Halfway through 1st Grade

We are halfway through the assigned Core A material. I’ll be stretching it until next fall with other books by the same author and maybe a bit of review before starting Core B as our 2nd grade year. We have had a good run without many interruptions since regular school started back up. 

For bible, we have morning devotions together. For school, we are working through The One Year Bible for Children. Joel also does a good job memorizing his verse for the week for school and Rangers.

In history, our main spine is The Usborne Internet Linked Children’s Encyclopedia supplemented with Living Long Ago. Joel enjoys following the internet links when he has some extra time at home. We also read a biography of Louise Braille called Out of Darkness and a missionary book called The Good News Must Go Out. 

For read alouds we finished up In Grandma’s Attic, read The Apple and the Arrow, then had a lighter reading with Adventures with Waffles. We also read weekly selections from The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry.

Readers will get more interesting as Joel gets better at reading but for now we are on limited vocabulary. We finished I Can Read It! Book 2 and went straight into book 3.

We are on pace with LA1. Joel is not a very good speller so we may do the spelling lists again when we are through. We have weekly spelling words, reading lists, grammar with Explode the Code 2, cursive with Handwriting Without Tears, and a weekly creative assignment.

For math we are in the middle of Horizons 1.

We are caught up to the correct week with Science A and Ginny tags along until she starts her next core. We’ve been working through various science topics in Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia. We also read Caterpillars and Butterflies.

Joel does karate twice a week and Rangers on Wednesdays. He has a weekly piano lesson and supposed-to-be daily practice. He ‘helps’ at Connections by playing with the other kids and doing a little bit of cleaning. His main responsibility at home is feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs. During this unit we had a trip to TN with the Diltz clan and much needed cousin time. We got to go to 6 Flags and Hurricane Harbor and use those passes we bought in May. We had two trips to the zoo and lots of church and Connections activities. We also started fostering a 3 yo which has been good for Joel to not be the baby. 😉 He helps with the little one and with Samwise who still needs lots of love and training.