Jennifer Lambert

A Sacred Balance

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Our First Homeschool Year 2005-2006

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October 29, 2015 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

We moved from Georgia to Texas during the summer of 2005.

I was pregnant with Victoria.

I couldn’t find a job. I didn’t even get a single phone call or email after I submitted applications and résumés.

Elizabeth has an October birthday.

She had just completed 4K at a private Christian school.

Texas public school rules wouldn’t allow her to enter Kindergarten for another year. She could repeat public 4K – reserved for ESL, special needs, and military dependents.

No, thanks.

We began our homeschool journey.

Our First Homeschool Year

I have an M.Ed. in secondary English education.

I had taught high school, middle school, and college for almost 10 years.

Everyone in Aaron’s family is a teacher.

I was in no way qualified nor did I feel confident teaching my 5-year-old daughter.

I acquired some old workbooks from Aaron’s mom. She had taught Kindergarten and 2nd grade for 32 years.

My daughter completed Kindergarten in one month.

I discovered The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home.

I followed it like a script.

I discovered Yahoo groups.

San Antonio, Texas, is a great place to begin homeschooling.

So much support. There are oodles of groups for homeschool support.

We “did school” every morning with the recommendations from The Well-Trained Mind.

We did lots of notebooking.

Our Curriculum for Our First Homeschool Year:

  • First Language Lessons
  • Spelling Workout
  • Singapore Math
  • Notebooking though an animal encyclopedia
  • The Story of the World

We had a park day every Friday. We didn’t do any book work on Fridays.

We went on lots of field trips.

Riverwalk

We explored the San Antonio Missions.

San Antonio Missions Field Trip

We really liked The Alamo.

Alamo Field Trip

We loved being so close to SeaWorld. There were frequent free days for military members and family.

Feeding the Lorikeets at SeaWorld

We explored dinosaurs and plants at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

San Antonio Botanical Garden

We dug for roadside fossils. Check out the Fossil Forum for digs!

San Antonio Fossils

Liz took weekly art classes at ArtWorks. She learned about artists and different media and produced lovely art.

Monthly Art Projects

Liz was very involved at church, singing, and performing in the Christmas pageant.

Angel in the Church Christmas Pageant

We kept an herb garden, and eventually planted some fruits and vegetables. We did projects in the Green Thumbs book.

This is the garden in fall:

Herb Garden

This is the garden in late spring:

Tomatoes

I knew I was doing something right when Liz would spontaneously write and draw and recite facts she’d learned.

Verb Practice
Magnadoodle Writing

Elizabeth became a big sister in March when Victoria was born!

Proud Big Sister

Liz was a big helper.

Big Sister Little Sister

We took a vacation to Destin and Houston over the summer.

Fishing in Destin

The Houston Museum of Natural Science had an Egyptian exhibit!

Mummies at Houston Museum of Natural Science

We didn’t anticipate continuing to homeschool beyond a year or two. Ha!

Aaron’s mom’s coworker tested Liz’s progress in April and she was reading above a 3rd grade level with great comprehension. So we got no more complaints from family members.

Our first homeschool year was exciting. It was so easy with just one child!

It was a great beginning to our homeschool adventures!

Now we have four kids homeschooling!

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Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: 1st grade, curriculum, elementary, homeschool, Texas

1st Grade Curriculum

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March 31, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

I’m revisiting what worked for Big Sister our first year and changing up some things I’ve found since for 1st grade with the girls.

I follow their lead, what they’re interested in, and allow for lots of breaks, outside time, play time, exploring, field trips.

My youngest child went along with his sisters from birth, so he did things whenever he felt ready.

Tot school, preschool, and Kindergarten were just natural progressions as they wanted to know more, learn more, do more.

I don’t want to rush academics. I don’t want everything to be so educational.

I feel almost sad this last time I am teaching 1st grade.

I highly recommend the books by Louise Bates Ames. A good guide to follow is What Your First Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good First-Grade Education by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

We focus on reading and writing.

We ease into science and math and all the humanities with Tapestry of Grace.

We make sure there is plenty of free time for play and helping with daily chores.

