This week we started our 1st grade curriculum. Creative Kid was finished with the vast majority of our kindergarten curriculum over 2 months ago and we’ve been filling in with random workbooks that I purchased in the fall of last year from places like Dollar Tree and the Target “Dollar Spot” area. I had planned to start our 1st grade curriculum at the beginning of May, but that coincided with the beginning of our house build and I felt we should postpone until I could give it the focus it deserved. I wanted to make sure we got off to a good start.
So last week I went through everything we had purchased for this year and organized it and made about 6 weeks worth of lesson plans for the subjects that needed it. I normally just go with CK’s pace and don’t really make lesson plans other than a basic outline of what subjects to cover on what days. But we are still going through our history curriculum from last year as doing it in the evening with Richard was not working out with our schedule. I decided that if I was taking it over and teaching it during the day, it made most sense to match up our history and geography, so this required a little more detailed lesson plans.
For instance, this week we started out in world history in a chapter about ancient India, so we also worked all this week learning about India in our Galloping the Globe curriculum. Not every country can be matched up with ancient civilizations obviously, but I will at least try to stay in the same region of the globe when at all possible. This is a lot of work for me to prepare, a lot more than I have had to do up until now as most of our curricula has been pretty straight forward, work right out of the book without much prep, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
So here is a list of what we have chosen to do this year, with hold overs that we are trying to finish up this year marked with an asterisk. Last year we had several of these things purchased and planned to use but that was before we put our house on the market and some of it got relegated to the back burner and we just focused on core subjects. I didn’t feel bad about this as most kindergarteners are not covering things like world history and world geography anyway, but this year I am determine to complete all subjects and for the things he is advanced in, I imagine I will be completing up to 2 years worth of those subjects because he flies through those curricula.
There were also a couple things we bought last year and after looking at everything decided to keep until this year just because I didn’t think he was ready yet for those subjects (needing to learn to read before starting language arts or spelling for example). We will be doing all of those subjects this year and we saved on curriculum costs because I had so many things I bought too early. Live and learn. It was our first official school year, so I blame it on my over-enthusiasm. 😀
I’ve also included our current plan for unit studies and some field trips we want to take. Those could be changed/added to as time goes on, but this is what we have set up for now.
CORE CURRICULUM
Bible The Picture Smart Bible, Old Testament
K5 Bible Truths*
Math Math U See, Alpha
Challenging World Problems, Book 1
Reading All About Reading, Level 2
Language Arts 1st Language Lessons of the Well Trained Mind, Level 1
Draw Then Write
Spelling All About Spelling, Level 1
Handwriting A Reason For Handwriting, Level K
Science Berean Builders, In The Beginning*
Evan Moor Science Books
History Story of the World, Volume 1*
Geography Geomatters, Galloping the Globe
Where on the Earth is Carmen Sandiego DVDs
Music Beethoven Who
Art Artistic Pursuits
Social Studies Me and My World*
Spanish Duo Lingo
Phys Ed Taekwondo
Swimming
Outdoor Play
UNIT STUDIES:
US History Liberty’s Kids DVDs, lapbooks
Ohio History Various Books
First Aid A kid’s book of First Aid
Fire Safety Fire Safety book and lapbook
Dinosaurs Various Books, lapbook and put together dinosaur models
FIELD TRIPS:
Ohio Railroad Museum
Anthony Thomas Factory Tour
Franklin Park Conservatory
Columbus Zoo
Olentangy Indian Caverns
Young’s Jersey Dairy
Thanks for reading!
