Finished with 1st Grade

Benjamin finished up his first grade core (Core B) and language work (LA2) two Fridays ago. We are done with the first half of world history, up to the fall of Rome. We are going to do a combined Texas history unit this summer with Hannah and then we’ll pick up the second half of world history in the fall in Core C. We have a couple weeks of science left to fit in.

We finished the readings in Leading Little Ones to God, memorized the New Testament books, and memorized a silly poem. Ben has also been listening in on Hannah’s bible assignments during our morning devotions.

In history/social studies, we closed out the first half of our spines: Child’s History of the World and Usborne Book of World History. We finished Usborne Time Traveler: Romans, George Muller, Akebu to Zapotec, and Roman Diary.

Read Alouds were fun, we completed Mr Popper’s Penguins, Detectives in Togas, Gooney Bird Greene, and The Case of the Gasping Garbage as well as our poetry book – Favorite Poems of Childhood and selections of Mother Good Rhymes.

Benjamin really got into a good grove with this language assignments for spelling, phonics (Explode the Code 6), and vocabulary (Wordly Wise A). He also had one assignment a week to write in cursive just to keep it fresh. His handwriting is coming along nicely.

We had some nice short readers that Ben was able to breeze through: Frog and Toad Together, Big Balloon Race, The Fire Cat, The Sword in the Tree, Wagon Wheels, and Titanic Lost and Found.

In science we read Why Do People Eat?, What Makes You Ill?, and Pasteur’s Fight Against Microbes. We also read sections of First Encyclopedia of the Human Body and See How It’s Made. We just started a unit on space and are reading Eye Wonder Space. Right now we are working through experiments with light and mirrors. Benjamin made a kaleidoscope and we have a periscope to build soon.

We have a few lessons in Horizons 2 to finish up during the summer. I’m letting them space out a little more now and let him have some Ipad math app time every now and then for a break.

Extras keep us busy. We have weekly piano, Royal Rangers, and park day. Ben went on a camp out for Royal Rangers at the district level called Pow Wow one weekend. He got second place for 1st grade in our homeschool Spelling Bee. We’ve had family visitors and fun times with the cousins as well as hatching some chicks and working in our garden.

Overall, this core is a really nice breeze through history with lots of enjoyable books and memories made.