First Grade In Review

Well, we made it out alive. That about sums it up.

It has been a rough year, filled with tears, some fun, questioning, doubt, excitement, hope and even some good times sprinkled in here and there.

By far the roughest days had everything to do with math. I am not sure how he did on assessments at the end of the year but I vowed I wouldn't obsess about it so...I won't.

Math: We tried 3 curriculums (Saxon, Horizons and CA Math). Next year we will stick with Horizons. I like the colorful workbooks and the spiral review and it seems more parent friendly than the CA Math. Saxon had too much review although I loved the teacher manual. We are working through the last half of the second Kindergarten workbook and will start on the Grade 1 book this summer to get a head start for next year. The books are pretty advanced for each grade level so it is common for kids to be in the year below them by at least half a book. I would like to have him in the Grade 2 book by the middle of second grade. We will see how it goes. :)

Language Arts: Caeden is reading well and he is working is way through every leveled reader at the library. He is just now getting that reading is fun and gives him information about the world we live in. That has been cool to see! We are working through First Language Lessons to finish the first grade section this summer. He really enjoyed Explode the Code for phonics so we will keep that for next year. Surprisingly, Caeden really liked poetry memorization! I am going to do more of that this summer and then in second grade for all subjects.

History: We spent the last semester learning about Ancient Egypt and the continent of Africa. We used the Veritas Press History flashcards ( I love these!) and the Story of the World, Volume I. He liked the projects that we did and he enjoyed learning about another country. I wish we had started it at the beginning of the school year because there is so much more to learn abd fun things to do! We will be finishing up some of our history over the summer too. :)

Science: We mainly studied animals from Africa and used the Draw, Write, Now books for drawing and copywork. We did some magnet experiments and have been learning about the Ocean, which we will carry into the summer too.

I think that's about it! I am already getting geared up for next year with new plans, shopping lists and lessons learned from this past year.

Caeden's Archaeological Dig

We sent Caeden on an archaeological dig in the backyard a few weeks back. We have been learning about King Tut, pyramids and all that fun stuff. He didn't discover mummies or artifacts during this dig, just some treasure from the dollar store. :) Justin made an old map for him and sent him on a hunt in the backyard. I was impressed with the wooden box he buried in the garden. It took awhile to dig it up, it was heavy and I had no clue how to open it. It made for a fun adventure.

Every Boy Needs a Tree

We are so thankful for our backyard and one of the great things has been this tree. In the last few weeks Caeden has perfected swinging from this tree and spends everyday, sometimes early mornings still in his pajamas, trying out different ways to swing and freak his mother out. Is this P.E?

Touring Ancient Egypt

Okay, so we aren't really touring Ancient Egypt but Caeden tells me that he wants to visit Africa! We have learned about the Nile River and plenty about Mummies and Pyramids. We still have a chicken mummy to do and I really need to get it going during these cold months. It will get nasty when the weather warms up. We learned about the flooding of the Nile and watched the crops grow. We made Cunieform clay tablets with Caeden's name written on them and wrote things in heiroglyphics too. We haven't even talked about King Tut yet!

Anyway, here are some fun links to fun stuff that's all about old stuff...and it wouldn't be fair to not show you some fun books too. :)

• Tour Egypt is a fun website that is for people wanting to travel to Egypt. We can't make a trip like that but they have lots of fun things for kids to do like, coloring pages, crafts and puzzles. Take a "tour" of animals in Egypt, learn about the pyramids and you can even shop for fun stuff.
• We are learning about all of Africa, not just Egypt. So we have been studying the animals that are from Africa. We use lots of books from the library. Some great ones are by Caroline Arnold and she covers all the animals individually as well as a fun book called African Animals. We also read Elephant Quest which is about elephants but also about other animals in Africa.

• While we learn about the animals, we learn to draw them in Draw, Write, Now-Dry Land Animals and Forest Animals. At the end of the year I am going to put all his drawings and writings in a book. He has started loving these books and asks for them all the time. They have been helpful with handwriting.

