First grade book list

I reserve the right to revise and alter thioos as needed. I'm pulling from many sites and lists.

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
Peter Pan (or, Peter Pan and Wendy) by James M. Barrie 
Harp and Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

Benjamin Franklin by Ingri D'Aulairie 

George Washington by Ingri D'Aulaire 

Buffalo Bill by Ingri D'Aulaire

Pocahontas by Ingri D'Aulaire

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway 

Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty
St. George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang 

Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang 

Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
Now We Are Six/When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit
Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Margaret and Margarita: Margarita y Margaret by Lynn Reiser
King of the Golden River by John Ruskin
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter
 

 Anyone have any must have reads for first grade I'm missing?

Future planning

It's that time again- we're midway through the year and that seems to be the normal time to start mapping out curriculum paths and even purchasing items.

For Little Bird- we bought the book, "What your preschooler needs to know" and we are using it with her current preschool program. When she turns 4 I will introduce Earlybird Mathematics. This will be all that I really want her to do book work wise. Other skills to work on for her include things like being quiet when asked, continuing to work on narrating skills and coloring.

Sweet Pea is a little more involved. :)

Language Arts

Spelling- we are on track to finish Rod and Staff Spelling early 2011. After this we will go through more lessons in McGuffey's Eclectic Speller and the probably start level 3 of R&S's program.

Penmanship- the Well Trained Mind calls to introduce cursive in second grade. We did Cursive First in Kindergarten, so this year we will do the opposite. Sweet Pea can write in print but has some letter formation and neatness issues. Spot correcting should solve this, we're not going to use a special program.

Reading- we are not using a reading program and don't plan to introduce one next year. Sweet Pea is an excellent reader and we discuss her books as she's reading them. This will continue on next year.

Grammar- I don't know what we are going to do for grammar. I have some ideas knocking around but nothing for sure. We could do Rod and Staff English 3, Growing with Grammar (although I have no idea what level), or some other program. I don't know. I don't know at all.

Memory work- we are currently doing no school memory work outside of Bible/Catechism. I'd like to introduce other memory work things this next year, probably tied into both LA and history. I haven't narrowed down lists or anything yet.

Writing

We are between writing programs. We will probably follow the WTM outline on this for second grade- writing letters, dictation 3 times a week, and writing across the other subjects.

Mathematics

I expect to begin Primary Mathematics 2A at the beginning of next year. We'll continue to supplement with Math Mammoth.

History

Second grade is medieval- early Renaissance (400-1600). I think at this time we will continue with Story of the World. This summer we are going to go out of order and do US History.

Science

Basic earth science and astronomy. I plan to start working with Sweet Pea on outlining chapters this year.

Religion

We will be going through the New Testament. Sweet Pea should have a good portion of the Catechism memorized by the beginning of the year, so we'll continue to hone and improve her comprehension.

French

We will continue with Le Francais Facile. Once both girls know all the vocab we will work on usage more.

Art

We will continue working through Artistic Pursuits. It's easy for mom- which makes it a winner.

Music

We have been listening to classical music. I'd like to have Sweet Pea start piano lessons this year.

Obviously this is a work in progress, but it's good to start looking. And planning.

Writing shopping

Writing doesn't seem like something to shop for, does it? What I'm looking for is a writing curriculum that has 100% of what I'm looking for.

We're muddling through right now with a conglomeration of different materials and lots of mom improvisation, but after we finish our current lot of materials I'd really like something that provides more hand holding for me and less tweaking.

What we are currently using: Rod and Staff English 2: Preparing to Build, Primary Lessons in Language and Composition, Rod and Staff Spelling 2: Spelling by Sound and Structure, and Writing Strands 2. For comprehension and literature we're reading books together.

Grammar is currently coming from the R&S book and Primary Lessons. Primary Lessons focuses on applications of grammar and R&S introduces new topics to discuss. Using both of these is kind of unwieldy as neither is get in and get out grammar approach. I have been looking at something like Growing with Grammar to that end, but I'm not sure on what level to pick. Or if I want something all in one across LA?

Spelling is currently going well. It's very hands off for me which is nice since so much else of what we are doing is direct interaction. Sweet Pea spells well and is constantly improving. I probably will not change this unless I get LA with spelling included. Even then I may not switch since this fits so well for now.

