First Grade So Far

We have started off our school year well here and are now in the third week! We hope to finish the fourth week before taking a little vacation to Tennessee next week.

Here are some of the things we are doing this year... in random order...

Once a week, we are reading one of the fables in our Aesop's Fables book. I read it aloud, and then Caroline narrates, or retells, the story to me while I type it. Then I print it, and she puts it into her fables book and illustrates it.

Here are two she has done so far: The Young Crab and his Mother and The Dog, the Cock, and the Fox. If you click on it to see the larger image, you might be able to read it...

We are also doing the same thing with Old Testament stories. I am reading one per week from a Catholic children's Bible, and Caroline retells it as I write it in her book. Then she works on copywork: a verse from the Bible story that is important or sums up the story well. This is glued into her book and she adds an illustration. So there are three components here: her narration, the Bible verse, and the drawing.

Here is her first page, The Story of Creation.

This is her page on Adam and Eve in Paradise. Again, I think you may be able to read them if you click the pictures to see them larger. Caroline really goes into detail in her Bible story narrations! She has far less detail when retelling an event that happened to her or explaining something we did as a science project or a trip we took. She narrates stories very accurately.

Here is Caroline's science book... we have titled it Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans. We are studying bodies of water and water in general this year. We took a trip to a nearby lake and observed the plants and animals there, and then Caroline made a scrapbook-style page of our visit:

She narrated the trip to me as I typed, and it is pasted into the book at the top. Then she put the photos in and wrote notes about them and what we saw at the lake. We plan to choose one water area to make several trips to over the year so we can observe changes in wildlife and plants as the seasons change.

This is Caroline's Liturgical Year Notebook. I showed it before in the post about our plans for first grade. Under the "saints" tab, we have added some copywork from a story we read about St. Christopher. Caroline also colored a picture of him (from Fenestrae Fidei) and narrated the story to me as I typed (and it is almost a whole page single-spaced, so I didn't take a photo of it)... it is on the front of the page with the story quote. Every week or two, we will read a different story that corresponds with the liturgical year, and we will add copywork and projects to this notebook. This is an ongoing project that will cover a few years, most likely.

For math, we have been using Math U See and so far, Caroline really likes it, and she understands the concepts very well. We made a poster of "decimal street" to practice learning place value and regrouping.

This is our timeline... only one event card up there when I took this photo, but now we have four, including one before this one which shows the universe and earth being created billions of years ago. It is a long piece of yarn across the top of the wall in our schoolroom, and as w read about each event or person, we add the picture to the timeline. It is a very basic introduction to history and gives an overview of where to place certain events in time. We also read a good children's book or three about each event if we have them available through our library. I envision taking the cards down and mixing them up at some points throughout the year and having Caroline re-order them.

And back to the Liturgical Year Notebook... I said this was in random order... Caroline painted a St. Benedict's Cross after we read The Holy Twins in July (which is when his feast day falls). She also copied a quote from the story, and we made these into a page for her notebook.

Here's a look at some Circle Time stuff... Caroline puts the date on the magnetic calendar and any saint magnets for the day, then she writes the date on the whiteboard easel. She also writes the time of the day and counts coins and writes that on the board as well. On this day, she counted two amounts and wrote them both, and then I gave her the directions to circle the amount that was less and draw a box around the greater amount. Under that are a few letters for Cecilia to name. Then there is a word given, and Caroline reads it, decides what the vowel pattern is, and writes as many other words as she can in the same word family. I have also put sentences on the board for very basic editing practice... they are missing beginning capitalization, or capitalization of proper names of people, and they are missing ending punctuation. I have also done some where she circles the correct verb use in a particular sentence. Also in Circle Time, we sing a different hymn each month (August is Hail, Holy Queen) and read a couple of poems daily from A Child's Garden of Verses and The Child on his Knees.

And back to water, and science... we did a puddle experiment this week. We poured water out to make a puddle in the shade and a puddle in direct sunlight. Then Caroline traced around the puddles and we observed them every 5-10 minutes to see what happened. She is going to make a page in her book with pictures and her retelling of what we did and saw.

This is something we will do here and there throughout the year called the Nature Logbook... the page was created by our homeschooling neighbors. We looked up information on mallard ducks since we saw them at the lake, and we filled out a page. Our notebook has sections for insects, mammals, birds, plants, and...

chickens! Yes, technically they should go in the "bird" section, but I figured we'd have many chances to observe them and gather information about them... experiment on them and such (kidding! ;). We are currently tracking their daily egg-laying with a bar graph. That blank day was one where we forgot to record the number of eggs... luckily, we have not had any one-egg or no-egg days! They are not at top-laying capacity right now, but they are still producing pretty well for this heat wave, I think! We finished this graph today and so I need to print out a new one for the next few weeks!

And on to social studies...
In addition to the basic timeline, we are doing something called Family Geography. So far, we have filled out a family tree going back to Caroline's great-grandparents and glued it into her book. Then we plotted where each person was born on a map for her book...

...and we also put stickers on the wall map to show everyone's birthplace. Next, we will look at old family photos showing the areas in which people were born or lived later in life, and we'll learn more about those places... things like climate, land features, location. We'll also try to include some regional recipes and fun stuff like that!

That is basically what we are doing for first grade... we do one Bible story a week, one fable a week, one timeline event a week, one day of family geography, one day of water study (as well as nature study at water environments)... math is daily, and copywork from the Bible verses and liturgical year stories is almost daily. We also do five minutes of the St. Joseph's First Communion catechism daily and will add in seasonal and liturgical year crafts here and there. So far, so good! I am feeling good about getting several weeks knocked out before the baby is born!

