I think I figured it out Okay ladies I think I got this. I had some time today. It was rainy and dark and perfect for a day of planning. I wanted to figure out where we were anyway and get my dad and his illnesses off my mind for a while. I figured out we will be on week 18 of our 36 week schedule for 1st grade begining next Monday. Yeah! Okay so I had slacked on Bible due to her being so involved with church stuff. I am putting her Bible stories back in plus she will be going to JBQ (junior Bible quiz) practices every Sunday night begining this Sunday. Science - Thanks to the suggestion on Burgess Bird Book I found it online and found printable coloring sheets to go with it! Free is fabulous! Grace absolutely loves birds so I think she will really enjoy this a lot. Plus we already have feeders out and can make some of our own for craft projects. So once a week we will read a story from this book and she can color a picture of the bird we are studying. I also have the Handbook of Nature Study to back this up. History - since the general concensus around here is that history is not that important for this age I have decided not to worry about it this year. We will be reading one story a week from 50 Famous Stories (which I already have) and maybe have her draw a picture that goes with it or we can act it out or something hands on. So our schedule will now look something like this: both history and science will be once a week, I have Bible scheduled for three days a week plus Sundays JBQ class, geography will remain once a week, and Aesop fable once a week. Everyday we will do math, phonics, poetry (her favorite subject), & handwriting. We will save our read alouds for bedtime. So far for read alouds we have done Little House in the Big Woods and Charlotte's Web. I plan to throw in a couple of historical biographies here and there but nothing major and nothing to intense. We already did one on George Washington a couple weeks ago. I will also toss in lapbooking when appropriate. We just did one on Fall. Ok that looks like that. Does this look like enough for a 6 year old 1st grader? I am open to suggestions. Without suggestions I never would have thought to look into Burgess Bird Book.
Looks great, Tiffany! Another read-aloud might be "The Secret Garden" or "Wind in the Willows". Historical biographies....hmm.... Have you tried the old "childhood" ones? I think they redid a few of them, but some you can find in libraries that carry older books. Can't think of the series right off hand! "Childhood of Great Americans".....something like that!
Oh you've helped me more than once - and so I probably still owe you The schedule looks great! I think she'll like it and with everything happening right now, easing off a little might help.
My dd10 has LOVED these books over the years!! And there are so many to choose from! SUPER suggestion! It doesn't seem like anyone else likes or recommended the Heritage Studies texts and related materials from BJU Press (Bob Jones University Press). *lol* We love them! You can sometimes find reasonably priced texts on eBay or Half Price Books.
American Girl books from the historical girls are great read alouds for first grade as well Your schedule looks great, though, for a first grader
Childhood of Famous Americans, and I loved them for my kids as well!!! You can still get most of them through your public library! I have had a unit study on the Little House books. I'm sure it was aimed at early primary. I think I just picked it up at a teacher supply store. I'm sure you could find something online. I hear you about wasting money on curriculum that never gets used! I taught at home for 20-odd years and I shudder to think how much money I spent on things that didn't work out for us. But unit studies I always felt safe with. If we didn't use them now, we could always use them later, and the monetary outlay for them was minimal compared to what you get out of them! I love the unit studies! I vote for American Girls for the girls as well!! They have the videos and everything now, and you can pick a lot of it up used on eBay!
We started Burgess Bird book this week and Grace really liked it a lot!! According to Ambleside (i can't believe I didn't do this before so thank you so much for this suggestion once again) we do six chapters a term or one every other week which give me plenty time to print it all out and find coloring printables for each bird. I am also going to be making new narration cards this weekend and we will begin those on Monday. I am really excited about that. We will be finishing up The Velveteen Rabbit today and have been reading Andersens fairy tales at bedtime - she loves that because we snuggle in mommy's big bed to read. Next week we begin our study on Beethoven!
sounds like you got it all under control.. We are doing apologia flying Creatures this year and I wanted something to go along with it so I'm going to be looking into the Burgess Bird Book as well. Angie
