First Grade

Welcome to First Grade! I can't believe we have already completed our first week of schooling. This year we are using our schedule board again, it is so helpful to keep us on-track, make sure everything I need to do gets done, and K. knows exactly when things are happening. This dispels lots of questions and nagging.

This year my posts will be different from Kindergarten, as I will not be putting up EVERYTHING we do. You can check out the "First Grade" page for our curriculum schedule. Weekly posts will just have games and activities that worked really well, books I used that aren't listed with the curriculum, etc. So if I don't mention a subject, it doesn't mean we didn't do it, it just means that there wasn't anything that stood out in my memory to write about. You will also notice that the posts are by the Set of weeks, and I'm just adding each week to that post.

This year for our Reading Incentive Program, I put a strip of paper (I bought rolls of adding machine tape to use as borders on our bulletin boards.) numbered in 25 increments (up to 800) on one of our bulletin boards. On the paper we are keeping track of the new books K. reads. When she reaches the 800 she will get a special treat. I haven't decided on the treat yet. It depends on how quickly she reaches the goal. It could be anything, from going to Golden Spoon to $1 to spend at the Thrift Store to a couple books at the $1.00 Book Store.

I've made a "New School Year Resolution". It is to take at least one picture of K. everyday. I get so wrapped in "life" that I forget to take pictures. So this year the camera is sitting on our dining room table (our base for schooling) instead of on a shelf in my room. I haven't taken a picture EVERY day, but I am getting better about it.

First Grade, Bible, Set One

• This year I am using our song as our "Call to Schooling". I start it playing (sorta loud) and K. comes running, ready to start singing.
• We did Way #3 from Our 24 Family Ways. One day we talked about what honoring was, and that a person could obey without honoring. Then next day there was something going on and K. said to me, "I'm obeying but I'm not honoring." This has really opened up some discussions for us.
• The week we read Genesis 1 - 7, I gave K. a coloring page that related to each day's reading because she tends to listen better if her hands are busy. And no, we aren't skipping the genealogies.
• When we read the first chapter of Being a Good Friend, I had K. draw a picture of her family. When we read the second chapter, I had her draw a picture of her friends as a gift. We read each chapter twice. The first day we read chapter 2 was a Park Day, so we were able to talk about how she could treat the friends she would see that day as gifts from God.
• I have put last year's catechism on a 1-inch book ring so they are easy to go through and review. We review them once a week.

• We are really enjoying the YWAM biographies. I've broken each book into three sections, so we just read a few pages three days a week.
• The Creative Focus in Life Lessons was drawing a treasure chest and then drawing yourself or your name in the chest because "I am God's treasured possession".
• Now that we have completed learning Psalm 1, K. can earn 50¢ during our "break week" by reciting it without any helps or mistakes.

First Grade, Writing, Set One

• We practiced drawing the robin and the background on scrap paper before she drew on the nice paper. I walked away when she was drawing on the nice paper because I didn't want to be telling her how to do it. That was the purpose of the practices. She really did a good job, and it will be fun to see how she improves over the year.
• We wrote a poem (Rhyme Time from Games for Writing)
• Next time we play Halting Stories (Games for Writing) I'm going to write the names of some stories (Three Bears, Red Riding Hood, etc.) on paper for us to choose from for our story. K. did well not loosing her train of thought, but the story was all over the place and went on forever.
• We played Egg Carton Tales (Games for Writing). K. really likes this activity, and during our breaks from school asks to play it. I really need to figure out some way to close the holes in the cartons because we kept having to find the jelly bean and put it back in the carton. But I guess that maybe that adds to the fun of the game. (We used a jelly bean this time instead of a nickle.)
• I set the timer for 7 minutes when we played Silence is Golden (Games for Writing).

Here K. is copying the paragraph from the book.

• When we played That's Good, That's Bad (Games for Writing) we were laughing a lot. I had to come up with something "that's bad", so I had the boy in our story trip and break his leg. A couple sentences later K. had to come up with a "that's good" and "that's bad". She had the boy put in a car to go to the doctor, but then the car wouldn't start.
• I found a Valentine's Day picture in an old Ideals magazine for the activity Write it For Me (Games for Writing).
• We really enjoy playing How Many Words (Games for Writing pg 127). Sometimes our sentences are really silly and sometimes they are profound.
• Word by Word (Games for Writing) is an activity that grows character. Throughout kindergarten I learned that K. was not going to help write the story I had in mind, so now I only insist that it make sense. For instance, if we already have "Landing was hard, but flying" and K. adds "bumping heads!" that makes no sense. We crossed out bumping heads and instead she wrote "he bumped". This activity is still growing K.'s character because she gets upset when I don't add the words she wants me to. Our rule is: I can't tell her what to write, she can't tell me what to write, but it has to make sense -- it may not be logical, but a person reading it needs to be able to understand it.