If you are in California, here is a great museum (or so I hear, we are going in a couple of months).
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Plantarium

We still have so much to learn! Happy touring!

The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk

Caeden has just started his first chapter book! He has been reading Henry and Mudge, Amelia Bedelia and any other level 2-3 readers we can get our hands on. I wanted him to be challenged a little so he has started reading this book during quiet time every day. Sometimes he even reads more than one chapter!

These are great books by Thornton Burgess, they have short chapters, some drawings and fun adventures via some sneaky animals, including Peter Rabbit!

Math

"Harriet hated math. She hated math with every bone in her body. She spent so much time hating it that she never had time to do it." — Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy)

Math is not my best subject, ask my Dad. He loves math and so does my father-in-law. I think they are strange (in the most kind and loving way of course :)). I remember in fifth grade the class being divided into two teams, one the math geniuses and the other team was, well, not the geniuses. Guess which side I was on? Yep, the not side. So as my grade sank farther and farther down my dad took this on as a challenge I suppose. Fix me and make me a math genius, or at least get me to understand fractions. So everyday I would do my math homework and he would check it and go over the answers with me. Pretty soon I was a math genius and on the other side of the room!...not really a genius but it felt good for awhile.

Fast forward to today.

I still am bad at math, let's face it I suck. So when I started looking at math curriculum for Caeden I was a basket case. I wanted something that would help me teach him, something scripted, something fun, something hands on, something that would give him a great foundation and help him love math! Wow...

This is what I got instead.

I ordered all of Saxon. All of it. I was sure this was the one. It was scripted (yeah for me!),hands on and had lots of review. Lots....of....review. At one point, actually it was more than one, it was days and days, anyway....we were counting apple seeds for the umpteenth time, Caeden was in tears. I was in tears. We were a mess. The apple seed math was driving us insane. The review was causing Caeden to roll his tear filled eyes into the back of his head. But I LOVE this program! I was so sad....

So we switched to Horizons Math, Kindergarten, since I heard it was advanced and he would have been lost in the First Grade Book. So then all of the sudden math was fun! It was colorful and he whipped through it and we were happy! And then we had the MID YEAR ASSESSMENT.

Duh-duh-duh...(that's music playing)

Holes, holes, holes.....The dang California standards had to get in the way of my math bliss!

Saxon goes to slow, too much review and he's bored to tears, Horizon goes faster but doesn't cover all he needs to cover in first grade.

So...we have a third math book in our midst. This time I have resorted to the school book. (Disclaimer: The charter school didn't make me do it.) Mcgraw-Hill California Mathematics.


[sigh]


Here is what I now love about this book. I love that it's colorful, hands on and it has literature links so I can add even more books to my library wait list (I'll need a bigger library bag, the library lady said so) and it has computer games linked for each lesson to help get the concept into that growing brain of his. The only negative is that I am now trying to make up for lost time. I don't speak "math". I am really bad at it. I try to explain something and I am pretty sure Caeden thinks I am speaking some other language, it sound like it to me (I miss you Saxon!).


So, Harriet...I feel your pain.

The Nile River-Part 1

For first grade history we have just started using the Veritas Press Timeline Flash Cards in combination with Story Of The World and it is all about Ancient Egypt! This week we made a model of the Nile River (which is the longest river in the world, over 4000 miles, it is in Africa, it flooded once a year......shall I go on?). It began like this....

Laying the pebbles out....

Planting the "crops"....

Happily flooding the Nile....

and so we watch it grow.....

November Brains

Here is a compilation of what we have been doing for the month of November! We had birthdays and holidays in the midst of it all and still stayed on top of school work. :)

The Dandelion in our front yard that we have been sketching and observing. They are pretty amazing little weeds.

Indian corn painting with a Q-tip...

These are fun to stick in your ears when you are two...covered in brown paint. :)

Potato planting like the Pioneers...Watching the weather with a weather vane.

Finding Our Way

When we started this idea of homeschool earlier in the year I had all these grand plans. Boy, how things change....

In the beginning...

