Our First Grade Homeschool Plan
Okay, mama’s! I know so many of you are homeschooling this year, and many of you are doing so for the first time! While I am no seasoned homeschool mom, and am still playing with things and learning our way, I wanted to share what our plan is for the 2020-2021 school year in case it could help you too!
Our Plan for the Fall
Below is our plan for the kids next year, but obviously this could change a bit depending on their needs! These will be what we start with. If they complete these books before the end of the school year, we will re-evaluate and most likely purchase the next level for them to start. But I have to say, I highly doubt we will finish them. I hope to have a slow and sweet year with them and want to let our curriculum choices serve our family’s goals, not us serve the books. It’s also important, I think, to note that my kids are on the later sides of their ages at the start of each school year. I mention this because kids can be so drastically different on their 5th birthday compared to their 6th birthday — sooo much happens in between! Reaghan’s birthday is in November, and Everett’s is in January….so they both have birthdays relatively close to the start of the school year.
Curriculums
Reaghan (age 6)
We loved TGTB Math last year so decided to stick with it for this year as well. I showed Reaghan the video highlighting the curriculum on their website and she was SO excited! Math is her favorite subject right now, and I think part of that is because of how fun and engaging this curriculum is. It also makes things easy on mama by including all the manipulatives you need including a clock, tape measurer, dice, toothpicks, beautiful counting manipulatives, a calendar and daily planner, etc. There are so many amazing resources available out there, and they can all look really tempting! But I’m all about keeping things simple and beautiful, so I appreciate that this curriculum allows me to have everything we need all in one place.
Language Arts Level K-1
We started the Language Arts Level K mid year last school year, and are still working through it. We will continue to do lessons from this book over the summer since Reaghan is making so much progress in reading and really eager to keep learning. I expect we will finish it up shortly after the start of the next school year, at which time we will move on to the Level 1 Language Arts.
This is TGTB’s recommendation for children in the Level 1 (1st grade) lessons. After reviewing the sample pages and knowing what Reaghan’s capable of in terms of drawing and handwriting already, I went with the Level 2. It’s emphasis, from what I can tell, is properly forming and spacing letters and words in sentences. Plus it has tons of fun activities to draw. It’ll be a quick but foundational addition to our homeschooling.
This year I really wanted to follow along with something for our Bible time. Last year we read through John (full disclosure, we didn’t finish) and it was wonderful, but I personally lacked motivation to keep going with it. I wanted something to follow, like a bible study or devotional, to keep me on track and motivate me. (yes, ME…because let’s face it, if mama isn’t motivated, is it going to happen??) Plus at Reaghan’s stage of development, I knew she needed something beyond the Bible stories she has grown up with. We have read through the Jesus Storybook Bible and the 40 Reasons Bible probably 100 times….and my kids both know those stories WELL. So for us, it is definitely time to put some meat on those stories and talk a lot more about what it means to truly be a Christian. My kids also desperately need character training (imagine that, lol) so I wanted to incorporate something into school this year that addressed character from a Biblical perspective. Well, you can imagine how excited I was when I found this curriculum. It’s created for kids ages 6-8, but Everett will also be joining in. It goes over character, who God is, who we are in Christ, hymn study, and so much more. I have to say this is probably what I’m MOST excited about for next year!
You will read more below, but we decided to take a break from Classical Conversations this year. One of the catalysts for that was looking over the Cycle 3 memory work for US History. There is no way you can fully capture the entire history of the United States in just 24 short sentences. I think this is totally personal preference, but I realized after MUCH thought and prayer that I wanted to present this information to my kids in a different way. I noticed last year just how upset Reaghan got during all the weeks we covered World War II. Why she got upset about this and not the black plague or the guillotine, I don’t know, but she did. It made me realize that their emotional maturity was not there yet to be introduced to these concepts, even in a very minimal way. Then I started to realize that both my kids have zero concept of the difference between our city, states, countries and continents. All of that to say, I wanted to start at the very beginning for them and give them that foundational understanding before moving on to more details about historical events. I feel like this Social Studies curriculum (and the Level 2 that comes after it) sets kids at this age up for understanding the world in a greater way and being able to place historical events into that framework down the road. Again, this is totally personal preference here. As I looked ahead at how Masterbooks presents the information, US History doesn’t begin until 3rd grade and it takes 3 years to cover. I decided I would much rather wait for more emotional maturity to grow and then dig deep into US (and World) History when our kids are older and we can really discuss it thoughtfully.
Adventures in Creation 1 (Science)
I’ll be honest with you, science is my least favorite subject. For one, I absolutely HATE science experiments. They make me want to pull my hair out. This is part of why I loved CC — someone else was doing the science experiments for me! This is something I will have to get over, and I hope I can! HA…. but in all seriousness, I love what I’ve seen in this curriculum. I really debated between this one and this other one, but in the end went with the Adventures in Creation for a couple reasons. First, it seemed more “little kid” with fun colorful graphics, scripture memory with hand motions, etc. This appealed to me as I thought through incorporating Everett into this time. Second, it covers the basics of what science is and why we study it, and follows a story line based on Biblical events, tying everything we learn back to the 6 days of creation, which I thought was pretty cool!
Everett (age 4)
I bought this for Everett last year but it was very clear he wasn’t ready for it. I switched gears and walked him through some VERY basic workbooks (the kind you can find at the Dollar Store) for numbers, counting, phonics and writing. He loved them! I also used ABC See Hear Do which has helped him to gain confidence and learn his letters much better. That being said, I’m going to pull out the Pre-K again in the fall and see if it’s a better fit for him then. While Reaghan is doing some independent work, I’ll go over this with him.