Writing is my big area of discontent and confusion right now. I think that Sweet Pea is a pretty good writer (for her age) and pretty enthusiastic about writing. Writing With Ease did not provide enough writing for her, so we dropped it. Rod and Staff wasn't quite right either, so we switched to using it just orally for the grammar practice. Primary Lessons is nice and has copywork, picture study, and composition, but it's short- 63 lessons (and we've already done 15). I also am not so over the moon with it that I've stopped looking, either.

Reading is going well, but this is completely mom directed for now. Sweet Pea just finished the first Harry Potter book and sometime this week will get to watch it with mom and dad. Little Bird will NOT be watching. We discussed every chapter as she read, as well as the character development and plot lines. Now she is reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and we are doing the same thing. I think this year we will work through some Newberry Award books, as well.

Looking back at this perhaps we are doing better then I thought? Who knows. I sure don't!

New semester changes

I had thought that I had the perfect plan for the year back when I set it all out initially. After 18 weeks of using the materials and seeing what works, doesn't work, and plain never makes it into the rotation I'm revising.

In math: At the beginning of the year we were using Sinapore Earlybird Mathematics in conjunction with Miquon. I'd read so many glowing online reviews of this combo and so many people seemed to adore both of them. We had already used Singapore's Earlybird program last year, so I was pretty comfortable with that choice, and I was willing to give Miquon an honest go. Unfortunately, we are Miquon failures. I love the idea behind the program, and I think with all the explanatory materials it's easy to implement and add into a homeschool program. Sweet Pea was initially a fan and even was known to refer to it as math games. She quickly changed her mind, though, and didn't want anything to do with it. In retrospect I think she just liked playing with the cuisenaire rods and the rest was a wash. So we jettisoned that and spent most of the semester finishing the Earlybird series, using an abacus, working on skip counting, and basic arithmetic. I then added in Math Mammoth's blue addition series, and that seems to be going well. Sweet Pea appears to just be a traditional worksheet kit. And that's fine!

Language Arts: At first I thought there would be huge upheaval and changes here. I detested Writing with Ease at first. We stuck with it, and it's a good fit and we will be keeping this. Our current grammar program is First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. I'm a little more mixed here. It's got a lot of repetition built in. When I say a lot, I mean a colossal amount. Really. Sweet Pea seems to be learning and retaining with it, and the poetry included for memorization is nice. I had intended to at least use this through second grade (which is in the same book) but now am less sure. I do think that we'll finish the year with it, and then possibly try something else like Growing with Grammar. I do think that grammar is vital and whatever we use we'll continue regular lessons and diagramming. Spelling is being done with Spelling Workout. I don't know if it's just the level A book or something that I'm missing, but I don't feel like the exercises are actually teaching spelling. Rather I feel like this is busy work that isn't accomplishing anything other then wasting time. I have McGuffey's Eclectic Speller and may just start using that to go through and make up my own practice sessions. I'm unsure. Reading began with Hooked on Phonics and is now firmly in the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. McGuffey's has come and gone in intervals throughout the semester and I see that trend continuing.

Language: I really, really wanted to be that homeschool family- the ones who use Latin from the beginning and succeed wildly. It wasn't happening. Prima Latina didn't fit us. And so we never got around to it. Instead we are switching to a modern foreign language- specifically French. I still don't know exactly what we are using, but hopefully in a few weeks that'll be resolved.

Science: I had this great plan for science. I was going to do it as laid out in the Well Trained Mind- and pull it all together myself from different encyclopedias and resources. Once again- it just didn't happen. We recently ordered and have begun Rod and Staff's grade 2 science program. It's open and go and all contained. So science is actually happening. We will not be using Rod and Staff long term for science, but at this level I don't see anything objectionable in it.

Report- and why year 'round school works for us

We school all year. It seemed like a good logical choice when we were talking about what education means to us, for us, and what we want it to look like for our family. I have a few teachers in the family and I'm used to the complaints (the very valid complaints) that kids forget a lot of material over the summer and the first weeks of school and spent in review and reteaching. I think that seems like a waste of time and effort- why teach things and let them fall away? Why get into a schedule and then let it drop?
Now, we do take it easy at different points. I think that we are pretty structured and that Sweet Pea has some pretty high expectations on her for a five year old. Over the summer we went very easy on most things- just kept up with math and really focused on phonics. This ended up being a really wonderful choice for us. Lessons were still short, but we covered a lot of ground and it brought Sweet Pea's reading abilities up to the point where she can confidently handle the daily assignments we are working on.
I don't follow a specific period of off and on times. Some of it is built around seasons, and some is built around family activity. I'm expecting a baby a little while after Christmas and I expect that school will slide for a little while. And that's OK- because we have all the time in the world to pick back up.

