How long should School last for first grade?

Oh. I like the Spanish thing.

Thank you.

 

I need to add that I keep science and history more of hands on fun type stuff. So, lots of experiments and such in science and I don't do both subjects on a day. That is not what I consider a part of the seat work. So when I said 1 hr, I was referring to handwriting, spelling, phonics, math, that sort of thing. I think for 1st grade, science and history should be as much fun as art and music and such so I keep it as something for the end of the day or on special days when we go out and do stuff, like field trips. I also have a lot of history books we just read for fun all the time and books on tape for in the car, like Story of the World.

 

What kinds of hands on history things do you do?

 

I'll answer this for my now-1st grader. We do lapbooking, which my 8 yo DD loves more than my 6 yo DS. We'll paint pictures or do playacting; last year, we built a ship for Columbus day out of couches & used my broom for a mast & sheets for a sail. We talked about what we needed to load for provisions, and what the ship names were. Studying Greece right now, and they are loving the armies. We didn't do it for Greece, but I'm thinking for our next unit (Romans) we'll put together our own armor from cardboard. We draw a lot of pictures, too.

And not quite hands on, but I'm trying to re-implement bedtime stories, and trying to make them match when possible. So for instance we're learning about Greece and reading Mary Pope Osborne's "Tales from the Odyssey."

 

Cool! We are actually going to the library tomorrow to get a biography for history and plan to do a lapbook. We were supposed to do this last week but my dad got sick and I ended up out of town at the hosptial for a few days and well we just put it off.

I love the idea of making a ship out of couches! I remember when I was little I would take all the cushions off the couches and all the chairs from the dinning room and mom would give me sheets and I'd make a huge fort in the living room. Oh the memories!

 

We are doing a hands-on literature-based study of cavemen and the first few chapters in Genesis from a Christian perspective this year. You can see what we are doing here http://eclectic-homeschool.blogspot.com/2009/08/prehistory-unit-study.html

In the 6 week study we are making a peppermint patty Adam and Eve, making a mini-coracle, making a woolly mammoth and saber toothed tiger cake, making arrowheads out of clay, and doing cave paintings.

 

We did hands-on stuff for History from SOTW 1 and the Activity book. There was outdoor stuff, coloring, mapping, cooking, arts and crafts---plus I foundmore stuff on-line. Oh my! That was such a fun year!