1st Graders? I've noticed a lot of people here have 1st graders and I was thinking it might be cool to start a 1st grade thread (and maybe K and on up?)...If you have a 1st grader, would you like to share what curriculum(s) you are using this year and maybe what you like/dislike about it? This could be helpful for others who are searching for 1st grade materials also...AND if you have taught a 1st grader what you really liked/didn't like? I know I still have the curriculum-shopolitis for 1st grade, lol ! I'm sure many will appreciate your input! I'll start...I have a 6 yo dd and we started 1st grade at the first week of August. We are using: Language Arts: Lifepac, Hooked on Phonics (finishing K and starting 1st grade) and Starfall.com. I love HOP and Starfall. Lifepac is good, but I think I'll be changing next year. We are doing at least 2 of these programs every day. Math: Lifepac--Again, good, but will be thinking of something different next year. She is doing fine and it is at level. I'm not too crazy about having 50+ problems on a page and then the next page has, like, 3 or 4! I understand it gives her a break, but it makes it a bit difficult for me as far as planning goes. (And I confess, I'm not a busy-work mom, so as long as she is getting the answers right and not whining, she doesn't have to do them all, and that seems to motivate her to do well.) Science: Lifepacs. Uhm. We are glossing over this right now...she did a lot of this stuff in K. But we just keep building on the foundation. :wink: History and Geo: Lifepacs. Uhm again...it is VERY similiar to the Science Lifepacs at this time; see above remarks. Bible: Lifepacs.Love it. Right where we need to be. So, anybody else? :lol:
Okay I'll play! I have a 1st grader but he's not normal. :love: We use Sonlight curriculum and love it. I highly recommend their reading list to anyone. We supplement with the following: Bible: Also use stuff from Doorpost curriculum (I think his is called plants grown up.) 1 book can be used for entire elementary and even beyond depending on what you do. Phonics: Explode the Code. . .like it very much. Like it much, much, much better than sing, spell, read, and write. History & Lang arts: sonlight Science: in addition to sonlight we are starting to work on the following: we are thinking that we're going to do the k'nex education packs. we hold memberships to lots of stuff here--hall of science, museum of natural history, etc., etc. So we do all their stuff too. Math--saxon. . .love it. . .but that's only bc I know how to use it :love:
I'll join in! We started the first week of July. Bible- BJU Bible 1 Like it except I really wish I had the visuals packet to go with it but that was as much or more then the rest of the curriculum itself! Other then that we really enjoy it. I like how it applies Bible times to our lives today and every day and we have a different hymn to sing with each section. I will probably use their 2nd grade curriculum next year. Math- Singapore Primary Math 1 and Miquon 1st year Love both. Both are perfect for dd. I also use a lot of supplemental material, games, ect. Math is our favorite subject. I will probably continue with both for next year as well. Grammar- First Language Lessons We have been using this since we pulled dd out this past winter. I like that it's not only grammar but memorization, narration and copywork. Dd has learned an incredible amount from this books short lessons. Which leads to another plus, the lessons are short but very thorough and to the point and dd totally "gets" them. Phonics/Reading- Horizons I had originially started out with 3rd grade Plaid phonics. While dd understood all of it, she hated it because the workbook was geared towards a 3rd grader so there was a LOT of writing. Switched to Horizons and she likes it. I can't say anything bad about it. She reads whatever she wants - step into reading level 4's, smaller chapter books, ect. Spelling- we're using an old 2nd grade textbook though I had purchased Spelling Power to use. I love Spelling Power, dd hated it so we ditched it till later. The text book is right up her alley. It has short lessons for each day so she uses the words every day and also encourages some critical thinking and writing skills. Vocab- I pick out words from our history for the week. Dd looks them up in the dictionary and writes their meanings the first day. Second day we go over the words and find them in our history reading for the day. 3rd day she uses them in sentences. 4th day we review all vocabulary words so far and in a few weeks I'll have her use them in a story. Science- We have BJU but I've dropped it for now. We're doing an ocean unit from learningpage.com in a few months I will be ordering from www.noeoscience.com BJU is great for covering the basics, but I had to work VERY hard to make it interesting lol. We had fun with the solar system and the few units we've done in there. But I'm not sure if we're going to pick it up again when we're done with our ocean studies. And I have no idea how long our ocean studies will go on. She's in the middle of researching sea turtles lol and wants to do dolphins next. History- Story of the World We are loving this though some of the reading is a little over dd's head and there is a lot of it which sometimes doesn't hold her attention. So I've taken to only reading a couple paragraphs at a time and using words for vocabulary. We enjoy it though and love the activities book. We're also doing music history although that's taken a back seat the past couple of weeks because we've been so busy! I think that's about it!