Caroline's First Day of First Grade!

Yes, we have started school again! Caroline told me, "Mommy, I'm glad we're doing school again!" :)

We have begun school this early so we can get a head start before Baby 3 is born in September. It will be a slow start, as we have several things happening here and there, especially things like OB appointments for me, every two weeks now! So, we began our day with Circle Time - new and improved since Kindergarten. We will learn new monthly hymns and do various money counting/comparing/exchanging, review and learn more counting patterns, and do a bit of language arts work on the easel each day. We'll continue doing calendar and saints of the day, along with some songs and rhymes for Cecilia.

Here is the official first day of school photo... we were all wearing white shirts today, and you will soon find out why if you keep reading this post!

New colored pencils for the first day of school... I debated ordering some really nice ones online... it is easy to want to do that when you see or hear about really nice art materials online... but practicality needs to win out more often. I think I'd rather have babies than expensive school supplies. :) So I got a pack of 50 Crayola colored pencils at Wal-Mart... they all just barely fit in this jar (which formerly held Trader Joe's almond butter).

Here is something else I have added to Circle Time this year: the pledge. I found this poster in my old school stuff - who knows where I got it; I used to teach 3rd and 4th graders and would have insulted their intelligence by posting this in my classroom!

For Cecilia, I am also doing this activity to teach about Jesus as the Good Shepherd and how we are like His sheep. I got this here from Catholic Icing and printed it off and assembled it... we will go through the Bible story once a week and Cecilia can re-enact it herself as well.

I gave Caroline an elementary spelling inventory since I have never assessed her spelling before. I thought it would be helpful to have and do one maybe each year for comparison. It is really interesting to see how the spelling patterns evolve...

Here is our schedule for this year... still somewhat tentative, but I think I like it mostly the way it is. We will try it out this way for awhile and see how it goes! You can see it larger by clicking on it.

Here's an ongoing project... we will add to it over the years. It is a liturgical year binder with several tabs... we can put projects, copywork, coloring sheets, narrations of saint stories, etc. in here. I got the idea from Catholic Mosaic - we will be reading several of the books on their booklist this year, I hope.

Here are the shelves in the schoolroom... the top shelf holds some of the books we will be using. The shelves below are the "work activity" shelves. Last year, I put an assortment of activities for the girls to choose from as a transition between breakfast and beginning the school day. That didn't seem to work out so well over the long haul, so I am trying something new this time: work trays. There will be just one or two items on each tray, changed each day. This way, there is no confusion over what is to be done! Caroline will also have her journal on her work tray twice a week along with a monthly list of topics from which to write about. Cecilia's tray is still optional at this point... she can use it if she is feeling like being included in "school," or she can do her own thing... either way, this is how I get the dishes done after breakfast each morning! I am also going to get her doing more water play and "helping" wash the dishes with me this year, I think.

Here's our new file crate, with a hanging file for each week. I have filed the Old Testament copywork verses for each week in here, along with the First Timeline images for each week. I also have a file for each month, and there are liturgical year coloring sheets, projects, and copywork from saint books filed there. Looking back, I think it might be overkill this year to have a file for each week... I had a file for each letter last year, which worked well. As more work is added (and more kids are "enrolled" in Hycliff Academy!), this will probably be a good system... not sure yet if I will be keeping each year's crate and then pulling them out in future years or combining all the kids' stuff into one crate for each year...

Here are most of our books for frequent use: my planning binder and the liturgical year binder, Caroline's math workbook, The Earth, our children's Bible, the First Timeline book, the First Communion Catechism, and Angel Food for Boys and Girls Volume 1, to be used alongside the catechism using this handy chart from Wildflowers and Marbles.

I found this Old Testament timeline to go along with our Old Testament studies... we will read a story from the children's Bible each week, and then Caroline will retell it and illustrate it. I also found this laminated map in my old school posters... we will use it for our family geography studies in which we will learn about the places where Caroline's grandparents and great-grandparents were born and grew up... this will be part of our social studies curriculum, along with the timeline.

Here's Caroline writing in her journal... her first entry ever was on the topic of the first day of school.

Here's Caroline illustrating the cover of her Old Testament book... she chose to draw Noah's ark on the front since she is already familiar with that Old Testament story.

Here's the finished cover. I love these books... they are blank with about 20 pages in each, and you can get them lined or unlined and in various sizes. I got them from Emmanuel Books.

And the first day of school happily coincided with Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A! For those who might be unfamiliar, I like to call this "Dress like a cow, get free food day." If you go in a complete cow costume, you get your whole meal free... chicken, fries, drink, and if you are lucky enough to have a Dwarf House Chick-fil-A, then you can sit down on the wait side and get a free salad, too! So the girls and I had made headbands with ears and a bunch of spots the day before, and I made each of us a tail by braiding yarn together. We also made "Eat Mor Chikin" signs like the cows wear.

Cecilia the cow

Caroline the cow, with a small cow... I think that one is "Cowie"

And they got to say hi to the big cow!! He came by our table a couple times and batted at the girls' balloons, shook their "hooves," and cradled their stuffed cows like babies. Cecilia used to be unsure of the big cow... when she first met him, she was about one and was a little disturbed... the thing is BIG! Today, she decided on the way home that she wanted to pretend to be the big cow... so I told her, "The big cow doesn't ever talk, does he? All he does is wave." So Cecilia then acknowledged everything anyone said to her by simply waving, which Caroline thought was hilarious. It was a fun way to end our first day of school!

I guess this post covered a lot of our curriculum for the year as well... any other families want to share what you are using for homeschooling this year? I got a lot of our ideas here from Mater Amabilis - they have each year's curriculum listed on their website.