I’m also planning to include Everett in our Morning Time, Bible, Science, Social Studies and Tea Time as well.
A BREAK FROM CC + a New co-op
We LOVED our time in CC last year — it was fun, the kids loved it, it was a nice break mid-week, the families are amazing in every way, and the day was academically and socially engaging. When we joined I was brand new to homeschooling and was SO NERVOUS. I truly needed someone to hold my hand and tell me how to do things. I also needed a structure to follow, and a community of like-minded mama’s who could help me when I was in a pickle or needed help with something. As I began looking through the Cycle 3 content, though, I just felt increasingly uncomfortable presenting the history information to our kids through the memory sentences (as I addressed above). This prompted me to take a closer look at the entire program and ask myself WHY were we signing up for another year. It was worth every penny and more until suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, it just wasn’t anymore, at least for this next year.
I knew that I would probably be spending more time and money supplementing with resources to help further explain the memory work, and the more I thought about that, the more I didn’t want to do it. Like I said, we loved our time in CC, so I was super torn. A few days later, I had a conversation with some moms in our church and realized that there are 5-6 families who are homeschooling this year that were not homeschooling at the start of last school year. It just clicked then that I should invest in my local community and that it would be a loss not to do so. We will be putting together a very laid back co-op that will meet weekly and go over the content in the On Mission magazines (which are beautiful if you have not yet seen them!)
I still adore CC and their resources, and will be using the Foundations Guide as a supplement to some of the other things we are doing. I also attended the (free!) parent practicums online this year and found them deeply inspiring and helpful. I love the Classical model of education (more fully explained in this post), but I also love the Charlotte Mason model. Unlike most people out there, I happen to think that they can mesh really well together :-) I love that young children’s minds are primed for memorization (something that will show up in our schooling this year quite a bit) but also they are curious to know more and want that “feast” of ideas, as Mason would call it, to explore. I’m excited to try something new and pull from both this year.
DAILY RHYTHM
I read a great article from Sonlight on structuring your homeschool day and really loved the approach. It’s similar to what we already do, but felt like it gave me a bit more structure to hang our daily tasks on, and some words to use with my kids that they can understand. This article talks about splitting your day into 3 parts — morning time, table time, and tea time. I love this because it bookends the table work (focused lessons) with two times that are more connection focused while still providing opportunities for learning. This rhythm seems like it’ll help us to get done all the things we desire to do in our day, without the stress.
We will also be looping certain subjects to decrease overwhelm but also fit in the topics we want and need to be exploring.
It’s very important for me to leave time for play dates, free play, outdoor time, etc. and not jam our days packed with school. Their education is important, but at this young age, the ability to play and explore is right up there in importance with their formal education.
Our Daily Rhythm will go something like this:
MORNING TIME (30 min)
Sing Doxology // Hymn
Scripture Memory
Read Aloud
TABLE TIME (1.5-2 hours)
Bible (20 min)
Math (20 min)
Language Arts (20 min)
Handwriting (10 min)
Loop — Science or Social Studies (20-30 min)
TEA TIME
(this will take place in the afternoon after their quiet time, and I’m leaving it open ended on the time frame for it)
Loop —
Fine Arts (CC Foundations Guide)
Music (Composer or tin whistle lesson/practice, CC Foundations Guide)
Nature Journal
Read Poetry
USA Map Drawing // tracing the US map practice // looking at The 50 States book
Free Art — Art Hub for Kids or Deep Space Sparkle
Other Resources
New World Echoes — this is a gorgeous book that houses poems, tall tales, and legends with beautiful illustrations. It’s a wonderful addition to your read aloud library. We read through Old World Echoes last year and loved it! It was created to pair with Classical Conversations Cycle 3 but you definitely don’t need to be doing CC to benefit from these classical stories, in my opinion.
Tin Whistle — Reaghan had a blast learning some songs on the tin whistle last year, so I decided to get one for Everett too. The CC Foundations Guide has short lessons on music theory and reading music, as well as song short songs to learn. This is Jordan’s domain, so he will be helping them and I stay completely out of it, ha!
My Homeschool Favorites on Amazon — just a few of the books and resources that I have found helpful!
Planning Resources
Planning to Teach from Rest — a wonderful and short blog series from Sarah Mackenzie about how to plan your homeschool year from REST.
Three Part Daily Routine — what we are basing our Morning Time, Table Time, and Tea Time rhythms on.
Homeschool Vision Planning Guidebook — I loved being able to back up and cast some vision before setting anything in stone. Highly recommend these planning sheets.
Massachusetts Homeschool Laws
For anyone who is in MA like me, this is the first year we have needed to submit a letter of intent to homeschool for Reaghan based on her age. I found the following website very helpful in giving me a structure for my letter of intent. My plan is to send a brief update on progress along with my letter of intent for next school year, next July: AHEM Sample Education Plan (wording for your letter of intent)
I also found the Facebook group MHLA Massachusetts Homeschool Group Discussion very informative on laws and when to spot when districts are over-reaching in what they are asking you to submit for “approval.”
For anyone in a different state, you can always google your state laws (they are all different) along with your school districts guidelines, but I have found it most helpful to ask local moms what they have done. Many districts overreach in what they ask for or “require” for you to homeschool, but legally by the state, you do not need to jump through that many hoops. So connect with some local moms for help in this area!