first grade homeschool

After completing Funnix2, my boys were reading on a high third grade level and my GooseyGirl was reading on a low fourth grade level. I can't recommend Funnix highly enough! Once they finished Funnix I put books in their cubbies that they'd read during our assigned reading time. I got the books from either our Story of the World booklist or the booklist in the Sonlight catalog (see links page for info). They started out reading 10 minutes and by the end of the year I'd built them up to 20 minutes of assigned reading time.

BTW- Funnix is a bit pricey but when you go to resell it you can get back most of what you paid.. Or you can order through the company.

My five year old triplets used Funnix2 after completing 100EZ lessons. Funnix is a computer based program and is written by Siegfried Englemann's son.

My kids enjoyed Funnix2 so much more than 100EZ lessons. The stories are so enjoyable and they are rewarded with colorful animated illustrations after reading the text. It is structured the exact same way as 100EZ lessons. Funnix2 comes with the last 20 lessons from Funnix1 in case they need some review. My kiddos didn't need any review and moved right into the first Funnix2 lesson.

Handwriting Without Tears was my choice for beginning handwriting. It is perfect for wiggly boys and lefties. The author has given you lots of ways to integrate gross motor skills into understanding how letters are formed and the "story" behind how numbers are made. My kidlets giggled a bunch through this curriculum. Get the Teacher's guides. They don't cost much and have some fun ideas on how to teach the letters. HWT

My kids would squeal with joy when I told them it was time for math. I'm serious! They even said they wanted a "Math U See" birthday party so they could teach all their friends math. Really... I'm not making this up. I think that is all the endorsement you need. My kids have blossomed with this curriculum and math is making sense to me for the first time too! M If you are on the fence about a math program, order the free demo. You'll know after you watch it if this program is right for you. MUS

First Language Lessons is an easy introduction to grammar. It also provides a framework for early memorization skills and eases the child into copywork. It is extraordinarily easy to implement and the actual lessons are only about 5 minutes long. This book covers two years of schooling and has 200 lessons. We used it through second grade. FLL

Evan- Moor has some really wonderful teaching books and workbooks. Plus at their website you can look at every single page of every book they publish! art

I used How to Teach Art to Children. We did one lesson every other week from this book to introduce the seven elements of art: line, shape, color, value, texture, form, and space.

Early on in First Grade my kids finished Funnix. After that I didn't use a reading curriculum. Instead I assigned them a book to read everyday for 10-15 minutes. They also had free reading before bed. I just tried to sprinkle books into every part of their lives. A key element is weekly trips to the library. Our librarians know us by name! And we have over 60 books checked out at a time. Funnix

To say that my kids wallowed in history through this curriculum wouldn't be an understatement. Story of the World is absolutely excellent. It is my kidlet's favorite subject by far. SOTW

The library list in the Activity guide is wonderful and is an essential companion to the textbook.

The audio CD's of the textbook are wonderful. I certainly couldn't figure out how to pronounce some of those mesopotamian rulers on the fly.

Implementing this program can be a bit tricky. To see how we do it visit our History page!

I mostly used this computer based program, Rosetta Stone, as a toy. They just poked around on it but I didn't require them to actually learn anything. However, they got pretty good at it. We finally joined a co-op for Spanish classes from a native speaker. Then we'd go roller skating with the class afterwards. It was FUN! Be warned though, it is very expensive. I got mine at Sam's Club online but it was still a lot of money. Check your library because some offer this through an online portal. Now that would be nice. Rosetta

I got a keyboard from Sam's Club online and found this book at the library. I started using the Suzuki books and CD and without much effort my kids are playing the piano with both hands! They are doing chords and playing different melodies with both hands together. I took piano for three years but I'm not very good at it. I play like a chicken... peck, peck, peck. But I was able to guide them enough that they've basically taught themselves. Suzuki

If you find a local teacher of Suzuki Piano method and you can afford it, hire them! With three kids it was going to be cost prohibitive for me.

Evan-Moor's Daily Geography Practice book was easily accomplished in 5 minutes a day. It allowed my kids to have daily exposure to maps and deciphering the components of a map. If you go to the Evan-Moor website you can look at every single page. I determined that my kidlets were ready for the third grade book because they'd already learned a great deal about maps in Kindergarten. This book was a hit with them. GEO

You'll find that for first grade you can get everything done in 2 to 2.5 hours a day. Some families break their studies up into blocks. One month they study history, the next month they turn to science, then back to history, etc. Whatever works for you and yours is the key.

Also, since you don't have to follow the school's calendar you can choose to homeschool on the timeline that works for your family. During Kindergarten we only homeschooled four days a week. Other families take the entire month of December off. By our state law we must have 180 days of instruction, however we can spread those around the year as we please.

We homeschool year round five days a week, on a seven week on/one week off rotation with extra weeks of vacation factored in for Christmas, Spring Break and family vacations. Plus, we take the entire month of July off. I start our morning lessons around 9:30am and we are done by noon. We belong to a homeschool group and participate in their field trips and gym days.

