First Grade for Judah

It’s the end of March now, so I feel that I can safely say what we “do” for school, without the risk of the pattern changing dramatically in the next week or so. (Probably in the next 10 weeks though – I’m due May 19th!)

Whatwe study is this: Bible Memory, Catechism (Harry VanDyken’s Bible catechism series), Reading, Handwriting, Math (Singapore Book 1B), Science (Young Explorer’s Astronomy), History (American history, currently reading an Ingri D’Aulaire book about Columbus), Literature (Leaves from a Child’s Garden of Verses and The Chronicles of Narnia). We also try to memorize hymns, with the Honeycomb Kids group from our church, and I try to review the states and capitals and the sounds of the Greek lowercase letters from time to time. Judah’s Aunt Rose is also giving him piano lessons.

We only do regular school 4 days a week – Fridays are our catch-up/other day – if we do science experiments or art lessons, we do those on Fridays. Also, cleaning the house for company, and cooking for the weekend! :-) On Monday through Thursday we start at 8:30 (alright, generally a little after) and are done by 11:15 – although we read our literature after lunch, or sometimes in the evening after Monica goes to bed. I go by a scheduled, rather than a prearranged lesson plan: e.g. we do Math for 20-30 minutes between 10:00 and 10:30 – and whatever we get done, that’s what we do for the day – I don’t schedule so many pages a day.  (“Literature” is also known as “read-a-louds!!”) I also have half an hour scheduled for preschool with Ezra (I read picture books to him, or sometimes we do preschool “math” books or mix up bread dough and recently I’ve been starting to have him practice phonograms during that time), and ten minutes for board books to Monica (she especially likes Sandra Boynton books) so that she doesn’t feel left out.

So that’s what we do for school! I don’t know why I wrote this down, really – I suppose grandparents might be interested in knowing how we spend our mornings. And that way when I someday am asked “what did you do for first grade” I might pull this up and be able to tell them! :-)

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