Monday, August 22, 2011

1st grade Curriculum & Co-Ops

Our school year year is off to a great start! We are in our 5th week of our 1st grade year! Around January every year I devote myself to a lot of prayer & research & more prayer & more research concerning schooling for my kiddos. I pray about homeschooling & I also seek the Lord as to whether I should send them to public or private school as well. My #1 goal is to do whatever the Lord is leading our family to do.

Researching curriculum can be VERY overwhelming!!! So many look good it can be a challenge to pick the right one for you & your child & not spend a fortune! Thank goodness for other homeschooling blogs where parents can share their ideas & opinions!

Last year I walked into the the store Ross & stumbled upon the book below. It only cost $4.99 & looked cute so I just bought it on a whim.


About a month later I really started to look into the book & fell in LOVE!!! It covered the 6 major subject areas of Language, Spelling, Reading, Math, Science, & Social Studies. The beginning of each week has a chart for the daily lesson plans of each subject.



Then the next pages have explanations of activities you can do that are listed in the lesson plans.



After that the book is filled with various full colored workbook pages for that week & other pages you can copy for the activities if you choose to do them. I struck GOLD! I knew without a doubt this would be my base for homeschooling 1st grade this year. The lesson plans are fun, detailed & you can pick & choose what you want to do or add to. Everything is right on grade level with some extra challenges if your child is up for it. The reading lesson plans cover a cute children's books or poems for each week. We enjoyed the ones we've done so far! The math goes at a great pace covering everything Brady will need for this year.

If I ever need supplements I of course use fun items from the Resource Center, printables from Makinglearningfun.com, or $1 workbooks from the Dollar Tree. We are also continuing with Hooked On Phonics First Grade for Reading & will be adding some Well Trained Mind stuff for Language & printing practice.

As far as our Bible curriculum goes I will just be using ideas from our Heart of Dakota book from last year, Christian Preschool Printables, & we will continue memorizing Scripture together. My plan is to just seek the Lord as to what to teach & when. Right now we are finishing up the Fruit of Spirit & then will learn about the Armor of God.

Co-Ops

Every other Friday Brady will go to a local church to take 3 co-op classes with other homeschool kids 1st-3rd grade. He'll stay for 3 hours (which I can leave & head home to work with my 3 year old one on one!!) & will take Apologia Land Animals Science class at 9am, then at 10 he'll take a geography class 1st semester & an American Historical Figures class 2nd semester & at 11 a class on the fundaments of art 1st semester & a fundamentals of music 2nd semester.

Brady is also doing a few co-ops with our homeschool group. They each only meet once a month for an hour. His Book-It class is basically just doing a book report & project on any book within a certain theme & giving a presentation on it at the meetings & listening to the other 1st graders' presentations & eating pizza! I'm really eager about this since Brady has a bit of stage fright! I also signed him up for a Popular Mechanics class that will teach him about force, motion, & all things science related to that. I signed him up for it because it sounded fun & let's face it, I am NOT skilled in that area! :)

He's also taking a Music class that a dear friend of mine will be leading. In this one he will listen to recordings of classical music, learn the stories behind the great hymns. They will also paint to music, dance to a waltz learn sign language to a song, & take 2 field trips. I wish I could do this one!!!

I was very wary of all the co-ops but Brady loves to be with other kids his age & this year may be the only year he will be able to do so much. He's so smart & picks up everything I teach him very easily & I wanted him to be challenged in other areas, have other teachers, & meet other homeschool kids his age. If for whatever reason it doesnt work out then I'll just pull him out of whatever I feel is necessary, but I do have high hopes :)










No comments:

Post a Comment