First Grade, Spelling, Set One

• K. enjoyed writing a letter to me about her favorite color.
• Since K. spelled the words correctly on the first day I introduced them, we did our pre-test orally.
• I really like BJU's spelling courses because they don't ask the children just to memorize spelling lists. Never do they suggest the children write the words out a bunch of times, and spelling generalizations (rules that don't always hold true) are taught and reinforced with each lesson.
• K. really is enjoying the letter writing part of our lessons. This is an example of a letter writing lesson:
• On a sticky note I wrote: Winter is almost over, plants are starting to grow. Tell about some plants you have seen waking up from their winter sleep.
• On one of her writing papers I wrote (in marker):
• On the first line "Dear"
• On the second line "I saw"
• On the last line "Love,"
• K. completes the letter. Here is how it ended up:

Dear Mom,
    I saw a fig tree in the back yard. Your bush is making lots of flowers. Hope you are enjoying God's good life.
Love, K.

First Grade, Grammar, Set One

• Compound Words: I made a list of words and we took turns picking a word and drawing a picture equation for that word. Examples: steam + ship = steamship, cross + road = crossroad, sea + sick = seasick

• Learning Games for Kids has games for compound words that K. enjoyed.
• I found a list of prefixes and suffixes, with their meanings on Scholastic's website. Learning Games' games for prefixes and suffixes are too advanced for now.
• We practiced dividing words between the prefix/suffix and base word. There are other ways to do this besides just drawing a line. One idea I had was to write the words on scrap paper and let K. cut the words parts apart.
• One day we play some of the "Syllable" games on Learning Games for Kids.
• Do you have a hymnal? Then you have a great resource of words already divided into syllables! Instead of asking your child to divide words in the correct place, have them circle in red the words that are divided between double consonants, circle in blue words that are divided after a long vowel, etc. Oh, make a photocopy for them to write on -- not in the hymnal!
• The day I introduced the idea of Action Words was a Park Day (nice how God worked that out!). So after the park we sat down and made of a list of all the things she did at the park -- ran, jumped, slid, ate, drank, sat, swung, etc.
• Some ideas for practice identifying Action Words
• write four words (3 nouns, 1 an action verb) have your child circle the Action Word
• write a simple sentence and have them circle the Action Word
• print some pictures from clip art that show someone doing something, have your child write (or dictate) a sentence about the picture and circle the Action Word
• We played a syllable game on Learning Games for Kids. I like that if you divide the word wrong it has you fix it and doesn't just go to the next word. You can also get hints if you want them.
• To review suffixes, prefixes, and compound words we looked at the text of Sammy the Seal. The book has no prefixes, but suffixes and compound words abound.

First Grade, Reading, Set One

• Here is the Picture Label Activity (from Games for Reading) we did this week. When we were through K. wanted to write a story, and that is what is on the right side of the paper.
• We are reading the book Pulling Together, the chapters are a bit long, so I read the pages on the left and K reads the pages on the right. Listening and comprehension are also a part of "Reading".
• This week our activity was putting Puzzles together. (See Games for Reading about why puzzles are a part of Reading.)
• Our third week our activity was Blindfold Drawing (see Games for Reading). This activity always brings lots of laughter at our silly looking pictures.
• Now we are in the BJU Reader, and each day's selection is short. K. reads it all herself and I ask questions about it.

• I changed Word Ladder (Games for Reading pg 55) from being a reading game to a vocabulary game. Whenever we read (whether it is K.'s reading lesson or history or a fun book I'm reading to her, or even from our memory verses) and she asks what a word means, we add it to our vocabulary list. So with Word Ladder she read the word and then told what it meant in order to move up to the next rung of the ladder. When she got to the top she got the prize of five pennies.
• We keep track of our vocabulary words by writing them on large letters cut out of 9" x 12" construction paper. We are spelling the word "VOCABULARY". We have the V and the O filled and are now working on the C.

• We ended this set of weeks playing Same and Different (Games for Reading). I used the same pairs of words from last year.

First Grade, Math, Set One

Here are some games and activities that K. really enjoyed:

• Learning Ordinals: Find a Penny, page 52 in Games for Math. We tried this game last year, but it wasn't much fun. This year she had a blast playing it. It also gave her practice in using the terms "closer" and "farther", which I hadn't realized was a difficulty.
• Counting On: Grasshopper in Games for Math. I used numbers 10 - 30. When I would tell her to jump to a number that was 1, 2, or 3 more she did that really easy, but if it was 4, 5, or 6 more, she had to stop and figure it out.