Latin: We did the first page of questions on the lesson today. Sweet Pea needed some help spelling things like, "consonants" but did really well!


Math: I have been annoying recently in my belief that Sweet Pea does not know her math facts (whatever that means for someone her age) and that it will hold her back. Today she did 4 worksheets of math- and knew them fine. Truly, math is going well!



Grammar- I am fast approaching the point that many people start to reach in First Language Lessons- the point of, yes, we do know nouns! Let's move on! And then skipping and consolidating lessons. We'll see.

Writing went well today- except an annoying issue with the connector off the letter o. I'm not sure what the issue was, but it's been resolved.

Phonics: I confess that I am astounded by how many ways there are to make the vowel sound, "oo". Sweet Pea is assimilating them well, and I added Hooked on Phonics back in just to break the monotony and cement ideas.

Curricula review time!

Now that we're getting a feel for what we're using, how it fits, and what we like.

For Math: we're continuing with our tangrams- still a win! Singapore- still a win. Miquon- Sweet Pea is enjoying this a little less right now, although I'm not sure why. Some of it the way that they are introducing addition- sliding the blocks and then sliding numbers. We'll see.
For Reading: I have to admit that we are in a McGuffey slump. We are doing the Ordinary Parent's Guide regularly, and while I can't say that Sweet Pea really LIKES it, it's short and effective. We are not using Hooked on Phonics any longer, unless I feel like Sweet Pea needs reinforcing or if she wants to read one of the stories.
For Language Arts: I like Spelling Power. It's pretty independent and so far all review. Sweet Pea enjoys it and is working steadily. Writing With Ease- this one is tougher. I like it, and I like it a lot. Sweet Pea on the other hand does not enjoy it quite so much, mostly because it's work. It's probably one of the more academically challenging things she's doing right now. We will continue to do it, and be grateful that it's short. First Language Lessons is a much bigger hit, on all sides.
For History: Story of the World is a hit. The activity guide is a bigger hit. I'm not sure how much is being retained- and that's the big benefit is the history rotation. There's no pressure to pund all the finer points of ancient history into my little one's head- it's just an introduction.
Latin and all others: I must confess that we are not yet doing any extras. So far we are doing our core, and regularly. Once we're more settled we'll add in the electives.

Daily updates continued

Today we had a royally awful morning, with behavior that was so bad it was amazing. So we didn't get any school done. By the time that Sweet Pea was ready I had a raging headache and I just wanted to sit with a hot cup of tea- so I did.
We did our school work in the afternoon.
We started with Spelling Workout- lesson three complete! Then Singapore Earlybird 2A- lesson 13 complete! Lesson 13 focused on the introduction of the written numbers and how they correlate to numerals.
After that we did Writing with Ease- which is now done for the week. I love the illustrations on the workbook pages for Writing with Ease- kudos to whoever put them in. Our assignment today was a short narration from a passage from, "Little House in the Big Woods". Sweet Pea's choice of sentences inadvertently perfectly complemented the picture!
I'm throwing this in, out of order. This is Sweet Pea's illustration to go with the poem, "The Caterpillar" by Christina Rossetti, from First Language Lessons.
I'm also posting the first part of my weekly schedule sheet now that it's filled out. It goes across the top to include Friday and Saturday, but there's nothing interesting there yet. Over on the far left is where I keep track of the weeks dates. For each day I then enter in what we actually accomplish vs. what I had planned on my planning sheets. I have another page that I've worked out all the acronyms, since the boxes are tiny. For example, under Thursday I have: SW- Spelling Workout, S2A- Sinagpore 2A (lesson 13), WWE- Writing with Ease (lesson 1), SOTW- Story of the World (intro), and the Ordinary Parent's Guide (lesson 93). I really enjoy keeping track like this- being able to know exactly what we did on a given day has been very useful.

