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Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Our First Grade Lessons

Here is a recap of our First Grade using The Well-Trained Mind among other resources.

Bible (in order of how we used them)
Leading Little Ones to God by Marian Schooland
Big Thoughts for Little People by Kenneth Taylor
Right Choices by Kenneth Taylor
Explorer's Bible Study Beginnings I: Old Testament

also learned/memorized
The Lord's Prayer
The Apostles' Creed
Our House Rules (scripturally based)
Hymns from Explorer's Bible Study that are on the cd "My First Hymnal"

Handwriting
D'Nealian Handwriting Practice by MCP until we switched to copywork with scripture, then switched to poetry. Started Classically Cursive by Veritas Press (also D'Nealian)

Poetry Memorization
First Language Lessons and Poem Copybook of "A Child's Garden of Verses" by R.L. Stevenson. We also read poems that pertain to anything we're studying, any subject or just to have a good laugh.

Math
Horizons 1 box set, I like the Teacher's Manual, also bought RightStart Math Games but haven't used it but 3x. We will probably use it more as the concepts get more complicated in our math studies.

Science
Life science studies based on WTM rev. ed.'s suggestions. See the right hand sidebar for the Life Science download. We've raised a frog but won't do butterflies this year, we did catch caterpillars but they died b/c we couldn't find their food source.

History
SOTW Vol 1. with Activity Guide reading Egermeier's Bible Storybook alongside with schedule from www.paulasarchives.com. We've added the VP History cards/CDs for memorization purposes and we love them!

Will also read Peace & Peril by Mindy & Brandon Winthrow at the end of SOTW 1 to start church history. We've done about 10 projects throughout the year for history.

Reading
Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading with Dick and Jane, Bob Books, Nora Gaydos readers (Now I'm Reading) series. We tried the McGuffey Readers but we just didn't stick with it.
Books we've read:
Click here to see the list
It needs to be updated but I took pretty good record. I also started dd on a reading log, she's to read 10 books on her level or just about and write in a log:
Date:
Title:
Author:
Favorite character:

this will increase as her reading skills do.


Grammar
First Language Lessons with the audio cd and Ruth Heller's books about grammar as well as poems I've found about grammar.

Spelling
Spelling Workout A (finished in 4 months)
Spelling Workout B (finished in 4 months)
We're done a little dictation throughout the year, really just about spelling words. We've increased from being able to say 1 letter at a time to saying 4 or 5 letters.

Language
We've decided to learn French, in fact- becoming a bilingual family. DD6, DS3 and myself are working towards being able to speak French all day and read/write in French. We're using a bunch of different resources, The Easy French is the curriculum I chose. We're putting off Latin until 3rd or 4th grade.

Art
We decided to focus on Art this year so we used Artistic Pursuits, K-3 Book 1. This went very well, dd's favorite subject! I'm combining Artistic Pursuits into history next year so we can study music as a separate subject. We also used Harmony Fine Arts (www.harmonyfinearts.com) which combines art and music á la Charlotte Mason in chronological order.

Other activities:
-DD started piano lessons (1x a week)
-We tried Recorder but she couldn't finger the holes correctly (used Recorder Fun!)

 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jessica


Looks great!

Do you have a copy of your daily check list posted here? I wanted to print it out but couldn't find it

Jessica said...

It's on the right hand column under Helpful posts, everything is pretty much the same as it was at homeschoolblogger, I did move a few things around.

: )
Jessica

Anonymous said...

Jessica,
Thank you for taking the time to post this. All I can say is WOW! Do you make your own lesson plans every week, or just a few pages of each daily? Thanks! ~Holly

Jessica said...

Holly,
I started out doing very detailed lesson plans and keeping everything on the computer. And then I've tried doing it a number of ways, filling out forms etc.

I've found the best thing for me to do is to have my checklists for each product we're using and keep a calendar. I use iCalendar on my Mac and it's pretty easy for me to use. I type in our lessons for the month, just the lesson # so I know at a glance what we're supposed to be doing and if we're ahead/behind of where I thought we would be.

Once you get to know your curricula, you don't necessarily need to keep rigid lesson plans. I don't know if your state requires it though. Here's a post that I did in the past about Lesson Plans and a lot of great homeschoolers chimed in. http://triviumacademy.blogspot.com/2006/07/about-lesson-plans.html

Anonymous said...

Hi Jessica,
I was just wondering what your opinion of the Charlotte Mason method is? In what ways does it differ from Classical....or are they the same. Sorry for all the questions. ~Holly

Jessica said...

Holly,
Wow, you sound like me when I first started! Bare with me, and don't take my word as fact- this is from what I understand.

Differences between Classical and Charlotte Mason:

CM doesn't have rote memorization in the younger years as Classical does.

I consider CM to fall under classical methodology but there are differences. To me CM equals living books, narrations, poetry, nature journals, homemaking arts, timelines (book of centuries) and somewhat of a lifestyle that is ideal for homeschooling. Classical, ála WTM or Neoclassical, uses all of CM's best ideas within it's framework but is a little more rigorous. CM is great for the younger years, which a lot of classical homeschoolers I know focus more on CM techniques in the early years to develop habits, a sense of love for nature and their own philosophy of education.

My favorite book on Charlotte Mason is Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola, For the Children's Sake, When Children Love to Learn by Eve Anderson is another of my favorites.

I would say I am a Classical/CM homeschooler and I read CM Companion just as often as I read WTM, lol. I feel that in the early years they complement each other well. WTM holds art, music and poetry, living books, nature study just as highly as CM does even though CM does a better job of explaining the how-tos.

SimplyCharlotte.com
higherupandfurtherin.blogspot.com
Amblesideonline.org
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/charlottemason.html
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/morecharlotte.php
http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/faq/mason.html