Curriculum Picks 2024/25: First Grader

We are well into our sixth year of homeschool, with four students this year - kinder, fifth, third, and first. I shared our homeschool workplans on Instagram, highlighting my first grader's list, and I had some questions about what we use for curriculum.

It's crazy to me that I am helping my third child through first grade. A lot has changed in my philosophy and the way I approach educating my children, mostly out of sheer neccesity. At the same time, many of the resources we are using have stood the test of time.

Math

We have stuck with Singapore math since our second year of homeschool, and I will keep with it until the children age out. It is a rigorous program, and it does take some getting used to, but I think it is a superior program.

I will give the disclaimer that we basically only use the workbook. I don't teach out of the textbook at all, and we do not do tests. For actually teaching the concepts, I use Montessori materials and lessons. For this I use the Mainly Montessori Timeline, free albums that I have, Youtube tutorials, and at this point for my first grader, just my background knowledge of the lessons.

We do a little bit of math every day, four days a week. This is not how I initially planned our week when we first started, but I find it so much easier on my students to just be gradually working through their program. In order to complete one year of Singapore for each grade, this seems to be the only way to manage it.

Copywork

For the first two boys, I created our own copywork based on our religion program because having a dedicated program didn't feel necessary for some reason. Let me tell you, we will be using Handwriting Without Tears for kinder-third grade (atleast) for the rest of my students.

The program is designed so beautifully to be gradual but thorough. My first grader has loved his entire workbook so far. It is a good mix of simplicity and practice, with new concepts introduced so seamlessly that he doesn't even notice he has graduated to a full page of copywork.

(But he is my most joyful student yet, so I'll give him that.)

Geography

Holling C Holling is on the Ambleside Online schedule for Years 1-4 and we loved every one of his books. This is one of the few books I have my first grader actually narrate (tell back to me after I read it) and he does brilliantly detailed and dramatic tellings from this book because it just appeals to kids. Paddle-to-the-Sea relates the journey of a little wooden canoe through the Great Lakes, and gives such fun descriptions about the geography, wildlife, and man-made obstacles he meets along the way.

Along with this book, I have very slowly been reading the Earth book to my children from the Tan books homeschool curriculum. It comes with an activity book, but I haven't purchased it. The children do notebooking pages, Montessori extensions, and narrations from our books. But honestly, more often than not, we just read it and watch a few videos on Youtube. That's just the kind of year we are having.

Science and History

In addition to the geography resources I have already shared, we are also doing these three books from the Ambleside Year One schedule. Ironically, when I was in Year Two with my older two boys and I realized I was going to have to re-read all of the books I was going through with them with consecutive students, I was afraid it was going to be a slog.

Much the opposite, re-reading these books to my next set of students has been a joy. These books transport me back to those golden first days of homeschooling the older boys. I greatly simplified my choices from the Year One booklist, having gone through them already and knowing what we enjoyed and really retained, and I know that has a lot to do with how much we are enjoying this go-round.

• Burgess Bird is heavy in descripitive language, and I doubt they really retain a lot of the specific information, but it gives such a great impression of the life of birds, which I think makes it an essential read.

• Our Island Story is the main history spine for Year One and Two of Ambleside, and I don't know if you can do the curriculum without this book. I am enjoying this book even more the second time around, as I feel I am able to connect the (very complicated) dots to the history of England even better this time around.

• Viking Tales is my first graders fvourite book, much to no-ones surprise. He saves this book for "last" every week. Even though the formatting of my particular version is ablsolutely horrendous, I'm enjoying just reading through this book at our own pace.

• I forgot to mention that we also re-listened to 50 Famous Stories retold, which was a very easy book to go through again. We listened as a family, and I thought it was fun to hear my older two boys commenting on what they remembered (and what we have learned about more now through their deeper study of some of the historical periods)

Reading - Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons

While Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons wouldn't normally be included in the curriculum for my first graders, I've been reviewing it with this student this year and it was the best decision I could have made for him.

He was delayed with his speech, so his reading journey has been slower than his brothers, but the gift they have given to him as my first students, is that they have taught me as the teacher to worry much less about where a student should be. Rather, I've learned to just show up consistently where my student really is and needs to be.

So instead of slogging through everything in All About Reading, I've been having him practice his reading in 100 Easy, and its been such a great confidence boost for him. I suspect that going back over this book will do more to progress his reading skills than slogging through the "grade one" reading would have done.

Reading - All About Reading

This is our first year doing All About Reading and I am underwhelmed by this particular level, as well as the Kinder program. On the other hand, I'm loving All About Spelling for the older boys, so the jury is still out on this curriciulm.

For the older two boys, we used Logic of English Foundations from grade one onwards, and I will definitely be switching my First Grader back into that program next year. I was noticing at the end of last year that some of the concepts we had gone over for kindergarten weren't sticking, so I was hoping All About Reading would be a good fit for him because it is apparently more hands on, but I just find it kind of fluffy.

All in all, it has been a really productive First Grade year for my third student. He is a joy to educate, even if he is exactly as squirrelly as you would expect a seven-year-old little boy to be.

Always honest,

Olivia