• Story Order. I made this activity up.
• I found pictures that had the same theme (all had a dog and people doing something) on my clip art disk. I printed them out (12 of them), cut them out, and glued them on colorful circles.
• K. picked 10 of the pictures and placed them on the rug -- in two rows of five.
• I had the words "First" through "Tenth" written on paper.
• I mixed the words up and then, starting with the one on top, placed one under each picture, starting at the top left. (The order is still mixed up.)
• Then I picked up the picture that had "First" under it and started telling a story (a few sentences). Then the "Second" picture and continued my story. All the way through "Tenth".
• Then it was my turn to pick the pictures and K. told a story as she picked up the pictures in the ordinal order.

• Park Day is always a great day for Number Stories (Games for Math). This way math can easily be done in the car on the way to the park.
• Dominoes can be turned into a fun math game. I have a pretty set (the tiles are white and the dots are different colors) of double six dominoes. We divide the tiles between us (each gets 14). The person with the double 6 goes first. What makes this a math game is that when you put your tile out, you say the addition or subtraction equation. So when the double 6 is put out the player says "six plus six equal twelve". We usually play twice. Once is addition, and once is subtraction.
• I changed Number Ladder (Games for Math pg 71) so that the numbers on the ladder were 0 through 6 (4, 5, and 6 are there twice) and our spinner has 2 through 6.
• The first half of the year we are concentrating on equations up to 6 + 6 / 6 - 6. The second half of the year we will go up to 12 + 12 / 12 - 12.
• We used buttons and a book instead of paper clips and our hand when we played What Did I Do? (Games for Math page 62) We took turns putting out a number of buttons, then the other player closed their eyes while the first player made a change in the number of buttons (either adding or subtracting). Then the second player had to tell how many buttons had been added or taken away.

• To practice the idea of renaming 10 ones as one 10 we played Group 10 (Games for Math pg 155) and Fifty Wins (Games for Math pg 138). K. won both games!

We use UNO cards for Group 10 and just ignore the cards that have words or the number 0.

• For practice with fractions we went to the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. Under Number & Operations, Pre-K - 2 there are activities where you can create fractions and name fractions. Although I would not classify these as games, K. enjoyed them and the idea of fractions seemed to "click", especially when doing the "Fractions - Parts of a Whole" activity.
• Races (see Kindergarten, Math, Weeks 25, 26, and 27) continue to be K.'s favorite way to practice her addition.
• This week we did Triangles (see Kindergarten, Math, Week 31), only I held the stack of triangles, covering one number with my hand. I put 1/8 cup of yogurt raisins in a bowl. I did not tell her to be fast, only correct. She could use her fingers or the raisins to work out a problem if she wanted to. If she made a mistake, I got a raisin. When we were through, she would get all the raisins left in the bowl. We have 30 or 36 cards -- I only got 4 raisins.
• The day we played Shape Lotto K. wanted to play it three times, which was fine with me. I had made a version that had both 2- and 3-dimensional shapes. She didn't recall the names of all the shapes the first time we played, but by the third time, everything was clicking again.

• To count the number of sides and corners shapes have, I drew shapes on a piece of paper. K. used a green pencil and put an 'x' on each side and circled each corner with a blue pencil. We counted as she marked them.
• For same shape/same size I looked on-line and found some worksheets. I didn't print them out, we just did them on the computer, but it gave me some ideas for a game for the next time we work with shape/size.
• For symmetry, we got a couple books from the library.
• The Shape of Things by Janine Scott -- it only had one page on symmetry, but at the back of the book it had a couple web sites. Primary Games has some fun learning games.
• What is Symmetry? by Mindel and Harry Sitomer -- this is a great book. It has you cutting paper and poking holes and folding things to learn about symmetry. It goes into point symmetry, so we will skip those pages, but we will probably play with plane symmetry -- in front of a mirror!

First Grade, History, Set One

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

• Long, Long Ago by Michael Berenstain -- I used this book our first day to refresh K.'s memory of what we learned last year, and lay the foundation for this year. I did not read the whole book to her, but stopped at the Renaissance.
• The Story of King Arthur and His Knights retold from the Howard Pyle original by Tania Zamorsky
• Life in a Medieval Monastery by Marc Cels -- we mostly looked at the pictures and read the bold writing. We found it interesting that the only had one meal a day during the winter. We decided that we wouldn't have liked that.
• The Two Brothers by Minfong Ho and Saphan Ros -- this is a folk tale from Cambodia
• Pangur Ban by Mary Stolz -- I've started reading this during our family reading time.
• Manners and Customs in the Middle Ages by Marsha Groves -- this book has lots of pictures. If you just look a 2 or 3 pages a day, you can read all the information. After seeing the pictures and reading about the knights, K. wanted to act it out. We also acted out Wedding Customs and Baptism (although, since we are Baptist, we talked about how this does not save a person, but made it more like a ceremony where they name the child).