Poetry Two times a week my kids work on their fluency through poetry readings. The way it works is that I read the poem first aloud. Then we read it together. Then they read it by themselves. This helps them hear the musical quality of our language and increases the speed at which they read. We use The Random House Book of Poetry.

I thought I'd picked FIVE IN A ROW (FIAR) for the exposure to literature. I thought it would be a great way to get them involved in a character and develop a love of stories. Well, it did that but it also turned on a few other lights in the house I didn't anticipate. Geography, art and character education being the bonus subjects. I used this specifically for Character Education in First Grade. Some families use this curriculum without supplementing anything but math and phonics. For me, I preferred the systematic, methodical and sequencial approach to history and science that is advocated in the classical education model. For this reason, I used FIAR only for character education. FIAR FFIARIAR

Five in a Row is a unit study centered around one top-notch kiddo book a week. We would read the same kiddo book for four days and do an activities that would bring the story and characters alive each day. It gives you lots of non-conflict time to talk about behavior. My kids really bonded with the characters in the books and I used them as examples long after we'd finished the story.

An unexpedted benefit from this program was the amount of geography that they injested without any prompting from me. We'd talk about the countries that the stories are set in. We'd find it on the map and talk about it's neighbors. We'd color the flag of the country and try to find a travel video from the library.

For me, the hardest part of this program was making the vocabulary pages for each book. So, to save you some time and angst. You can download my vocabulary pages as pdf files. If you can't open these click on this star for the free Adobe Acrobat Reader Program.

Daily:

Geography: Daily Geography Practice alternated weekly with Critcal Thinking: Building Thinking Skills

Math: Math U See

Assigned Reading:10-20 minutes. Books from Story of the World Activity Guide or Sonlight Curriculum book list.

Writing: Handwriting Without Tears 3x week alternated with copywork 2x week

Four Times a Week:

Character Education: Five in a Row

Three times a week:

History: Story of the World

Twice a week:

Science: REAL Science Level 1

Language: First Language Lessons

Poetry: Random House Book of Poetry

Spanish: Rosetta Stone

Art or Craft (many times our history or science activity counted as a craft

* You can download the form I use for lesson plans from our "Organize The School" page.

+ weekly library visits and nightly free reading time where they read the book of their choice. At the library they can get up to 4 personal choices but they also must pick out one science book, one craft book and one biography. Because of that requirement my kiddos have discovered an entire section of the library that they hadn't explored before and they are loving it. Now, if only I could get RocketMan away from the NASCAR driver bio books!

The kids studied the Human Body, the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. Be aware that the climate you live in will dictate what order you tackle the book. I live in the midwest and recommend you do the "What is Life" lessons followed by the Animal Kingdom lessons. Do the human body unit during the winter and spring is the perfect time for the plant kingdom unit. REAL

My kids LOVED the labs although they needed help to fill out the lab sheets. The amount of writing on the labs sheets was asking too much of my boys fine motor skills.

This curriculum starts out with a notebook page which you read to the child. The lesson is followed by a couple of easy to implement labs using things lying around the house. I purchased a butterfly habitat and the Pets in a Jar book which were both excellent. However, skip the Color Anatomy and the Animal Pix game. Completely unnecessary in my opinion.

My only "wish" for this curriculum was a longer supplemental reading list to extend the lesson using library books. Click on the link and you can see a sample page.

It is funny to think of writing paper as a curriculum choice but there are some really cheap, badly made papers out there waiting to frustrate your kiddos.

I have a perfectionist child who absolutely LOST it when he would make a handwriting mistake. He needed good quality handwriting paper that could stand up to vigorous erasing. I found Smart Start brand paper and continue to use this paper in our homeschool.

I especially love that the top line is blue for the sky. The bottom line is green for the grass and the middle line is the red fence. It just makes sense! I can say, "Start at the sky and pull down to the ground and my kidlets understand what I'm asking them to do. I know this paper isn't the official Handwriting Without Tears paper but this made more sense to me. (I'm a rebel, yes, I know).

I felt like I needed some good old drill work and enjoyed the free online drill at the Math U See website. However, I couldn't speed my kids up. They wanted to be accurate and GooseyGirl would just sit and daydream until she felt like answering the next problem.

I got QuarterMile Math and because it is a timed drill, they have gotten faster and more competative. However, the price for this software is ridiculous. Buy it used.

If you have an anxious, perfectionist child, this may not be the best fit. Even though the child is competing against his own best times, my perfectionist still gets all bunched up about it occasionally.

I alternated Building Thinking Skills with Geography. One week we'd be studying Alaska and the next week we'd be working on pattern recognition. CriticalThink

Once they understood more about how the Building Thinking Skills curriculum worked, I could do both in less than five minutes each every morning. They really grew during our time with Building Thinking Skills and we will continue this curriculum into second grade.

First Grade was almost identical to Kindergarten except we started History and Science. History quickly became their absolute favorite subject. This photo is the nomad tent we made in the woods by our house. We covered it in Wholly Mammoth fur that looked strangely like blankets. We put soft pine needles down on the ground and spent the afternoon reading books in our new "house". Everyone was glad that we had a modern house to sleep in that night and that we didn't have to pack up and move everyday. Making a nomad tent is hard work!