid I will.

[Pata]

We are currently working throught first grade here, but we blend WTM and Sonlight. I like having everything put together for me when it comes to history and read-alouds, but in exchange for that I have to give up the 4 year cycle thing! For math we use Singapore and love it, but have looked at Horizons or Saxon? Both are good programs. For science, we use Biology for the Grammar Stage (I'm the Paige from Elemental Science, so I use my own plans;)). I designed it to be done in 5-15 min a day, so it's not a huge time commitment. Biology covers animals, plants and the human body. The plans lay out the readings, experiments and vocab for you and the student workbook has all the experiment and narration sheets you need including pictures. That said with twins coming you may find that just getting science-type books from the library led by her interest to be your best option. Or you could just do nature study using Barb's Outdoor Hour Challenges. Hope all that helps!

[TN Mama]

Hi there & welcome! :)

 

This is my first year homeschooling and I'm already feeling like I can celebrate that we've made it through and my daughter has actually learned things! From me! I'm not a math person, but felt I could probably handle teaching 2nd grade math. I found and love Christian Light Math. It is easy to teach and my daughter has really excelled. Plus she can work independently after I introduce whatever new concept we are learning that day. I will be using this again next year for both of my girls. They will be in 1st and 3rd.

 

For science, I followed the WTM and we used an Animal Encyclopedia & Human Body encyclopedia and have gotten library books on the topics we've covered weekly. There is this free human body curriculum, also designed by someone who frequents the boards, Jen. This has been a great addition to our plans this year.

 

Classic Science is another free life science download. I have used bits & pieces in our studies this year. I'm tempted to use his plans for earth science next year, but so far I've made no decision! :)

 

We haven't used this, but several here have for nature study : Outdoor Hour Challenge.

 

Good luck!

[Rosie_0801]

I am intending to use Math on the Level with my kiddies. I like that it explains how to explain, and it is so flexible I'll be able to tweak it in any way I need to without actually swapping curriculums. I really recommend you have a look at it.

I haven't actually seen Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, but I very much like the theory. From the reviews I've read, it seems to be an excellent spine, but does require a lot of supplementing. The author is aiming to teach the scientific method, which I think is the most important thing. I don't know how to do that off my own back (I'm a history girl!) but I do know how to add content.

 

Oh, curriculum research is such fun!

 

:)

Rosie

[JudoMom]

Welcome! I love your children's names :001_smile:.

 

Looking at the ages of your children, and seeing that you're expecting twins, here is my advice. I haven't had twins, but my 5 boys are a little over 6 years apart, and now that my baby is 3 I realize just how taxing it was (it seemed normal at the time).

 

Don't worry about formal science. Just get library books and add them to your fun reading.

 

Most of our first cycle of history consisted of listening to SOTW (I read about half and we listened to the other half on CDs) while they colored the page from the activity guide. We did the mapwork, but not well. Looking back, I would've skipped the formal mapwork and spent more time talking about the globe.

 

For Language Arts, I would either add in Writing With Ease or replace FLL with it.

 

We use Saxon for math, and have from the beginning. I like that the early teacher manuals are scripted, and I like that the later years have the DIVE cds to teach most things for me (it frees me up to teach the youngers). All of my boys are doing well in math. Just a word of warning: people tend to feel passionate about their math program, so you'll probably get suggestions for every math program out there. If you can to a convention or something to look at programs, that would be ideal.

 

Keep it simple, and enjoy this time!

[Aurelia]

Your list looks good, I especially like the literature choices. Like the PP, I would recommend dropping FLL and doing WWE instead, especially if you haven't finished ETC or OPGTR yet.

 

For math, we use and love Right Start (very hands on), but it is expensive. You might try Math Mammoth or Singapore for less expensive, workbook-related options.

 

We're planning on just getting books from the library and continuing the nature study from Five in a Row that we started this year for science, and maybe some experiement kits for hands on stuff.

[King Alfred Academy]

Welcome! You have already received some great suggestions. The only thing I would like to add is how we do science at our house.

 

I will have a 3rd grader and a 1st grader next year. Since I pretty much decide on the curricula and topics we cover for our subjects, I do let my boys have somewhat of a "say" for science during the grammar years. We looked at the lapbooks and unit studies offered at homeschool share and I let them chose ones they thought sounded interesting. Everything on the site is FREE and created by homeschool moms.

 

This is what I hope to do next year:

 

Chemistry and Periodic Table Unit...I will be including Real Science 4 Kids Pre Level Chemistry with this. It is a 10 week study.

 

Sharks

A Unit on the sea/ocean using Holling C. Holling's book Pagoo

 

The Human Body..I put this together myself using the following resources:

Usborne's First Human Body Encyclopedia

Head to Toe Science by Jim Wiese

My Body

and several Magic School Bus videos

 

Meerkats...if we can get to it.

 

Hope this helps a bit! :001_smile:

[Narrow Gate Academy]

For math we love Singapore. Horizons would be my second choice.

 

For science, I would keep it very low key, and just read some science books each week. Some series we enjoy at this age: A Let's-read-and-find-out science book, Rookie read-about science, and Magic School Bus. HTH

[BlessedMom]

Welcome it is nice to meet you!

 

It sounds like you are putting together a solid educational plan so far.

 

We are really enjoying Horizons Math and I highly recommend it.

 

Bless you on your journey!