• The Crafts and Culture of a Medieval Monastery by Joann Jovinelly and Jason Netelkos -- we looked through this book, sometimes reading, sometimes just looking at the pictures and their explanation. Then I let K. pick one craft to do (many were above her skill level, but there were two or three that were easy). She decided we would make pretzels. We had a good time and they tasted good!

• The Barefoot Book of Pirates retold by Richard Walker -- K. really enjoyed hearing all the stories, but the best part (to her) was acting them out after we read them.

First Grade, Science, Set One

Here is a list of resources we used for learning about the Arctic:

• Ice Bears by Brenda Z. Guiberson -- this book is really great because it doesn't just spew out facts, but puts the facts in a story.
• All Kinds of Habitats by Sally Hewitt -- I used this book the first day of school to introduce the subject. I'll probably get it from the library to introduce each biome.
• Survival at 40 Below by Debbie S. Miller -- another great book that puts facts into a story. We also got our list of (more than) 10 animals that live in the Arctic from this book.
• A Tundra Food Chain by Rebecca Hogue Wojahn -- K. loves this book. 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.
• Call of the White Fox by Willis Lindquist -- I read this during our family reading time.
• Nutik & Amaroq Play Ball by Jean Craighead George -- picture story book about a boy and his dog in the arctic
• The Call of the Wolves by Jim Murphy -- a picture story book about wolves in the arctic
• What if There Were no Lemmings? by Suxanne Siade -- I skipped some of this book because it got too politically correct for my taste, but the paintings are great.
• Arctic Adventures by Raquel Rivera -- this book has four stories. Pick and choose which to read.
• These books we just used to research information about animals and plants:
• The Arctic by Wayne Lynch
• Arctic A to Z by Wayne Lynch
• Pole to Pole by Barbara Taylor

• I printed out pages that have a space for an animal's name, its picture (we found them on the internet), three lines to write something interesting about the animal, and she circles either Nocturnal or Diurnal, and Carnivore, Herbivore, or Omnivore.
• One day we looked through our books for ten plants that grew in the Arctic. The next day we looked on-line for pictures of them. I printed out pictures (1-inch high). K. cut them out and glued them by their names.

Here is the list of resources we used for learning about the Antarctic:

• A Penguin Year by Susan Bonners -- learn all about the Adelie penguins in a story format
• Icy Antarctic Waters by Wendy Pfeffer -- has lots of interesting information in an easy-to-read format, especially information about Emperor Penguins, Minke Whales, and Weddell Seals
• Exploring Our World: Polar Regions by Terry Jennings -- has a good diagram and explanation of a glacier. There is information on both the Arctic and Antarctic.
• Penguins! by Gail Gibbons -- a good fact book
• Antarctica by Allan Fowler -- this a a "Rookie Read-About Geography" book, and although it does not give a bunch of information, it is a good book for very young children. It can also be used as a starting point for childen. example: "This book says that some birds and insects live in Antarctica. Let's look in these other books and see what birds live there."
• Antarctic Journal by Meredith Hooper -- picture book, but really a journal about her summer at Antarctica. Don't try to read the entire book at one time.

Here are books I wish we had been able to get to (I didn't think there would be so many good books about Antarctica!):

• The Antarctic Habitat by Molly Aloian and Bobby Kalman
• Amazing Arctic & Antarctic Projects You Can Build Yourself by Carmella Van Vleet
• Antarctic Antics by Judy Sierra -- this is a book of penguin poems
• March of the Penguins from the film by Luc Jacquet
• Antarctica by Lynn M. Stone
• Animals Robert Scott Saw by Sandra Markle

On our last day we made a chart of how the Arctic and Antarctic were Alike and Different. In trying to answer a couple questions, we found the Polar Discovery website. We didn't get to look at everything, so K. wants to be sure to visit it again.

First Grade, Fine Arts, Set One

We are learning about Johann Sebastian Bach. Here is a list of books and cd's we liked:

• Bach's Big Adventure by Sallie Ketcham
• Play Bach! [cd] written by Chris Ceraso and Gena Raps -- this cd is probably more interesting for older students
• Mr. Bach Comes to Call [cd] by Karen Lavnt -- tells the story of Mr. Back dropping in on a little girl at the piano.
• Famous Children: Bach by Ann Rachlin -- tells the story of Bach copying his brother's music, with one page about his adult life
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Great Man of Music by Carol Greene -- this is A Rookie Biography book
• Johann Sebastian Bach by Mike Venezia