First Grade Curriculum 2011 - 2012

This year, I decided to try out a few different options for our curriculum.

At the FPEA conference I walked through the vendor hall many, many times. I perused all of the merchandise multiple times. I decided that an all-in-one boxed curriculum was not the best choice for us, so then began the task of choosing curriculum for individual subjects. It was a bit overwhelming looking at all the options, and not every choice is even available at the conference!

In the end, here is what I decided to do:

Reading:

• Explode the Code workbooks - I purchased books 1-4 at the convention. I'm not sure how many books we will actually use this year, but they were discounted at the convention, so I grabbed them.

• Bob Books - I bought set 1 and 2 at the convention to use for reading practice. I already have the Abeka K5 readers from last year that we will be using this year. (Gigi is a little behind in her reading).
• Happy Phonics - Games that reinforce phonics lessons.
  

Handwriting:

• I did not purchase any formal curriculum this year for handwriting. Instead I bought a composition notebook where I will have Gigi do some copywork from various sources.

Math:

• RightStart Mathematics Level B - This was my biggest purchase so far this year. I bought the complete kit while at the convention.

Science:

• Again, no formal curriculum. The plan is to create lapbooks on various topics. I have quite a few topics in mind that I would like to cover, but of course that is all subject to change based on Gigi's interests.
  
• If the subject matter allows, I plan to use the Let's read and Find Out book series to research information for the lapbooks. I really like these books, plus they often suggest experiments that correlate with the subject.
  

Geography:

• I plan to have Gigi create lapbooks for this subject as well. We will make one lapbook for each state we learn about.
• In addition, I want to start letterboxing with her when the weather cools down a bit.

Bible:

• I will be using the Character portion from Hubbard's Cupboard as a guide.
• I will have Gigi do some notebooking pages based on the character traits we learn about
• We will also be referencing the God and Me! Devotions for Girls book that we already own.

Music and Art:

• I will teach some basic piano to Gigi myself. I took some lessons as a child and still have a book from that time that I can reference.
• For art, I will allow some free creativity time, providing a different material frequently

In addition to these things, we will be making many trips to various local museums, zoos, aquariums and theme parks. We will also be using the library for it's treasured resources as much as possible.

Goals for First Grade - 2011- 2012

We entered our second official year of homeschooling about 2 weeks ago. I came up with a basic outline of our goals for First grade just as had done for Kindergarten and curriculum has been chosen.

This year I will be including little man in much more school activities than last year. He will be three in October. Our goals for him this year include learning his alphabet, numbers etc. He is great with his colors, but needs quite a bit of help with everything else. We will go slowly and just cover basics since he is so young.

For starters, here are our First grade goals for the Princess:

The subject areas I want to cover include:

• Reading
• Handwriting
• Math
• Science
• Geography
• Art
• Music
• Piano
  
• Health
• Foreign Language
• Bible

I'm going to break it down now by subject what I would like to cover through the year. Som things are being carried over from last year since I do not feel they were mastered well enough.

Reading:

• Read common, irregular sight words (e.g., the, have, said, come)
• Make all the letter sounds and letter patterns, including consonant blends and long- and short-vowel patterns, and combine those sounds into recognizable words
• Be able to retell a story in detail and in her own words
  
• Read aloud with fluency in a manner that sounds like natural speech
• Write simple, short stories using sight words and phonics skills
• Respond to who, what, when, where, and how questions
• Follow one-step written instructions
• Identify and correctly use singular and plural nouns
• Identify and correctly use contractions and singular possessive pronouns in writing and speaking

Handwriting:

• Continue to improve manuscript with focus on lower-case letters
• Emphasize use of proper punctuation and capitalization
• Space letters, words, and sentences appropriately

Math:

• Recognize and Write numbers to 100
• Count orally by ones, fives and tens to 100
• Use symbols for less than, equal to, or greater than.
  