• I did not want a boxed curriculum, I thought it would make me feel to, well, boxed in. I wanted to be able to be free to change at a whim and not feel like I wasted money on something I wouldn't use all the time.
• I thought I was eclectic. I like everything!
• I thought I could throw a plan together and follow it the whole year.
• I thought I would love unit studies and they would be so easy.

Then we started.

• Boxed curriculum has it's advantages. It does it for you! Saxon Math turned into an emotional drama nearly everyday. We pitched that 2 weeks ago and opted for Horizon Math which we now do everyday with NO fighting or tears. Yeah! I still have the teachers manual for Saxon in case I need the script for teaching a certain concept. I am very afraid of math.
• I am eclectic in the way that I do love everything, especially at Rainbow Resource, it all calls my name and is so pretty. Books, books, books. But then I realized I have no philosophy or method. No goals for Caeden, we were pretty much winging it. We use a charter school (don't slap me) and it helps with the $$$ part of homeschooling and then I also have the accountability. With that of course come standards that need to be met but I still want Caeden to learn things that he wouldn't be given the time for at public school. He really likes art and write now he wants to be a News Reporter so everything is about that. I started looking at philosophies and methods...
• Unit studies are fun but sometimes can be a lot of work to put together.
  

Classical Education
Charlotte Mason
Unschooling
Eclectic
Montessori
Waldorf
Unit Studies

So after perusing the book, The Well Trained Mind, twice, I think we best fit in there, somewhere. I love that Caeden would learn history chronologically and in a cycle and that good books are a huge part of it. I love that the arts are a huge focus, compared to public school. I am learning still so it isn't all as clear as day yet. But I like it.

What we started with at the beginning of the year has mostly changed. I had this hair-brained idea that I would just pull all that he needed from tons of different resources. This gets exhausting and overwhelming. Thank God there are homeschool blogs, moms that have gone before us and they have so willingly shared what is working.

This is where we are now.

Math: Horizon K. They are advanced and the stuff in the Kindergarten book is all first grade material. He would have been lost had I started him in the first grade book. We use the manipulatives that we got from Saxon to help in his math exploration.

Reading: We use the library and get books that are go along with whatever we are learning about. We have just started using narration where he tells me what he remembers about what we are reading. This was a weak spot at the beginning of the year but he is getting better. He reads at a 3rd grade level so his reading his really good. We do lots of read-alouds too and I am trying to find time to fit in more reading during the day.

Phonics: We are using Explode the Code and he loves these workbooks, they even make him laugh and he zips through them.


Spelling: Linking Words to Meaning is good but we won't use it next year. I wish we had gone with Spelling Workout so we will use that in 2nd grade. He can spell pretty well. I am always impressed with what he can do.

Grammar: First Language Lessons. We just got this last week and I really like it. They are simple little lessons and scripted (which I like). We will use this in 2nd grade as well.



History/ Social Studies: Unit Studies/Ancient Egypt/Map Skills. We started the year out with some Unit Studies and after Christmas we will get into Ancient Egypt even more than we did for our Unit Study. This is the first history rotation for Classical Education. Well, actually it's ancient civilizations but we are breaking it up even further (more on that later. :)). The most exciting thing is we are going to go to an Egyptian Museum in San Jose next year! They have a mummy and other Egyptian treasures. Caeden will love it!



Science: Various. We just got a sketch book for nature study, Caeden really likes it and I think this will be a fun part of our learning. He loves science! We are focusing on animals, human body and plants. We will most likely carry some of this over in 2nd grade along with some other experiments.




Art & Music: I want to do more art with Caeden. I am getting a book about teaching art to children so it's not just art projects but learning about the art of art. Does that make sense? We will study different artists in 2nd grade. We are going to start learning about the different instruments in the orchestra and I would love to find a production at the end of the year so he can see them all in action.



All this to say, things change. This is our first year and we are still finding our way.

Ice Age

We did a unit on the Ice Age which is apparently controversial in Christian circles but I did it anyway. :)





Caeden requested modeling clay so he could make a mammoth and saber tooth. He also made a man from the Ice Age that looks remarkably similar to Mr. Bill.