Daily updates continued

Today, we did Spelling Workout, Earlybird (Singapore) 2A, lesson 12, WWE, and the introduction of Story of the World.
Sweet Pea didn't finish her spelling work in a reasonable time period, so I assigned it as homework. She's currently at the table finishing that up.
Otherwise, she was very happy to begin doing the Singapore math again. It was number lines, forward and backwards. WWE today was narration practice.
For SOTW we did the activity- making a family "history" album. So far we have called both my parents for history and we may call some other family members for theirs. Sweet Pea asked all the questions, I wrote the answers.
This evening (like every evening) we'll do phonics and catechism.

First day of school!

For the year.
We opened with First Language Lessons. I think we're going to end up using this pretty closely as written. Sweet Pea liked it, it was short- curriculum win!
Next we had math. Today it Miquon. We worked through building number stairs and we've begun filling out a 0-99 number chart. Once it's complete I'm going to laminate it and put it up on the wall.
After that we did Writing with Ease (WWE). I had Sweet Pea write both model sentences and we did a mini- diagramming on them. Fun!
We'll do phonics this evening, then catechism as normal. It was a wonderful first day!

Pictures of all our materials!

I got this dry erase board to put on the wall right where we school to answer the ever present question of, "What's next?" I'm hoping it serves as a good visual reminder of how much is left.
And when to expect certain rotating subjects. I have a much more detailed on in my master binder, but this should be good for Sweet Pea.


Latin- Prima Latina.


Language Arts- at the top is the always present binder. Underneath is Writing with Ease 1 with the workbook, First Language Lessons (or the butterfly book as Sweet Pea calls it), Spelling Workout, Mad Libs Jr., and a cursive copybook.


Math- on the left is the Singapore stuff- challenging word problems 1 (I don't know if we're starting this quite yet!), and 2A and 2B. Then the Miquon for the year- the Orange book we've already begun, and the red book. All the assorted mama helps, too. And our beloved Patternables book.


History! We are doing Story of the World, Vol. 1. We have some of the suggested coloring books, the Activity Guide, the test booklet, the book itself, and in the binder I have schedules and places to put the completed work. We'll flesh this out with a lot of material from the library.

Below are our "elective"- home ec. (Sweet Pea's specifically requested to start this), catechism materials, Artistic Pursuits, and character building.

Sweet Pea helped haul it all out and group it together- and she's really excited. What I'm less then thrilled about is returning everything to a state of order- the chaos from locating all the bits and pieces that I had stored in various areas has caught up with me!

Hooked on Phonics vs. the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

I own the Hooked on Phonics K-2nd grade kits and I just got the Ordinary Parent's Guide from the library. I've lined them up and done a little comparison, trying to see where we are and if it's worth it.
At this point, I think it will be once we finish HOP 2nd grade.
We have now completed K and 1st grade and while it doesn't line up completely (the scope and sequences are different) it look like we've worked through section 7- out of 25 available sections. The next kit will get us further- how much I don't entirely know since I'm not familiar with all the word lists yet, but it won't get us through the end of the book. I believe that I've seen around that the Ordinary Parent's Guide goes through about a 4th grade level and looking at it that seems about right. It's also very reasonable.


So far I've had the following learn to read programs- Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Hooked on Phonics, McGuffey's, and now I'm borrowing the Ordinary Parent's Guide.
My current favorites would be the Hooked on Phonics, the the Ordinary Parent's Guide, the McGuffey's.
I completely dislike the 100 easy lessons. I'm not getting rid of it, I'll keep it in case it meshes with the learning style of a later child, but it's way too scripted and I strongly dislike the annotated alphabet. I think that it could be an awful transition once you drop the marks, and beginning it with a child that knew the letter sounds introducing the marks was unpleasant, as well.
I'd like the McGuffey's better if it had more phonetical instruction. I think it's more of what we now call incidental phonics- but I could be confusing that. They are currently mostly useful to us as readers and extra practice.

Initial plug

We got the Early Reader's Bible from Zonderkids today and as far as I've seen so far I am very impressed. There are 64 stories and they use words that are right at Sweet Pea's level. There's a short comprehension question section at the end of each story. Sweet Pea likes it and I like it- two votes of yes!