1st grader Hi I have a 6 y.o. son that I'm homeschooling this year. This is my first official year, so I feel like I'm not quite prepared. I have been using many public library resources along with the internet for our curicula. My son seems to like starfall.com. I have hooked on phonics, flashcards and educational games also. I have been asking one of my friends what her son did last year in 1st grade public school. There is a website by worldbook that I've been using as a guideline for 1st grade. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way. I hope we all have a great time homeschooling this year! Becca
We're going on vacation in 2 hours...thought I'd check in. I'll have a 1st grader this year (also a 3rd grader, but I'll stick to my 1st grader for this thread!). L/A - First Language Lessons of the Well Trained Mind Math - Making the Grade - a lot of this is review for him, but the last half is hard so I think that it will last us maybe half the school year...then I'll have to pick something. Science - Making the Grade - I'm going to do things out of order so that it matches my 3rd grader and I can kinda do Science together. History & Geography - Lifepacs - I loved doing this with my daughter, she loved them too, and my son picked this. I'm going to supplement with the Social Studies from Making the Grade Bible - Nest Family Videos & Workbooks. My son is an extremely audio/visual learner. Planning on using 1 video for a week or two and picking a few things out of the workbook. Art - we're picking a medium each month and exploring it - finding artists who use that medium and studying them as well. We start on the 17th when we get back from Vacation.
I have a first grader as well. Madison turned 7 yesterday and is in 1st grade. Math: Saxon 1, we are about 1/2 way thru it, we used it last year for Kindy also Umm everything else...misc. books, unit studies, online resources. I have a huge science experiement book that I got at a book sale at work, and a ton of other things.
Hey I'll join in, I have a 1st grader and also one in Pre-k. For 1st we're using: Bible - Lifepacs, my favorite part about this is my 4 yr old can also do the worksheets if he wants. They are mostly drawing/coloring. Science - Lifepacs, so far it's all been review for him, but I like the layout and pace and I think it will pick up and get more challenging/interesting as we go on. Reading/Phonics/Language Arts - Rod and Staff, loooove this. It is very solid, but he enjoys it and so far the lessons don't take a lot of time. Math - Math-U-See, love this, too. He is doing great and having fun, what could be better?! Geography - Which Way USA, we have a lot of fun with this. You do puzzles/games and learn facts and interesting bits about each state. It's a little above his level, so I have to walk him through some of the activities. I think this is his favorite part of school, though. We also had our first "Science Experiment Day" yesterday. There were 8 kids here between the ages of 1 and 6. We did experiments from The Backyard Scientist. I don't know that they could tell you why the experiments worked, but they had a lot of fun doing them. Lisa
Our youngest, Joshua, is a 1st grader. He is only 5, but we decided to go ahead and start him in first grade as he's way ahead in phonics and math. He even answers some of the questions I ask our 3rd grader. He is still 'young' in handwriting, though, as his fine motor skills are not matured yet. So, we're taking it all at his pace. We use A Beka curriculum.
My first grader is 7 in less than a month. We're using: L/A - HOP readers, Bob books, other easy/early readers, homemade games & montessori materials, Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons, Leap Frog DVDs (letter factory, etc). Workbooks weren't working for him, so we set aside Explode The Code for now. Oh and Handwriting Without Tears (thatfits with L/A right?) Math - Miquon - orange book & Singapore 1A (oral). Loving the cuisinare rods. Science/History/Bible - Christian Cottage Unit Studies - In The Beginning God! We also have PE on Tuesdays, Park Day on Wednesdays, Art on Thursdays. Mondays & Fridays are pretty much free.
My daughter is not classified as a first grader but we have moved back to 1st grade language arts so she can catch some of the stuff she missed last year in ps. We are using Lifepacs and we HATE them. We started with the 2nd grade ones and they were too much for her so we moved back to 1st grade (SHHH she doesn't know) and we just don't like the way they are set up. Same thing with my other kids who are using lifepacs. We may be changing all of their language arts soon.
My dd is a 1st grader this year too!! I'd love to join in! I changed all of my curriculum and this is now what we are using/fixing to start using. Science - BJU grade 1 Math - Math U See Alpha level Language Arts - HOP, First Language Lessons and Spelling Workout. (and Starfall for fun) Social Studies - Heritage Studies level 1 Bible - BJU Bible Truths level 1 Just really getting started so I'll let you know how it goes!! Nice to see other first graders around.