Modeling Clay~Ice AgeI thought he did a good job after all he did use every bit of clay and the toothpicks were a great addition. The ice wall was made with some broken tile he found...very resourceful. :)

We learned about cave painting and the tools they used. Caeden made his own cave painting.

In the end, the mammoth looked more like a dachshund but he was pleased none the less. :)


Caeden wrote a book about what life would be like if he lived in the Ice Age, of course it had a lot to do with hunting and making friends with a wolf that just happened to be named Maisie.

It was a fun unit!

The Joys of Modeling Clay

A.K.A. "m-oa-deling clay" as Caeden reads it on the book we got on how to use Modeling Clay. We did a Farm unit and decided to make ducks.












I really thought it would end there and the best we would get would be snakes and the interest would be gone. Alas! Three hours later we had NO clay left over and quite the array of clay workings.



Needless to say, I was impressed and Caeden was thrilled. Now, let me say the clay that we used was non-hardening clay which I thought was cool at the beginning, but now 2 weeks later I wish it would harden so that when I stuff them all in a shoe box, because Caeden can't bear to part with any of his art, I wish that snakes and bugs would not stick to beavers, mice and anacondas.

This week we are learning about the Ice Age and Caeden cannot wait to make Mammoths and Sabertooth Tigers and I as his mother have no doubt he will succeed.

Dragonfly Days

So were in the middle of our lesson and I heard this fluttering around me. So I glanced up and there was a HUGE dragonfly trying so hard to find a way out of our house but flying into everything! So it landed in the corner of our kitchen window, which is the perfect place for observing. It stayed for about a half hour, every once in awhile trying to fly through the window, can you imagine how frustrating that would be? Perfect learning opportunity! We journaled, and did a internet search on dragonflies. Very interesting creatures.

OUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Hooray! We made it and there were no tears! There was some arguing but not as bad as I had thought. :) So this is what we did....

First, I made this bucket for him of stuff to use for the year. I wrote him a note that he could read in the morning when he got up. We got donuts for breakfast which is I know, not a great breakfast for the brain, but FUN none the less. :)
We had circle time which was interesting with Maleiah. I made a CD of worship/bible songs that he loves and I love. We sang 3 and Maleiah danced wildly for us.

We did our first lesson of Saxon Math and we tweaked it a bit but it worked. From there we worked on a Language Arts Assessment which was very helpful! I made a list of some of things that we need to work on, handwriting being one of them. We did an art project that was called "What I Did On Vacation". Caeden drew a picture and write a sentence about our trip to Pismo Beach. He did better on this and we hung it on our school board.


All in all it has been a good day. Yeah!


I made this great Macaroni & 4 Cheese from Ellie Kreiger last night! Maleiah and I had some for lunch today and so did her doll. :)
She has been really interested in her doll which has been a delight to watch. Right now she is feeding her from her sippy cup.

Homeschool~First Grade

Math

• Saxon Math Grade 1

This curriculum has lots of manipulatives to help learn the math concepts and a great teacher's edition that helps me know how to teach Caeden at home.

Language Arts

• Steck Vaughn-Linking Words to Meaning (Spelling)Level 1
• Steck Vaughn Language Arts Handbook-Grade 1
• Signatures Phonics Workbook
• Draw, Write, Now (Handwriting)

These are the workbooks we are using for language arts along with other hands on activities. As for reading we are doing tons of it and Caeden is reading really well. As a family we are reading The Chronicles of Narnia and we are all enjoying it a lot! During the day we are reading lots of other books that support the theme for the week.

Social Studies

• Basic Not Boring Social Studies
• Unit Studies

History

• Story of the World Volume 1
• Unit Studies

Science

• Janice Van Cleave-Science Around the Year
• The Complete Book of Animals
• Unit Studies

Bible/Character

• Super Heroes Bible
• Everyday Graces
• Little Boys Book of Manners
• Under the Tagalong Tree
• Out of the Treasure Chest

We are using the library like crazy to supplement all we do. So do not fear if you see us lugging wagons of books out of the Library. There are simply never too many books!