First Grade Curriculum

  • Journey Through the Bible and/or Studying God’s Word books A/B
  • All About Reading
  • Literature read alouds
  • Year One in our history cycle – Ancient Times.
  • Singapore Math 1 and Life of Fred
  • Christian Liberty Nature Readers
  • Apologia Science – Astronomy and/or Human Anatomy and/or Land Animals

Math

Starting to do some more formal math with the girls…Today, we started the textbook Singapore Math 1B (This is leftover from Big Sister and I haven’t gotten around to even buying workbooks yet.)…

We worked through almost half the book and got into place value. I brought out the cute little pipe cleaner bead strands I made a while back (they were totally unimpressed then!). I used shiny silver pipe cleaners and 10 blue plastic beads for each strand. I scrunched the ends of the pipe cleaners to hold the strands together.

I stopped at page 33. I got tired. My throat was sore!

Place Value Math with Beads
Montessori Math Beads

So, here’s the funny story. The equation was 15-3=? and I laid out 1 tens bead strand and 5 ones beads. I grabbed three beads and asked them what was left. Katie hollered out, “12!” I thought that was pretty amazing that they really were getting this. I asked her how she knew that, expecting her to explain how she got the answer using the beads or something…

With her head cocked to the side, she replied, condescendingly, “Mom, I just thinked it.”

Of course you did, Honey. How silly of Mama to underestimate you. Obviously, we need to move on to grammar and subject-verb agreement now.

Science

We’re beginning Apologia Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day. We also are reading Christian Liberty Nature Reader 1. We read Green Thumbs and we’re ready to start a garden!

We studied the phases of the moon this week for astronomy. They had charts and matching pages.

Check out my astronomy Pinterest board for fun learning ideas.

Labeling Moon Phases
Moon Phases Montessori

Tori working on her space workbook.

Space Workbook

Fun

Eating purple grits! that Big Sister made one morning.

She’s been playing with food coloring lately. We have a different color of lemonade every day too.

Purple Grits

Writing

Penmanship, calendars, word families…

I found some fun free pages and I plan to incorporate that idea into our morning work now since the girls loved it so much. The calendar notebooks weren’t working out so well. I’ve since updated our calendar yet again and done away with the notebooks altogether.

Morning Message Work

We’re now working through our word families. We’ve done –an, –and, and –ad so far. 

Word Families and Copywork

Our calendar board is two sided. I use the Calendar Connections for our monthly themes.

On the other side, I just re-created all the focus points. I have our quarterly poet, composer, and artist at the top. I have our Bible verse and character trait and pledges and the Lord’s Prayer.

I have a poem, song, and hymn on the bottom. The blue background has our word family, a French word, and a German word.

I haven’t quite worked out what to put in that fourth quadrant yet. The blank space on the bottom will probably have our animal of the week to go with science. Always a work in progress!

Calendar Connections Astronomy
Circle Time Board

We do Bible and calendar time during or right after breakfast in the little living room right by the kitchen and dining area. Then, the girls and I do other school activities in the basement.

Here are the girls’ shelves with Montessori works and the word wall above. In the shelves, I have a moveable alphabet with Lauri letters and silent E worksheets, a red basket full of Unifix cubes that they love to do patterns, some paper weaving seahorses, flower arranging, hot dots short and long vowels, some file folder games, a sentence dice activity, and an animal book with an animal fact learning wheel.

Word families are in the blue pocket chart. The red chart holds Easter words and will have a theme each week or month or whenever we change.

Pocket Charts and Workboxes

Katie’s green box holds her notebooks and personal school items. Tori has a blue box in the picture above, under the easel and beside her table. This has worked well for us the past few weeks. We used to use workboxes, but now we have evolved into work folders, kept in the colored boxes.

Our read alouds:

We’re finishing Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Unit 4.  

We’re reading through Beatrix Potter and loving it. Dad even hopes he’s around for those readings – he’s a Peter Rabbit fan!

We focus on classics and fairy tales.

History is fun and simple and they love a coloring book with it!

We worked through First Language Lessons 1 for grammar and writing with the girls. 

We’ll take off a couple weeks in July when we have friends and family visit.

Do you school year round or take a big summer break?

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Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: 1st grade, back to school, curriculum, elementary

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