First Grade Home School: First and Second Week Review

When I Home School I spend months planning and preparing and then I take the first week deciding what will work and what won't. We started school the Tuesday after Labor Day this year (last week.) The night before our first day we all went to bed excited and feeling great. Jakob and I both woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep. We eventually started our school day and to be honest, it ended up being rocky. But after making some adjustments it has actually gone great from the second day on. What was the biggest change? I decided to pull back on my Moving Beyond the Page lessons. I really enjoy their program and it's content. But Jakob really really dislikes them this year. I will try to add some in, but I'm not going to force them. They were a filler anyway.  Jakob doesn't like to discuss, write, and color. MBTP has a lot of creative expression in their lesson's and Jakob would rather read about something and discuss it instead of hashing it over and over again. He shuts off pretty quick. So I have certain theme units for each month and we read A LOT.

The themes help us cover everything from social studies to history to phonics. Every day I try to read a new book as well as finish up some of the books we're in the middle of reading. Our on going books include a book of fables and fairy tales and A Child's Story of the Book of Mormon. I'm thrilled to say that these two books are the books that Jakob enjoys reading out of the most. How cool is that!? They are both very well written and entertain my seven year old boy as well as touch his imagination and his spirit. I can't ask for more.

We enjoy history in our family. One of the fun ongoing activities we have is our time-line. I printed off a time line that wraps around our living room. I have a page per 1000 years for a while (starting from the creation) and then goes to every 100 years up to 2000. Every time we read a book or watch a documentary about a certain subject that has a date to it that's interesting to us we print a picture about the subject and glue it to the proper year of our time line. I LOVE this activity!

There is so much to tell about home school this year. But the best thing right now is the fun that we're having. It's not easy, but we're all learning and moving forward. Good things are surely in the future. I'll keep you posted. I will also try to get photos us ASAP.