Our Homeschool Curriculum: Part 1
I'm going to post about our curriculum in short bursts (hopefully short, anyway), taking one subject at a time. The jury is still out on many of these books and resources, as we've only just gotten started. But I think it will be nice to look back in future years on how we began and what changed in our first year, if anything.
For those of you who don't know, there are pre-packaged sets of curriculum for homeschoolers that cover all subjects, if you choose to do it that way. Some examples are Spectrum, Timberdoodle, or The Well-Trained Mind. I didn't buy an all-inclusive curriculum this year; I kind of just selected the subjects I wanted to focus on and then hand-picked some books and methods that I thought N would enjoy. I probably cost myself a lot more time and stress by doing this a la carte, but I wanted to make sure that school would be enjoyable for her, using teaching methods that would make learning fun. Originally, my goal was to keep things inexpensive by NOT buying an all-inclusive package, but I think by the time all was said and done we spent close to what I would have for a box set of curriculum. Part of the reason for that was one-time purchases that will continue to be used throughout our homeschooling journey, such as our calendar board and classroom supplies. But definitely something to keep in mind for future years.
So.......... let's start with the Language Arts.
I didn't purchase N a reading curriculum, since I figured we could just practice reading by... well, reading. She is working her way through the leveled "Easy Reader" books; luckily our library has a wide selection and we have been checking them out all summer with lots of options left. Her reading fluency has already improved by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the summer. In the afternoons when the little girls are napping/resting N will read one or two easy readers to me, and I read aloud to her as well, either from What Your First Grader Needs to Know, which has a great introductory selection of classic poetry and short stories, or I read to her from a chapter book (right now we're starting the Little House series over again with Big Woods).
Last year in kindergarten she did "popcorn words" (sight-recognition words) to improve reading fluency, so we're doing some work with that. We made flash cards from a list that I obtained from the school district of first-grade words, and I also got her a book of sight word searches because she loves word searches.
Again, no specific writing curriculum. We're going to practice writing by... you guessed it... writing. (And reading examples of good literature.)
Each morning we do journals, and I incorporate either a contraction or new form of punctuation into the prompt I give her. (According to my research, punctuation marks and contractions are about the extent of first-grade grammar.) I use the punctuation mark or contraction in the prompt that I write on the board, and I ask her to use it in her journal entry as well. We go over it together just to make sure that she has structured the sentence correctly. Once we finish all of the punctuation marks and contractions on the little list I found, we'll probably review them all, and then I might look into a grammar curriculum at that point. We shall see.
Later in the year, I'd also like to do more letter writing with her, or perhaps a family newspaper, to introduce the idea of writing in paragraphs, and teach her the mechanics of all that. Pen-pals, anyone??
I purchased a Common Core Language Arts workbook for her on the cheap, because I wanted to provide her with some consistency between homeschool and public school (where they were very Common Core emphasized, obviously). Plus, if there's ever a day when she decides she hates this homeschool thing and wants to go back to public school, I feel like it will be better if we have at least touched on some Common Core stuff. In this book she gets some practice with things like story planning, finding the main idea, etc. as well as reading comprehension exercises. I figure this covers any bases we might be missing by not having an official reading/writing curriculum.
I'll write tomorrow about the mechanics of writing (handwriting, spelling), although that technically falls under language arts, and combine it with a math post (not too terribly much to write about that subject). Keeping things short as can be here, since we are busy busy busy with school already!
Links to part 2 here and part 3 here.
For those of you who don't know, there are pre-packaged sets of curriculum for homeschoolers that cover all subjects, if you choose to do it that way. Some examples are Spectrum, Timberdoodle, or The Well-Trained Mind. I didn't buy an all-inclusive curriculum this year; I kind of just selected the subjects I wanted to focus on and then hand-picked some books and methods that I thought N would enjoy. I probably cost myself a lot more time and stress by doing this a la carte, but I wanted to make sure that school would be enjoyable for her, using teaching methods that would make learning fun. Originally, my goal was to keep things inexpensive by NOT buying an all-inclusive package, but I think by the time all was said and done we spent close to what I would have for a box set of curriculum. Part of the reason for that was one-time purchases that will continue to be used throughout our homeschooling journey, such as our calendar board and classroom supplies. But definitely something to keep in mind for future years.
So.......... let's start with the Language Arts.
READING
Last year in kindergarten she did "popcorn words" (sight-recognition words) to improve reading fluency, so we're doing some work with that. We made flash cards from a list that I obtained from the school district of first-grade words, and I also got her a book of sight word searches because she loves word searches.
WRITING
Again, no specific writing curriculum. We're going to practice writing by... you guessed it... writing. (And reading examples of good literature.)
Each morning we do journals, and I incorporate either a contraction or new form of punctuation into the prompt I give her. (According to my research, punctuation marks and contractions are about the extent of first-grade grammar.) I use the punctuation mark or contraction in the prompt that I write on the board, and I ask her to use it in her journal entry as well. We go over it together just to make sure that she has structured the sentence correctly. Once we finish all of the punctuation marks and contractions on the little list I found, we'll probably review them all, and then I might look into a grammar curriculum at that point. We shall see.
Later in the year, I'd also like to do more letter writing with her, or perhaps a family newspaper, to introduce the idea of writing in paragraphs, and teach her the mechanics of all that. Pen-pals, anyone??
I purchased a Common Core Language Arts workbook for her on the cheap, because I wanted to provide her with some consistency between homeschool and public school (where they were very Common Core emphasized, obviously). Plus, if there's ever a day when she decides she hates this homeschool thing and wants to go back to public school, I feel like it will be better if we have at least touched on some Common Core stuff. In this book she gets some practice with things like story planning, finding the main idea, etc. as well as reading comprehension exercises. I figure this covers any bases we might be missing by not having an official reading/writing curriculum.
I'll write tomorrow about the mechanics of writing (handwriting, spelling), although that technically falls under language arts, and combine it with a math post (not too terribly much to write about that subject). Keeping things short as can be here, since we are busy busy busy with school already!
Links to part 2 here and part 3 here.
Have you seen these? http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Workbook-Grade-Math/dp/0761178082/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409723269&sr=1-1&keywords=star+wars+workbook There are a ton!! We got a couple over the summer and they are really good! Enjoyed this post, nice to see what you are working on!
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