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!

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.

Tori working on her 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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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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Our Curriculum for 2011-2012

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February 6, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

The solution I discovered a few years ago to homeschool burnout midyear is to begin transitioning into our next “grade level” of school. We educate year-round, so we don’t follow the traditional school calendar and we don’t completely take summers off. I began this non-traditional schedule with Elizabeth when we first began homeschooling since she finished her curriculum about March. Then, I panicked, what were we to do until August?!

Our Curriculum for 2011-2012

Elizabeth is 11.

She’s mostly in 6th grade.

One of the freedoms and blessings of home educating is that we don’t have to maintain that grade level standard. We do have to report to our local schools a grade level on the form, so I go with whatever math level we’re currently using. Elizabeth reads on a high school level, and has vast interests in languages, history, and art.

She does like science, but we’ve not pushed her because I wasn’t ready to move on to Apologia General this year. One reason is that I wasn’t ready to put Elizabeth in with the high schoolers at our homeschool co-op. I am kinda worried about how she would do socially with 13-18 year olds.

In reviewing our proposed scope and sequence and upcoming schedule for 7th grade, the workload is going to increase exponentially. I hope Elizabeth can rise to the challenge. She has done better this past month or so; I hope that means she is maturing. First semester had some rough patches.

After intense research and polling the members of our homeschool co-op about math curricula…it seems our best bet (since we’ve used Singapore from grades 1-6) is to go through Saxon 8/7 and then dive into Video Text algebra.

So, next month, we’ll continue with

Tapestry of Grace
First Form Latin
Ambleside Online
First Start French
Write Shop Storybuilders
Artistic Pursuits Book One: The Elements of Art And Composition
Bible journaling and copywork

Elizabeth takes P.E. and drama at co-op and a cooking class through our community learning program.

We need to get out and do more nature activities, but I’m just not a winter girl.

We’ll be finishing up Singapore math 6B and Apologia Swimming Creatures. I plan to wait until this fall to start the new math and science. Co-op will probably offer an experiment course.

Track should be starting up soon! Elizabeth and Victoria can hardly wait!

The girls are doing Kindergarten work.

They’re not fluent readers yet and we need some work with handwriting. I find that I’m getting frustrated with them because they’re not where I want them to be. Some days, they really get the concepts we’re doing…and other days I want to pull my hair out.

They’re finishing up the program at Raising Rock Stars Kindergarten and You Can Read.

I started First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 (Second Edition) (First Language Lessons) with them last week and they love it.

My son likes to sit with us and be nearby. We give him fun Montessori toys and keep him busy and watch him play.

We’re reading The rainbow book of American history : Illustrated by James Daugherty.

I plan to supplement U.S. history with a download from a while ago called Read-draw-remember American History Activities.

We will continue to use Tapestry of Grace, Ambleside Online, and Artistic Pursuits, Book One: An Introduction to the Visual Arts.

Here are the co-op classes we’ve done: Swimming Creatures experiment course, a StArt class that’s really popular, a PE class, and a geography class with Window on the World: When We Pray God Works.

We’ve done a few lessons from Draw Write Now, Book 1: On the Farm-Kids and Critters-Storybook Characters (Draw-Write-Now). I will introduce some real copywork next week.

I’m thinking about doing Apologia Land Animals for science in the fall. I kinda want to see if co-op offers a science course for this age group next fall.

I still like Singapore math for grades 1-6, but my husband has never really cared for it, so we may change. They still have a K math workbook to complete and lots of fun hands-on activities. We’ll continue to do some Montessori works. The girls have been great about going out to play even when it’s cold. Good for them and gives me a break!

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A Charlotte Mason Education

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January 30, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

An Atmosphere, A Discipline, A Life…

A Charlotte Mason Education

I’m loving notebooking instead of worksheets. The kids can be so creative!

Bible Study

I believe in a good foundation and being open to questions and conversation about God and the Bible.

Here is Elizabeth writing her daily Bible journal.