I have a first grader, too! I actually wrote this for a webpage I'm making so Grandma can keep up with what we're doing, so it's a bit wordy. We are using My Father's World again as our core curriculum. Last year we used their first grade material and we liked it immensely, although Joy was already reading at a level beyond what they were expecting her to be. This year we moved on to their Adventures in My Father's World curriculum, which is meant for second/third graders, but also can be made to fit advanced first graders. Perfect! Bible Through Adventures in My Father's World, we will be focusing on the names of Jesus (He is the Rock, the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, etc.) Joy will be memorizing verses, and will be finding and reading passages about Jesus in her New International Reader's Version (NIrV) Bible. We're also going to continue where we left off last Spring, learning the name and a brief summary of events or themes for each book of the Bible. Social Studies Also through Adventures in My Father's World, we will do a (rather light) overview of U.S. History and Geography. Joy LOVES maps, so she has been pretty excited about this. If we stick with the My Father's World curriculum track, she will be studying U.S. History in much more detail- and in the context of world history - in 5th and 6th grades. We'll do world geography next year in 2nd grade, which will also be fun. (I love maps, too!) Science Both of the My Father's World packages came with an assortment of Usborne science books. We didn't finish the ones we got with last year's package and they are really good! So we are doing those this Fall, and we'll save the ones that came with this year's package until later - probably after Christmas. We're starting with Finding Out About Things Outdoors, and then will be moving to Science with Water. Joy's going to especially like that one! Reading To go along with the U.S. History lessons, My Father's World suggests some specific books to read aloud this year, including On the Banks of Plum Creek and Farmer Boy ! Yayy! Also several that I haven't read: Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims, The Courage of Sarah Noble, In Grandma's Attic, ... Charles has been reading books out loud during our family prayer time at night, and as soon as he finishes Charlotte's Web, he's going to start Little House in the Big Woods so Joy has some context for the other Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Joy also gets to read a lot of books on her own, of course. We have a library day scheduled each week (usually on Tuesdays after our church's ladies' Bible study), and we're going to check out some books that relate to what we are currently learning, but also lots of books just for fun. Writing Joy does some kind of writing project every day, whether it is just practicing letters, or writing a summary of our history lesson, or making a birthday card for a relative! We are going to be listening to some classic patriotic songs in history, so one day each week she may be copying lyrics. On other days, she might be writing her memory verse or the lyrics to the Hymn of the Month from our church's Children's Choir. Math We continuing where we left off in Saxon Math 1. We'll be movin' on up to the next math book after Christmas. Language Arts We went through the first book of Learning Language Arts Through Literature (LLATL) last year and really liked it. Joy wasn't ready for the writing involved in the second book at that point, so we started going through various reading comprehension and logical thinking workbooks while we worked on her handwriting. We're continuing with the workbooks right now and are going to reassess the LLATL program for after Christmas. With all of the chapter books we're already reading for history, adding more for language arts might be a bit much... There are other options that don't involve quite so much reading. Spanish Joy LOVES Spanish and for the last several years has been babbling in a made up language that she is pleased to call Spanish to anyone who would smile sympathetically at her. She is really excited that we are going to be learning the real thing this year! We looked at several different programs and found that most of them were either too dry, or too easy, or too expensive, or some combination thereof. We finally settled on Flip Flop Spanish. It's written for 3-5 year olds (Senora Gose is working on a series for older students, but it isn't available yet), so it is on the easy side for Joy. Sra. Gose has some recommendations on her website for complementary books that she uses with the older students she teaches, so when we move on to the second book in the Flip Flop series, we will probably buy those from Amazon.com to help fluff the content out. I'm enjoying learning Spanish, too! Art Daddy is in charge of art, as I have trouble making realistic stick figures. He is going to use I Can Do All Things, which is a great art program that we actually bought last year. Joy's fine motor skills weren't quite ready for it then, but I think she is going to like it a lot better this year. They will also be doing other fun projects as the whim strikes them. Right now they are busy making an animated movie short based on a really cute series of pictures Joy drew.
Math - Math U See Beta, Math Wrap - ups and homemade file folder games History - We follow the outline in World Social Studies Yellow Pages and use Story of the World and lapbooks from Hands of a Child to fill in the blanks. DS2 sorta tags along with DS1. He will be more active in History next year. Science - We are working on Fundamentals of Science right now, Using a microscope and measurement Language Arts - We don't do a formal LA curriculum. I prefer for them to learn grammar, spelling and phonics through real experiences. DS2 taught himself to read using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. He read his part of the script and I helped him if he needed it. I did not read any of the parent script. He stopped at lesson 65 and is now reading real books. For grammar and spelling we write in our journals. At the moment he just writes whatever. I will not begin correcting him until next year. DS1 writes in his journal, I re-write it below with all the correct spelling and punctuation and then he copies the correct entry. Logic - Mindbinders and Sudoku Music - Classical Composers Study, We listen to one composer a month in depth. At this stage of the game I am just interested in their exposure to the music. If they are able to put a name with the music that is a bonus. DS1 is working on a Music Appreciation lapbook and DS2 will tag along. Art - Art Master Study, We study one artist a month. We look at their art work and do activities out of Discovering Great Artists and Art for the Very Young. Geography - Keeping the Traditions, We study one country in depth each month. We read stories from that country, study immigration patterns, native cultures, basic history, location, food, art, etc. Foreign Language - We don't start formal language study until 2nd grade but DS2 does tag along when we work in Rosetta Stone Handwriting Without Tears PE - Traditional Archery
Hmmm...I started a post and then it disappeared.:| I had went to into detail, but now I'll just say thanks to everybody for all the sharing/suggestions! You all have me really re-thinking what we are using now and I have to remember I'm not 'married' to Lifepacs! I do feel that they are getting the job done but I might start picking up some different stuff here and there. I know your info will be helpful to others! I was really glad to see the art suggestions as today I was looking B&N for something to teach about artists. DD has decided recently that she likes Monet. We just missed a huge Monet viewing at one of our local galleries and they have Picasso up now. She thinks he is weird. :roll: See why I need a book?!:wink Any other 1st graders out there? Please share...