Secular curriculum musings

Mostly because of some threads I've been reading in various places. I think that there is an outside conception that religious homeschoolers use a lot of religious curricula, or only use the Bible to home school, or that they are sheltering their children from the full sweep of ideas. I'm not sure exactly where this idea started- maybe it was more true earlier in homeschooling but in my experience this is less and less true.
Personally, my family qualifies as "very religious". My husband is a pastor, after all, and a conservative one at that. We're probably on the strict side of the spectrum but looking at our curriculum choices it's mostly secular.
The only religious program for a core subject, or really anything other then religion, is Prima Latina- a Catholic program for Latin.
Everything else is secular- from the history to the science to the LA products. And it's mostly on purpose. Some of it is my experience with reading through religious curricula for history and science is that the publishing group's biases and views leak through in sometimes insidious ways. I don't want to have to run everything through a filter to see if we agree with it or not- if I wanted that I'd be devising my own curriculum. And I'm not.
Amusingly, this was one of my thoughts when we were first seriously considering homeschooling- only from the other side! I thought it'd be nice not to have to deal with the public school bias. And now I've discovered that there are biases all over and it's nearly impossible to get away from it.
Susan Wise Bauer has written an interesting post about this here: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/neutral.php

Organizational post

You can click on any of the pics to make them large enough to read clearly.


This is the worksheet that I used to slot things by day and then time of day. I also put time estimates down for everything so that I could tally the total estimated time spent per day to make it even and not too long.
Writing it all out in a spiral notebook helped. It's also an easy way to divide up how much should happen in each week to finish books.


This is a general outline of what I'm planning on using for 1st grade.


The cleaned up daily schedule. This is the first item in my planner binder.


A blank school calendar. I plan to circle the days that we school.


Next is an attendance form. I won't need to file this with the state until Sweet Pea turns 7 but I like to practice skills before we need them. And try out different forms.


Next I include a course of study- which is a fancy way of saying I write down all the books I plan to use and what subjects we'll use them for.


Then I have a sheet to keep track of the abbreviations used for each subject. This way when I record keep I don't have to write the full titles everyday- and so when I look back in time I remember what the acronyms mean.

I plan by semester each subject on it's own worksheet. It's broken down into specific days for each week. I do one semester at a time so that if we're ahead or behind I can reevaluate at the semester's end.

The forms I use for much of this I've found at http://www.donnayoung.org


Also in the binder are reading logs, library books lists- including when to request books needed for Story of the World, and daily schedules.

I also have the binders suggested by the Well Trained Mind ready for language arts, history and science. They're pretty blank right now, though, since we aren't starting until this fall.

I'd also like to make a household management binder at some point, but that's a ways off.

These are the slate exercises from McGuffey's. It's a nice change from Cursuve First now that Sweet Pea has done almost all of it. :) Go Sweet Pea!

It's a princess with a castle.

OK, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but Sweet Pea thinks that Miquon is the most incredible thing ever. She really enjoys it. If that isn't a great review for a math curriculum, I don't know what is. :)

Also, having now read and reread the new Well Trained Mind, I'm at a crossroads for next year. Incredibly, I'm leaning towards continuing what we've been doing this summer and then starting first grade, not Kindergarten, this fall. I'm a little apprehensive, but the more I read and look around at standards and curriculum and what Sweet Pea is doing and what she WANTS to do, it seems like the best option.

In the book she lists these as the goals for:

Kindergarten:

Reading: basic phonics 10 mins at beginning of year, move to 30 by end she is doing advanced phonics, practice easy readers we're doing this currently

writing: practice printing work up to 10 mins a day she prints really well and we're currently doing cursive copy short sentences from model- check

Math: count from 1-100, write 1-100, skip count by 2s, 5s and 10s I'm pretty sure she will be doing all this by fall but if not her math curriculum isn't tied to anything else

And First Grade:

Language: spelling 5-15 mins per day, grammar 15-20 mins per day and 30 mins per day making notebook pages (like illustrated short book reports), 30 mins fun reading and penmanship as needed writing: 5-20 mins a day write short letters to family or copy sentences Math: 30 to 40 mins a day of a program history: story of the world and activities/ 3 hours a week

Science: animals, human body, and plants for 2 60 minute blocks

Religion: world religions and lutheran blah blah blah

Music: begin piano

I'm not decided by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm really looking into it.