Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Our First Grade Curriculum


After lots of going back and forth and pouring over websites and curriculum catalogs, I finally chose our first grade curriculum.

For the subject of Language Arts, I broke it down into Spelling, Writing, Reading, and Grammar.



Spelling- I plan on purchasing Spelling Workout B, until then we are using the Dolch Sight Words for First Grade. I have Bean copy and read the words on Monday, copy sentences I wrote with the spelling words in them on Tuesday, on Wednesday I make her a computer generated word search, on Thursday we copy and review the words, all in preparation for a spelling test on Friday!


Writing- We are using Writing with Ease. It seems a bit brief to me so far, but I see the value in it, and obviously we have only been using it for a week and a half so I will give it some time before formulating a real opinion!


Reading-Basically for everything we study during the week, I go ahead and reserve as many relevant books at the library a week beforehand. I make sure to get books that she can read independently, as well as books that I read aloud to her. Plus, Bean goes along with me and I let her pick out whatever books appeal to her for her reading time.


Grammar- Now for grammar, we are doing narrations on books we read per The Well Trained Mind. Combining these with using Writing With Ease-I think we should have a good grasp on grammar.

I am very excited about our choices for History and Geography.

I chose Story of the World Volume 1 for our History. There is a lot of talk about the pro's and con's of this series. I don't care about any of that. I find it very informative, Bean enjoys it when I read the text to her, and she retains an impressive amount of information for something you can't quite believe is interesting to a six year old! We also bought the activity book and it is a great help and time-saver. I love how it lists related literature...at this point all I can say is I am a fan!


Ever since I heard of Galloping the Globe, I have wanted to get it for this coming year. While it is not quite as extensive as I thought it would be (in hindsight my expectations may have been a bit over the top!). Similarly to The Story of the World, it has lots of resources listed for related literature, Bible Stories, etc. The activity CD, contains all the relevant PDF's. I am looking forward to the Christmas around the world section. A few countries have recipes included and others you can find in the cookbook they refer to in the book. We are trying to coordinate our countries in GTG with the countries we are studying in SOTW for extra emphasis. When we finish with this program I would like to get their Cantering the Country program.



We are taking a more eclectic approach to Math this year, which I guess does not differ greatly from our approach last year. We have tons of lessons and books I have received from my elementary teacher mother in law, as well as other random workbooks, and printables. My approach with Math is to follow our state standards, as well as the Core Knowledge Series, and beef that up as I see fit.



For science I am using an interest-led approach this year. Again, keeping in mind the state standards and the Core Knowledge Series advice, there are a ton of free curricula, printables, etc. out there for the taking. We studied a lot about plant life last year, and so far this year we have studied the human body. Bean will also be taking the monthly series of classes our local zoo offers, which will hopefully be a lot of fun for her!

We mix up some art and music in there, and there you have it! We shall see how this all works out for us!

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