• Add and subtract numbers up to and from 10
• Addition and subtraction word problems
  
• Compare quantities by estimating, weighing, and measuring
• Use graphs to gather information
• Tell time
• Count coins
• Recite the days of the week and months of the year

Science:

• Animal Habitats
• Seeds and Plants
• Recycling
• Butterfly Life Cycle
• Ants
• Ocean life
• Dinosaurs
• Magnets
• Volcanoes
• Scientific Procedure
• Any other topics that princess shows interest in
  

Geography:

• Basic map skills
• How to use a compass
• Important US symbols
• The 50 states - we will do a lapbook for each state we learn about (all 50 will not be completed)
  
• Letterboxing
  

Art & Music

• Experiment with different materials and methods
• Learn how to draw some simple pictures
• Learn about music notes (different notes and what they mean) and sheet music
  
• Learn the notes of a piano
• Learn how to play simple songs on the piano by reading the sheet music
  

Health

• Learn essentials of nutrition
• Learn basic functions of the body
• Importance of personal hygiene
• Learn why our bodies are special and are to be kept private
• Safety in public places
• Proper manners in different situations

Foreign Language: (Spanish)

• Learn Alphabet orally
• Basic colors
• Common items in the home
• Animal names

Bible

• Character Traits - Respect, honesty, obedience, attentiveness, self-control, orderly, forgiving, content, thankful, humble, joyful, generous, compassionate, responsible, patient, diligent.
  

Tampa Bay Homeschool Convention ~ Who Knew?

Ok, so most of you know that this is our first year of homeschooling.  It has been a bit bumpy, but overall, so far,  I am really happy we decided to take this leap.

When my husband and I first discussed the possibility of homeschooling the Princess, we agreed we would re-evaluate her progress each year in order to determine if we would continue homeschooling her or find a charter school for her to attend.

The agreement is that when she has her annual evaluation, (which is performed by a board certified teacher and required in our state) if it is determined that she has progressed at or above where her same-grade peers have, then we will continue to homeschool the following year.  If her evaluation shows she is below where she should be, then we will consider finding a public charter school.

Unfortunately, with all the chaos of searching for a house and finally moving, daily lessons have taken a back seat.  Education is a priority in our household, yet somehow a structured day has still slipped away from us. 

In an effort to re-fuel my passion for homeschooling and get back on track, I went searching for a local homeschool support group.  During my search, I came across an announcement for a homeschool convention.

Now, the FPEA (Florida Parent-Educators Association) hosts an annual convention in Kissime.  I am a current member of FPEA and we have been considering attending this convention in May.  It is a HUGE convention, which unfortunately comes at a price.  We get reduced admission because we are members, but we would still have to pay for travel, a hotel for a couple of nights and our meals. I would like to go, but we will have to see how the finances pan out first.

In the meantime, I am super excited that I found out about a Homeschool convention right in my own city!

The Tampa Bay Homeschool Convention takes place TODAY, Saturday February 5, 2011.  The Keynote address is at 8:30am with the exhibit hall opening at 9am with over 50 vendors.

What is truly exciting to me about this convention is that it is nearby, only minutes from where I live and it is inexpensive!  Tickets are only $5 per person (Children 12 and under are FREE) at the door and all homeschooling families, as well as those considering homeschooling, are welcome.  For more information you can visit the official site.

I am hoping that this convention will not only get me excited about homeschooling again, but also afford me the opportunity to connect with other local homeschooling families.

But that is just one mom's opinion.

Are you going to attend this convention?
Let me know your thoughts!

Workboxes

With this being our first official year of homeschooling, I have been doing tons of research on the best ways to go about teaching my children.  I have always taught my children.  In fact, I began showing my daughter Montessori activities at the age of two.  Back then though, it was just me teaching my child because she wanted to learn.  Now, even though she still wants to learn, I have to be sure she progresses appropriately as she will be tested at the end of the year by the state.

So I have done my best to assess not only my daughter's learning style, but also my teaching style.  I am trying to find the best balance between us to make the experience as fruitful as possible.

I am not sure what personality type I qualify as, but I do recognize some of my strengths and weaknesses.  I am the type of person that needs everything ready and available at my fingertips or I will be setting myself up for failure. This means I need to be organized or I could end up spending hours just staring at the television.  This is not an exaggeration, sadly, it has happened before!  If my day is not scheduled out with meaningful tasks, I will get lost.  The down side of my need for organization, is that when I do prepare things in advance, I can lose myself in the set up!  I can literally spends hours, even weeks, planning and organizing.

Knowing this, I have been using a curriculum that has daily lesson plans for Phonics, Handwriting and Math.  This has worked great.  Mainly because I know we need to do school and it's easy enough to just open up a book and do as it says. Still, even with the lessons set up, I still have to gather materials, find worksheets. manipulatives etc. and I often scramble for those things while I give my daughter busy work.

Unfortunately, I do not want to follow the daily lessons from this curriculum for other subjects and this is where I am falling short.  I prefer to have hands on, creative lessons for things like Science, Bible Studies, Foreign Language etc. 