[Amy in KS]

We LOVE Christian light education (NOT Christian light publications) for math! It is challenging, but the kids quickly learn to be independent. It's also inexpensive (big plus).

[Loupelou]

Welcome!:D I believe I saw your post in the networking forum that you are LDS, so are we!

 

Anyway, the other posts have some great ideas!

 

We use Rightstart/Singapore for youngers, I also use and really like Horizons. I think you would find Rightstart too time consuming unless you were doing two children together. My philosophy is never buy it new if you can help it! With yours being so close in age I would also like to recommend a great little book,Games for Math by Peggy Kaye. Lots of easy to put together games, really easy, like grab a jar of money, a pencil, and paper.

 

I agree with other posters about laid back science when they are young. I actually have used Sonlight K with a 2nd,K, and Preschooler. They include the use of Usborne's Science activities and First Book of Nature. Pick a subject, get some books, maybe a fun video, do some hands on activities, make your own nature journals and just let them have fun. Also, check out your library's programs. I know ours has a once a week program, usually some science subject, you could attend that and then just use some extra resources to reinforce the subject.

 

We love SOTW, my older kids use it as a spine in Sonlight 7, so we use the activity books for further study, younger reading, and fun hands on stuff.

 

I use Sonlight language arts so I can't give you much advise there. My younger kids do love ETC though.

 

Just have fun while they are young, and don't get too stressed out. It looks like you are already doing some great things!:D

[Roses]

We are just finishing up our 1st grade year with our DD. We followed the guidelines of TWTM. I set up a simple planner using a free excel sheet I found at http://donnayoung.org/index.htm. I wrote the subjects down the left-hand side of the page and Monday-Friday across the top. Then each day I would just fill in what we read/covered that day. I printed out 36 of these pages (one for each week) and used dividers to divide them into 36 weeks in our planner notebook. Having the planner notebook made it very easy for me to keep track of where we were at and how we were progressing.

 

For history we did SOTW: Vol. 1 and did the coloring pages and map pages from the Activity Guide. I put those sheets into a 3-ring history binder in the "Ancient" divider, just as TWTM outlines.

 

For LA we did FLL (the first half) and WWE Level 1. We found the lessons to be short, easy and fun. We put the lessons in the writing and grammar sections of her Language Arts binder.

 

My dd had already completed the OPG for reading so I didn't include that.

 

She did HWT for handwriting.

 

We used Horizons Math Level 1 for math.

 

We bought a few of the science books TWTM recommends - Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia and First Human Body Encyclopedia and the Usborne Science with Plants book. DD read through the encyclopedias and we pulled a few experiments from them to try along the way. We jotted down the procedure for the experiments and put them in her Science notebook. Currently we have mold growing on some bread in the kitchen. :)

 

We read lots of great books (mainly as bedtime stories) and I kept a list in the back of her planner notebook (again using a free form from the Donna Young site). Titles included The Secret Garden, Peter Pan, Understood Betsy, The Little House on the Prairie series, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. DoLittle, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and many more.

 

We read through Egermeier's Bible Story Book and memorized scriptures.

 

We use All About Spelling for our spelling curriculum.

 

We used Drawing with Children at the beginning of the year and then started using Artistic Pursuits. We do art about once a week and my dd loves to draw on her own a lot during her free time.

 

We found the above to be very manageable. We had a lot of fun together. I hope this helps!

[Heather in Neverland]

Just another suggestion for math...Math U See has been awesome for us!

[hsmom27]

I'm new to this whole thing too, but thought I'd share. I have twin 6yos and here's how we go.

 

Math- Singapore which I and DS 1 love! We also supplement with Miquon and that's good for explaining the why's and showing different ways to solve the problems. Both are pretty inexpensive. My other DS (who has autism) is starting MUS. This seems like a great fit for him, but he needs hands-on, visual, and repetitous learning at his own pace.

 

History- SOTW 1 & AG. I also think it's a good idea to invest in either/both of the big Kingfisher or Usborne World History Encyclopedias. You'll use that for years, so it's only an expense this first year.

 

LA- FLL 1 only takes a few minutes a day, so we like it. Spelling Workout is one my kids are doing well on and it's inexpensive. We also use ETC. Then we just do lots of reading and periodic narration pages. We're using Zaner-Bloser for handwriting.

 

Science- I wrote my own Biology for this year. I'm glad to share too, if you'd like to take a look.

 

Also, we cut down on expense by not having the kids write in the consumable books. I have them write answers on another paper. I figure it's handwriting practice, as well as being economical. I have also heard of people putting something transparent over the pages and having the kids use dry erase markers. Then you just wipe down the sheet and reuse. Plus that way you can resell the books. HTH:)

[skaterbabs]

My DD will be starting first grade in the fall as well. We unschooled kindy. lol We're going to use Oak Meadow's first grade as our spine, Right Start math, Explode the Code for reading/phonics, and Story of the World vol. 1 for history. Oak Meadow gently introduces art, science, music, etc. DD will also do some French and Spanish.

[laylamcb]

Right Start/Singapore, Ambleside Online lit list, and Phonics Pathways fans here. :001_smile:

[the4Rs]

I appreciate this post. I so want to overplan everything. It gets extremely frustrating. I will have a first grader next year and I am trying to figure out what to do. Thanks for giving me more to think about. :glare: My brain can't handle this. :tongue_smilie: