OLD HOMESCHOOLERS NEVER DIE . . . THEY JUST WRITE CURRICULUM


"Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants."

Deuteronomy 32:2

Courses of Study

To view the Course of Study for each grade level, you can click on the "Course of Study" label
or "Search This Blog" for the specific grade level you wish to see.
To date, I have courses of study completed for kindergarten through fourth grades.

Newsletter Articles

In 2013 the Lord started me producing a newsletter for the homeschool group we are a part of. Every other month I write an article on a topic the Lord has put on my heart. I've decided to add these articles to this blog. I hope you will find encouragement through some of my ramblings. You can click on the label "Newsletter" to find the articles.

Saturday, June 9

First Grade, Bible, Set Four

  • We are continuing and enjoying Little Pilgrim's Progress.
  • "We choose to be gracious, even when we don't feel like it." is the Way we are working on during this set of weeks. We are discovering all sorts of situations in our lives when we can apply this.
  • Chapter 5 in the Friendship book was about being gracious to our friends and having a good attitude by deciding before we get together that we will be cheerful and cooperative.
  • Lesson 4 in Life Lessons is about God's most precious gift -- Jesus and eternal life. One of the activities was to make a gift. K. wrote "eternal life" on a card and put it in this little box. Then we wrapped it in white tissue paper. She wrote "Jesus" all over the wrapping paper and we attached a card with her name on it.
  • This week's new catechism, "Where is God?" brought us back to last year's memory work with Psalm 139.

First Grade, Writing, Set Four

In addition to Draw Write Now,
  • I'm a Quiet Mouse (Games for Writing pg 150) -- after working with similes in the last set of weeks, this was fun to play, but I would suggest changing the metaphors to similes.
  • Three Sentence Challenge (Games for Writing pg 146) -- K. really enjoyed this and we completed all the sets of words given in the book before she wanted to stop.
  • Writing to Form (Games for Writing pg 139) -- we came out with very different stories, and it was a lot of fun to read them to each other.
  • How Many Words (Games for Writing  pg 127) -- this is another game that K. and I really enjoy and she usually wants to play longer than I had planned (like that's a bad thing!)
  • She is so . . . (Games for Writing pg 121) -- we did "She is so fast" this time. We had "her" running right out of her shoes, blowing the roofs off of houses, and stopping the earth spinning.
  • Writing to Form (Games for Writing pg 139) -- I used the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Next time I won't do something that is so long.
  • I printed a couple sheets of paper with pictures from our camping trip (and lines for writing). She is writing a few sentences each day about the trip. Then we will put them in a folder.
  • K. wrote about five sentences each day this week to complete her journal about our camping trip.


First Grade, Spelling, Set Four

  • We are working on dictionary skills, also -- entry words, guide words, word forms, sample sentences
  • Alphabetical order, by first letter, is another skill that gets worked on with spelling
  • Somtimes K. wants to do her spelling "tests" on the refrigerator -- I think I'd better get another set of magnetic letters!

First Grade, Grammar, Set Four

  • I found a couple good FREE websites with printable activities for leaning Location Words (prepositions). Busy Teacher and Free Language Stuff 
    • Where Is Mortimer? by Karen Bryant-Mole
    • If you were a Preposition by Nancy Loewen -- I only read through page 11, because after that it starts teaching about prepositional phases and we aren't that advanced yet.
    • Snail Trail by Ruth Brown
    • Under, Over, by the Clover: What is a Preposition? by Brian Cleary
With this game you make up a sentence (with a location word)
about the picture when you land on the square.
Example: The monkey is between the trees.
  • I am using short stories to teach how to Skim and Scan a story. When you skim, you look for the general idea of the story. When you scan, you are looking for specific information.
  • To review Action Words, Naming Words, and Describing Words, I am making my own Mad Libs from stories in a 1960 Reader called Merry-Go-Round. I choose words to leave blank and ask K. for an action, naming, or describing word. When we are through, we read the story and laugh at the silliness of it. I print out two of each story, so K. can go back and write a sensible story, too.
  • I added in our Review Game this week.

First Grade, Reading, Set Four

We played these games to enhance our learning:
  • Pick a Blend (Games for Reading pg 126) -- I made different boards this time. It is interesting how simple this game is, yet K. really enjoys it.
  • Rabbit Sounds (Games for Reading pg 110) -- I made the level 5 chart with sidewalk chalk in our driveway. We did each sound once, then K. was ready to do something else.
  • Problems and Solutions (Games for Reading pg 167) -- after K. told me what she would do, I asked "and then what" a couple times to make her keep thinking about it.
  • Chain Game (Games for Reading pg 130) -- we did three lists with 10 - 15 words in them. We kept getting stumped.
  • Linking Words (Games for Reading pg 102) -- we actually played this game after dinner one evening because our schedule got wacky that day!

First Grade, Math, Set Four

Games, activities, books, and web sites that enhanced our learning:
  • Measurement Mania by Lynette Long
    • We made a measuring tape (activity #5)
    • We made a measuring cup using just a can of soda (activity #19)
    • We discovered that most "cups" hold more than one cup (activity #20)
    • We tried to find things that weighed one ounce (activity #28)

    • We measured different water temperatures (activity #34)
  • The first day we worked with Comparing Numbers, K. and I secretly wrote down a number, then we showed the number and K. put out the correct wolf, and read the math sentence. The second day I used Uno Cards. I just took the top four cards and laid out two 2-digit numbers.



  •  For Even and Odd Numbers we started a chart.
    • Odds and Evens by Thomas C. O'Brien -- this book has some activities and concepts to explore
    • The first day we used paper clips to determine if a number could be separated into two groups with the same number of paper clips. We did numbers 1 through 20.
    • The second day, she noticed the pattern. We started with 20 paper clips. I asked how many paper clips I needed to add to make the next even number. We did this through the number 30. Then we talked about the pattern and I wrote random numbers in their proper places on the chart. K. colored them appropriately.
    • The third day, I put out 2- or 3-digit numbers using Uno Cards (I just picked them up in the order they were in the stack) and K. held up signs that said "Odd" or "Even".

  • I introduced addition problems up to 9 + 9 this week. For a couple days we worked on grouping concepts. For instance if you take 15 counters (beans, paper clips, etc.) you can group them in different ways (9 + 6; 8 + 7) but you still have a total of 15.
  • We played a game with Uno cards. I made a spinner with the numbers 10 through 18 on it. I divided all the numbered Uno cards between us. Flick the spinner (it lands on 15) you have 1 minute to make as many sets as you can that equal 15, such as 5+5+5, 9+6, 4+5+3+3, etc. We had fun playing it. At this point K. copied my sets a lot, but she did come up with some of her own.
  • We played Addition War with the Uno cards. Shuffle the numbered cards, then each of us took two cards and added them together. The person with the highest sum got the cards. If the sums were the same, we each drew two more cards and the person with the highest sum got all eight cards.
  • Other games we played to help learn our new addition facts (and review the old ones). Math Checkers, Double It, and Fast Track (all from Games for Math).
  • We played Fraction War (Wacky Word Problems by Lynette Long, Activity #15). The activity in the book was for percentages, but we aren't learning that yet, so I changed it to be fractions. We used Uno cards, so all her categories didn't work, so I changed those.
  • For Multiplication Readiness and Repeated Addition we played:
    • Star Count (Games for Math  pg 113)
    • Victor Vampire's Birthday (Games for Math pg 117) -- only I changed it to Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Tigger. Piglet wanted to bring 4 haycorns for each animal; Pooh wanted to bring 5 glasses of honey punch for each; Rabbit had 16 carrots - how many does each animal get?; Tigger brought 1 bottle of strengthing syrup for each animal.
    • Lots of Boxes (Games for Math pg 123)
    • Shoebox Math (Wacky Word Problems #28)

First Grade, History, Set Four

In addition to Child's History of the World, we used:

After reading chapter 51:
  • Knights and Castles by Will Osborne -- the is the research guide to the fiction book The Knight at Dawn (which isn't worth reading, in my opinion).
  • The Medieval World by Philip Steele -- full of illustrations, text in a large font to read to younger children, lots more information in a small font for children that are older
  • A Knight's City by Philip Steele -- a fun book with pop-ups, which give a interactive tour of life in a medieval city. Here is a picture of one pop-up.

After reading chapter 52:
  • Illuminations by Jonathan Hunt -- we mostly looked at the pictures
  • How to be a Medieval Knight by Fiona Macdonald
  • The Middle Ages by Sarah Howarth
  • The Days of Knights and Castles by Pierre Miquel
Literature:
  • Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray -- about a boy (Adam) that gets separated from his father in 1294 and Adam's travels and (mis)adventures to find his father
We are making a castle. First we took a square piece of cardboard and painted the moat. Then we made the walls with battlements. K. drew the battlements and I cut them out. We have attached the drawbridge and made a portcullis. We were going to paint the walls on Friday, but the trees on our street were getting trimmed, and that was much more interesting, so maybe we'll do it over the weekend.




We got the walls painted. (Don't glue the walls together before you paint.) We used sponges to give it a rough look. Inside we have a kitchen, the great hall, and the stables. I used half gallon juice cartons and glued (hot glue worked great) white paper on the outside so K. could paint them. I'm still working on the keep. Since K. isn't old enough to use a knife and cut the buildings, I have found it works better to talk about what buildings we want, then I make them at night and read to her while she paints them. Otherwise, she is sitting there watching me work and getting very tired of the project.


I put a counter along one wall of the kitchen.

There are two tables in the great hall. K. wants to paint the wall yellow with pink dots.

I made this door too big, so it is the stable.

First Grade, Science, Set Four

Here is the list of resources we used in learning about the Mountains:
  • Mountains by David Cumming -- this book has a map that we used as a guide for coloring our map to show where mountain ranges are. It has a few pages on vegetation and wild life, and a really nice illustration of the different types of vegetation at different altitudes of a mountain.
  • Hills and Mountains by Sabrina Crewe -- this is another book that has a little bit of a lot of different kinds of information about mountains, but this one is written for younger children and has some activities to do.
  • Mountains by Fran Howard -- this is another book that touches on what mountains are and where they are and animals there. This one is even shorter, for young children to read on their own.
  • Food for Life: Mountains by Kate Riggs -- this is a book about who eats who
  • Hiding in Mountains by Deborah Underwood --this book is written for younger children, so it has large photos and minimal text. It shows different animals that live in mountains around the world camouflaged in their habitat, and then it has a picture showing the animal "revealed".
  • Who Lives in . . . the Mountains? by Ron Hirschi -- another book with great photos and minimal text
  • America's Mountains: Guide to Plants and Animals by Marianne D. Wallace -- if you can only find one book, this is the one to get. It has full page spread illustrations showing the plants and animals of each mountain range in America (Appalachians, Northern Rocky Mts, etc). K. just loved this book! It is also great for comparing the plants and animals of different mountain ranges.
  • Animals of the High Mountains by Judith Rinard -- this book is divided by continents, and has great photos with minimal text
  • Faces in the Mountains by Ron Hirschi -- great photos
  • Mountain Mammals by Elaine Landau -- learning about six animals that live in the mountains
  • A Temperate Forest Food Chain by Rebecca Hogue Wojahn -- We really like this series of books. You pick an animal and turn to the page designated, then read about it and then choose what it had for dinner last night, turn to that page, learn about it, choose what it had for dinner last night, etc. until you get to plants. There is a lot of information in this book, so to keep it at a 1st grade level we are skipping quite a bit, but it is definitely a book to re-visit when she is older.
Literature or Picture Books about Mountains:
  • Kami and the Yaks by Andrea Stenn Stryer -- picture book about a family in Nepal
  • Caravan by Lawrence Mckay Jr. -- picture book about a trip through the mountains in Afghanistan
  • My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George -- about a boy living by himself in the Catskills
  • Heidi by Johanna Spyri -- about a girl in the Alps

First Grade, Fine Arts, Set Four

Here are more resources for Joseph Haydn:
  • Franz Joseph Haydn: Great Man of Music by Carol Greene -- this is a Rookie Biography, so it has lots of pictures and minimal text
  • I picked up a cd with his Symphony 96: The Miracle and Symphony 100: Military
  • Another cd I picked up has his Symphony 82: The Bear, Symphony 38, and Symphony 104: London
  • We have started listening to The Creation by Haydn.
Another cd we are enjoying is My First Classical Music Album it has fun music by a variety of composers.