I have dozens of books piled next to my bed as well as a notebook filled with great ideas for lesson plans.  But they are not organized enough for me to actually use them and I can't seem to find the time to do that. So I end up lugging the huge pile of books over to where we are doing school, then I browse through them blankly and end up doing nothing.

I need a system.  Something that once it is in place, it is easy to change out for new lessons and activities daily.  I need something so that everything I need for a lesson is easily accessible - this includes any worksheets, manipulative etc. Most importantly, I need something that I can adapt for my toddler's use as well.  My son is nearly 22 months old.  He is undoubtedly very smart.  However, he has some speech delays.  Due to his speech delays, I can tell he will not be in the same place at two years old that his big sister was at that age.  This is fine as every child is different, but I still want to be sure that I am taking advantage of this crucial time to implement a love of learning.  So I want to utilize a system that will keep him engaged in something beneficial while I am teaching his big sister.

When discussing these concerns with a friend, she mentioned the use of workboxes.  She had just begun researching them herself, but already loved the concept.  So of course, I began to research them for myself.


Workboxes are an organizational system that can be used in conjunction with any curriculum.  The purpose is to have a successful, structured school day while helping your children gain independent work habits. This system was developed by Sue Patrick, a homeschool mom from North Carolina.  She has a published book that details the system called, Sue Patrick's Workbox System User's Guide 

I have not read the book, but basically from what I've seen from other homeschoolers, the way this works is like this; you use several containers, like plastic shoebox containers for instance. Each box is numbered and filled with a different lesson/activity.  Your child works through the boxes one by one, in order,  until they are all completed.  There are many more details to the system, but as I've said, I have not read through the book!

I can see myself spending hours setting this up initially.  I'm sure I would want my boxes to be cute and then I need to find the perfect spot to place them etc.  However, I think once it is set up, changing out the contents of the boxes will be not as time consuming - I hope!  I'm fully expecting to lose myself in the set-up, but I am also expecting that the day to day change after the initial work will be quick and easy.

As I previously mentioned, I mostly want to use these for my son. I can imagine filling the boxes with lots of hands-on, Montessori type activities for him.

Here are some of things I would like to include for him:

Items to enhance fine motor-skills:  Lacing beads, Lacing Cards, Puzzles, Clothes pin games, Play dough, Transferring activities using tongs, tweezers, spoons etc., Pouting activities using rice, dried beans etc., Sorting games using colored pom-poms, foam blocks etc.

Sensory Activities: Textured blocks, Smelling bottles, Sandpaper letters, etc.

Art projects: Finger Painting, Activities using glue, Stickers, Crayons, Colored Chalk etc.

Literature: Worksheets of Letters to color, Letter magnets, Picture Board Books etc.

Pre-Math Skills: Counting blocks, Big and Little comparisons, Pattern Blocks etc.

I still need to read more about this, find some boxes to use (hopefully I can re-purpose something for this), figure out where I can place them etc.

As for my daughter, she needs my assistance still with lessons -she is not quite ready for independent study.  the ADHD makes it difficult for her to stay on track without my guidance.  Still, I think this would be great for her because she will be able to actually see her day's workload diminishing as the boxes empty. Hopefully that will translate to less frequent, "are we done with school yet" questions!

I hope to be able to update you on my progress in about two weeks.  This is the deadline I have set for myself to get this into daily use.  I am going to need a lot of patience and a lot of persistence, but I think it will be worth it in the end!

But that is just one mom's opinion.

Have you used, or do you currently use, workboxes?
What do you like or dislike about this system? Any tips for getting started?

Let me know your thoughts!

What is Your Child's Learning Style?

This year we will begin our first official year of homeschooling! I am very excited...and a bit nervous.  I am trying to do some research now and get a basic outline of what I would like to cover throughout the year.  Throughout my searching I came across this site that had a "test" to determine your child's learning style.  Knowing your childs learning style is a great starting point for new homeschoolers.  After all, what is the point of trying to teach in a way that your child will not grasp?

The Child Learning Style Quiz is a short 15 questions.  I took the test in a matter of minutes.  My dd's results were;

The results of this assessment show that (your child's) learning style is 15% visual, 38% auditory, and 46% kinesthetic.

I think that sounds about right for her! Time to look into some hands-on activities togo with our lessons!

I think this is a great tool and I am glad I tried it out!

But that is just one mom's opinion.

Have you taken the learning style quiz for your child?
Did you feel the result was accurate?
Let me know your thoughts!