1st Grade!

Woo Hoo! Simon started first grade this week! Yesterday we all got up right at 7am, brushed our teeth, ate a quick breakfast and rushed out the door to get everyone where they had to go.

Well... not really. Instead, here's how our morning went on the first day of school yesterday:

Barb got up at 6am and left for work at 7am. Simon and Gwen got up around 8am and turned on the TV. I got up around 9am and got them some food. Around 9:30 Simon did one of his math lessons. At 10am we left to go to a park where we meet a bunch of homeschooling friends when the weather is nice. At 3pm we got home and Simon did a half of another math lesson. At 4:30pm Barb got home and I went off to my evening job. At 8pm I got home (earlier than usual) and found Simon working on a writing/drawing lesson with Barb. He had finished the other half of his math lesson, completed one more and then did the drawing lesson. Then we all hung out and got ready for the kids to go to bed. In other words, our first day of school was very relaxed. That's how we're planning them all to be.

Here's how Barb and I decided to organize 1st grade. First we selected a bunch of curriculum materials based on Rebecca Rupp's excellent book Home Learning Year by Year. This is a great book. It is organized by grade levels and for each grade it recommends a set of educational topics and resources for each topic.

Here's what we selected for Simon's 1st grade while trying to maintain our balancing act between structured schooling and unschooling:

Reading:
For this topic we've decided to stop actively or formally trying to teach him. The boy is reading just fine and doesn't really need our help. I read to him every night (the Narnia books, currently) and he reads his own books without our involvement. Other than reading to him, we figure he doesn't need our help with this one.

Writing and Drawing:
We combined these lessons into one topic because we found this great series of books called Draw. Write. Now. There are 8 books in the series and each one is broken up into lessons. Each lesson provides step by step instructions in how to draw a picture (animal, tree, barn, etc.) and also some accompanying text to copy down. We only bought the first book and now have to go back and get the rest of the series.

English:
This is a broad category including grammar, listening skills, narrative interpretation and recitation. For this topic we selected Jesse Wise's First Language Lessons. It is a two year program in one book intended for 1st and 2nd grade. If it goes well we'll pick up the next books in the series which go up to 4th grade currently.

Spelling:
On a whim, and based on a number of good reviews we bought Spelling Workout Level A. We haven't used it much yet so I don't know if we'll be happy with it or now. I did notice that this book starts very easy with the phonic sounds of each letter. A bit too basic for Simon. We may have to start the book in chapter 5 or something.

Math:
Singapore Math level 2. We did level 1 last year and Simon loved it. Now he's in 1st grade doing 2nd grade math and cruising right through it. This is only day two of 1st grade and he's already finished more than a week of math lessons. He finds it very intuitive. He doesn't get that from me. We tried Saxon math last year, but it was much more expensive and we all hated it.

History:
Susan Bauer's Story of the World series, part two: the medieval world. Last year we used the first volume on ancient times. To tell the truth, I like these more than Simon does. See below for how we're incorporating this into our daily lessons in a way that makes us both happy.

Science:
For science we mostly just let Simon's interests in astronomy and chemistry drive what we do, but we did pick up two books to help us. Sandbox Scientist and Backyard Scientist both offer a number of experiments to do around the house using household items.

Art:
For art, apart from the drawing lessons mentioned above, we bought a book called How to Teach Art to Children, which discusses color theory and making your own color wheel and things like that. Haven't used it yet, but it looks good so far.

Music:
We haven't selected anything yet for this topic, and I'm not sure yet how, if at all, we'll cover it. I did bring up two guitars and a full size keyboard up from the basement. Also, the kids really love the Disney TV show called Little Einsteins. Each episode discuses a famous work of art and a famous piece of classical music. They walk around some days humming tidbits from Schubert or Pacabel. I really want to find a book/CD about classical composers that gives a kid's history of them along with samples of their music. I haven't found anything I like yet though.

When we first put this list together it occurred to me that we were never, never going to cover every topic every day. We would hate it and the kids would hate it. It would by necessity become much more structured than we wanted to be with our homeschool.

So, we thought for a couple of days and came up with this solution. We discussed it with Simon and he agreed.

It goes like this: Every day we agree to do 3 lessons, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. At each of these times Simon gets to pick the topic we study from the above list. If he wants to spend a week doing nothing but math, that's ok. If he spends another week bouncing from topic to topic, that's ok too. It's up to him. If we feel like some topics are being left behind we try to push them to the forefront without mandating it.

The only exception to this plan is history. Last year we bought the main book, student exercise worksheets and the audio CD for Bauer's Story of the World: Ancient Times volume and all he wanted to do was listen to the CD. It came on 7 discs. Almost every night for the past year Simon has listed to one of the seven discs of the ancient history volume. Over all he probably listened to the whole book more than 40 times. This year we asked him if we should buy the audio discs for the next book in the series or if we should get the actual book for me to read to him. He picked the CD's.

I'm a bit disappointed by this because I wanted to be involved in the history lessons (my favorite topic right now), but we agreed to let him handle this how he likes. So, we got the new discs in last week and he's already started listening to them every night before he falls asleep. He calls them his "stories" as if he watches General Hospital every day. He doesn't usually talk to us about his "stories" so I'm not sure how much he's absorbing. However, the other night I noticed that, while listening to one disc he hit the pause button, ran off to the bathroom and ran back to bed to hit the play button again. Apparently he didn't want to miss anything. That's good enough for me. :)

So, that's our plan for 1st grade. We didn't want so much structure that we were just recreating school at home, but we also don't want to go all the way to unschooling. Also, I want to keep the "classical" theme alive with history and grammar lessons. In a year or two we'll add Latin, but it is too early for that yet. All in all there are a set of subjects we want to make sure our kids are learning, but we want to organize it in a very relaxed and fluid manner so that "school" becomes an integrated part of our daily rhythm. Also, because Barb's working days and I'm working evenings, this allows us both to be involved in our "lessons". So far so good.

To wrap this up, here's a picture of Simon with his first drawing from the Draw. Write. Now. book. He was so excited that he learned to draw a chicken that he spent two days doing little else. A damn fine chicken, too, if you ask me. :)