We are in the final week of first grade here in the prestigious Scott Academy! It's been another great year of learning and growing together for me and Ben as teacher and student. Compared to last year things were much easier this time around, namely because I wasn't pregnant this school year like I was last year. That has made a substantial difference. And, Joey was in pre-school 2x a week which gave Ben and me some quality time of work. I guess the only hiccup has been toddler-aged Hannah here in the last couple of months. She is on the move constantly, getting into everything all the time, and has challenged the schedule we used to keep. Each of her 2 naps a day are not very long and we don't get a lot accomplished while she's asleep.
But, it's given me ideas for the new school year in August, especially since Joey will begin kindergarten. I think we will keep things easy during the morning with subjects we don't have to do at the table, like reading, history and science, piano, etc. We'll save the more mom-involved subjects like math, writing, and spelling for the afternoon during her nap, as she should be down to 1 afternoon nap a day by then.
I thought I'd list our subjects here with how Ben has grown with it and my thoughts on each book too.
First is math, and we used Saxon level 2. The biggies this year were learning how to add and subtract using carrying/borrowing and how to multiply the facts of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 10. He caught on to all this quickly and easily in spite of the fact that math is not his favorite subject. :-)
For language arts, we were all over the place. We used First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind (grammar) and The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease (writing), both by Susan Wise Bauer. I loved how short and simple the grammar lessons were and the fact that Ben memorized 6 poems this year. He learned about nouns, adjectives, and verbs and other language-based subjects like addressing an envelope, abbreviations, etc. In writing at this age, the weekly lessons were two-fold: copywork, to ingrain in him good examples of writing before he takes on the task himself, and narration, which was listening to short excerpts of various types of literature and respond to comprehension questions. We used All About Spelling levels 1 and 2 this year (he flew through it!) and has a great foundation for spelling words. I love that it's more "out of the box" with its approach and he was writing out dictated sentences from early on. For reading, he read on his own both for leisure and purpose. He's to the point now where he can 150 page chapter books in a day if he's really into it! I read more difficult books to him for read-aloud. I've found some great ones that are free/public-domain through my Kindle. Our favorite was reading the original Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was definitely way more dark than Disney's spin on it, but the lessons were so practical for a little boy! We didn't have a handwriting curriculum, but I used his copywork as an opportunity to remind him of neat handwriting and proper letter formation. He also worked his way down from very wide-ruled beginner's paper to much more narrow lines. He does a good job... when he takes his time. :-)
First is math, and we used Saxon level 2. The biggies this year were learning how to add and subtract using carrying/borrowing and how to multiply the facts of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 10. He caught on to all this quickly and easily in spite of the fact that math is not his favorite subject. :-)
For language arts, we were all over the place. We used First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind (grammar) and The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease (writing), both by Susan Wise Bauer. I loved how short and simple the grammar lessons were and the fact that Ben memorized 6 poems this year. He learned about nouns, adjectives, and verbs and other language-based subjects like addressing an envelope, abbreviations, etc. In writing at this age, the weekly lessons were two-fold: copywork, to ingrain in him good examples of writing before he takes on the task himself, and narration, which was listening to short excerpts of various types of literature and respond to comprehension questions. We used All About Spelling levels 1 and 2 this year (he flew through it!) and has a great foundation for spelling words. I love that it's more "out of the box" with its approach and he was writing out dictated sentences from early on. For reading, he read on his own both for leisure and purpose. He's to the point now where he can 150 page chapter books in a day if he's really into it! I read more difficult books to him for read-aloud. I've found some great ones that are free/public-domain through my Kindle. Our favorite was reading the original Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was definitely way more dark than Disney's spin on it, but the lessons were so practical for a little boy! We didn't have a handwriting curriculum, but I used his copywork as an opportunity to remind him of neat handwriting and proper letter formation. He also worked his way down from very wide-ruled beginner's paper to much more narrow lines. He does a good job... when he takes his time. :-)
His favorite subject this year was history, and I enjoyed it immensely too. We used The Mystery of History volume 1 and I would give it 10 thumbs up if I had that many hands! The best part of it is seeing Biblical history in the context of world history and seeing how world events were used by God to bring about his plan for Jesus to come into the world. We loved making our timeline and adding figures each week. It's served as a great review for Ben as he looks back on things we added earlier in the school year and can tell me what it was all about. There are activities/assignments with each lesson and we did some (not all). Lots of options for going more and more in depth!
We used Christian Kids Explore Biology for science, and he learned about the full scope of life sciences from plants to humans to animals to insects. He liked the lessons just fine (as did I) but he's not a science kid. There was plenty offered in the book to make more of the curriculum, but we didn't really explore it. For just needing an introduction to biology, this was perfect for us! We're using the next book in the series (space and earth science) next year.
We used Christian Kids Explore Biology for science, and he learned about the full scope of life sciences from plants to humans to animals to insects. He liked the lessons just fine (as did I) but he's not a science kid. There was plenty offered in the book to make more of the curriculum, but we didn't really explore it. For just needing an introduction to biology, this was perfect for us! We're using the next book in the series (space and earth science) next year.
For Bible and character training, we dabbled in quite a bit. AWANA was the bulk of our Bible learning. For character, we borrowed a book from some friends that Ben really liked, and after that, I found a treasure trove of FREE material! If you have the YouVersion app on your mobile device, look up reading plans and click on family. There are a ton in there varying in length from 4 days to the one we've been doing right now, courage, that is 28 days long. We discovered with the courage series that there are neat videos attached to them too! This is definitely an area you don't have to spend money because the free resources out there are abundant.
I think that wraps up everything for the most part... it's been a wonderful year together. It really has. God sure knew what he was doing when He led us down this path. :-) I'm already getting resources together for next year!
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