I got this devotional for her. We have the Hands On Bible, but she uses her KJV. She’s been doing well with the readings and answering the question each day.

She just recently completed the kids’ version of The Bible in 90 Days. I introduced her to the SOAP journal method from Mom’s Toolbox. She loved that. She has a desk, but she always writes with her notebook in her lap.

Good Habits

Big sister is a mother’s helper.

Elizabeth spends much of her time with her siblings, helping with preschool and watching the baby.

She does well teaching them and often makes it more fun than I would do!

Here are Victoria and Alexander playing with the alphabet on our magnet chalkboard. Elizabeth is there mostly making sure that Alex doesn’t eat all the letters. He is Babyzilla. :)

I want all my kids to love each other and get along well and we instill good habits and love through free time and play. Good relationships are important.

We often have tea time to wind down in the afternoons.

Exercise

So, we went bowling one day…Victoria won! We are continuing ice skating lessons. The girls are all getting much better! I want the kids to be active and healthy.

Natural History

We went on a nature walk and were excited to see winter plants and birdies. We have never lived anywhere to experience winter before! It was nice that the temperatures have been in the 40s so we could get outside and look around.

Geography

We’re all loving geography…We’re studying Russia this week and working our way through the US states. We learn with books, maps, drawing and coloring.

History

We roughly use Ambleside Online for Elizabeth’s curriculum. She is in Year 4. She loves to read and loves history, so it’s a good fit. We love the reading lists for living books in history. It helps it come alive for us and I learn so much too!

Music

Liz takes piano lessons and we learn about composers, hymns, and folk music along with our history timeline.

Art

We love art and learn about artists and create our own crafts and projects.

Language

We’re learning Latin, and I introduce some vocabulary weekly in Spanish, French, and German. I feel it’s super important to learn languages.

Literature

I love poetry, Shakespeare, the classics. I have a degree in English, so I love to read and instill a love for reading in my kids. We can never have too many books!

We started off using The Well-Trained Mind and have felt more comfortable with the eclectic approach lately. I have much of Liz’s reading material on our new iPad and that’s working out very well that it’s so portable and we’re not worrying about carrying lots of books when we’re out and about. We have some really cool educational apps too!

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Homeschool Space in Utah

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January 22, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 6 Comments

We moved to Utah from Hawaii.

It’s a BIG change.

Here is our workbox wall.

On the left, our calendar/circle time “corner.”

Here is our desk wall and calendar. The clock is set to “Daddy Time” in Afghanistan.

Here is the rest of our school space that we finally cleaned up and organized.

We are so blessed to have a finished basement in our rental house to use almost exclusively for learning space. When we move, I have no idea what we’re going to do because I doubt we’ll have anything like the space we have here and we’ll have to downsize! We came from a small 3 BR 1-level house where we “did school” at the kitchen table or on the living room sofa to this great 6 BR 2-story with a basement. God made it all possible. :)

That corner wasn’t really working out, so here are our updated circle time boards on a pocket chart rack. They are two foam boards hooked together. (I am working on changing it up for the week so there’s blanks.) A word wall is in the red pocket chart on the back.

Our reading nook.

Our weekly preschool manipulatives are in the cubes (from Target).

I use the shelves (yard sale finds) to store pencil boxes, AWANA cards, felts, a Beka cards, big puzzles, our book of centuries, and nature journals. The tops of the shelves have our pencil sharpener, a basket of magnet letters, a portable DVD player, paper towels, Kleenexes, etc. The rainbow cart (had this forever) on the right holds magnets, push pins, do-a-dot pens, geoboards, cork boards, play doh…On top of the rainbow cart are our Education Cubes and tot trays.

Here is the same wall from another angle. I found this very sturdy table at a yard sale for $15 and the 4 chairs at another yard sale (on the same day) for $20. That was a good day!

I put our daily tools in little metal buckets on a lazy susan on the table. The bulletin board above the computer station shows off my 2 preschool daughters’ Bible crafts. To the left of that bulletin board, I have created pictorial timelines for my daughters with pictures of each of their birthdays to show their growth. They love it! Underneath those, a little blue pocket chart holds a weekly Bible verse.

The bookcase holds all my teaching materials and extra books that I want to keep nice. The bottom two shelves have some manipulatives like dry erase books and magnet dolls. The colored plastic drawers hold lots of Melissa & Doug and Lauri puzzles. On top of that is our bin of circle time stuff.

There is another set of folding doors to the right of these, but it’s still messy. I store board games in here. We have labeled plastic bins with all of our school and craft supplies like construction paper, paints, stamps, beads and baubles, pipe cleaners, feathers, etc.

We also are so blessed to have a separate play room for toy storage and another room that is supposed to be my personal sewing and craft room (right now it’s seeming to be storage!)…

We also have our TV and sofa behind the reading nook. It’s nice to have a not-so-central location so it’s not on very often. We use it more for the Wii anyway.

Our school room in the basement…

Maybe should’ve taken the picture before school time?

(Although, it looks better than most days! Notice I’m not showing you the play dough tables and accessories all over the kitchen floor! Nor the glue dollops and collages that are stuck to my plastic floor pad under my computer desk…)

We do workboxes, sorta. Love my cube unit for activities the 3 littles share. The girls are about to outgrow those little pink and purple desks! The bookshelf mostly holds Elizabeth’s books. A plastic crate holds board books. Bean bags and pillows are on the floor.

There’s another bookshelf in Tori’s room that holds the picture books and early readers.

Elizabeth has an entire setup in the room that should be a formal dining room. We turned it into her music studio and desk area. She has her keyboard, workboxes, a storage shelf, desk, and computer station.

This setup is working for us this year!

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5th Grade Curriculum

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January 22, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

Year 5 can be tough. Bodies and minds and attitudes change. It’s a hard time for a child, asserting her independence and discovering who she might be.

I try to allow for interests while guiding the curriculum for what I want her to know. She has a lot of freedom and few rules.

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

5th Grade Curriculum

Geography and History

This week, we started geography learning about Kenya. I bought the Expedition Earth curriculum and we love it! I’m teaching future missionaries with our new books and prayer cards!

We’re also studying a U.S. state a week with the Nifty Fifty states flash cards from A Beka and other U.S. books I’ve had since I was a kid. We did Alaska last week and this week we did Montana. Yeah, no rhyme or reason. They just picked those out of the stack.

We love the PowerPoint shows at 1+1+1=1. The membership is well worth it!

Literature

She loves to read, so I have no worries there. Just trying to find appropriate and interesting books to read and discuss can be a challenge sometimes. We love the book lists from Ambleside Online.

Music

Liz has studied piano for over 2 years and here she is practicing! She loves classical music and opera and adores Broadway musicals. We learn about composers and music all the time.

Math

Liz is working on Singapore Math 5B. She does really well when I can work with her, but does not do well independently in math. She loves reading and will do almost everything else on her own…Life of Fred is a great supplement that incorporates fun stories with sneaky math.

Latin

She did her Latina Christiana II lesson right after math with very little help. We have the DVDs and CDs for those and they’re great.

Notebooking

I love notebooking for assignments and narration and evaluation. I print notebooking pages as we need them based on our history and reading assignments. I don’t force writing formally.

Life Skills

Liz helps a lot around the house and with her siblings. She’s becoming a great mother’s helper.

5th grade is a fun transition year – before middle school!

My middle girls in 5th grade:

Singapore Math 5
Tapestry of Grace Year 2
Studying God’s Word F
Spelling Workout E
Apologia Botany
Latina Christiana I

The last time I teach 5th grade!

My son:

I can hardly believe my youngest is doing 5th grade work this year, y’all! He’s only 9 but keeps moving along at a quick pace and I won’t hold him back.

Singapore Math 5
Tapestry of Grace Year 4
Studying God’s Word D
Spelling Workout C
Apologia Human Anatomy
Latina Christiana I

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