Our first week of first grade has gone really well. We've managed to be up and ready and starting on time each morning. C is enjoying working in his spelling workbook (Spelling Workout Level A) everyday. So far, it's like all the pre-K and kindergarten activity books he's always loved.

He really enjoys science, too. We're following the guidelines in The Well-Trained Mind and studying animals, the human body, and plants this year. He chose lizards as his first animal to study, so we spent a lot of time on Monday and Wednesday reading about reptiles, lizards in general, and more specific lizards like Komodo dragons (his favorite), chameleons (my favorite), iguanas, etc. We'll make a trip to the zoo in a few weeks and spend some time watching lizards, snakes, alligators, and turtles. Maybe by then it won't be in the 100's every day!

C hasn't shown too much interest in history (The Story of the World, Ancient Times) yet. I think part of the reason is that J (3 1/2) comes in bored from computer games and toys and starts trying to distract him. We're doing a fun project for our introductory chapter - sort of like a timeline of C's life, his own personal history. He helped me pick out 3-4 pictures of each year of his life, then I downloaded them to Walmart.com for printing. We picked them up Monday and started working on his timeline pages Tuesday. We did ages 0-2 on Tuesday, 3-4 yesterday, and will finish with 5-6 today. I hole-punched the pages we completed and put them in his notebook. He's eager to show them to his grandparents when they come next weekend. I think he'll start to enjoy history more next week when we start talking about early people and not just what history is in general.

As for math, C enjoys it at times and not at others. We're continuing with the Saxon math series. We completed Math 1 last year without any problems, so we're going ahead with Math 2 this year. (Did I mention that in my last post? It's hard to remember sometimes...) Today will be his first timed math fact worksheet, and I'm not expecting it to go well. He'll have one minute to correctly answer as many doubles addition facts as he can. He's a perfectionist, for one thing. He won't be happy if he has to leave any unanswered. He's also a dawdler on these worksheets. He's bored with them and finds any excuse he can to try to get out of them. I remind him that he's only making his time with them longer, but that doesn't seem to matter. I ended up setting a timer for him last year, but this year will be different because he'll have only one minute. We'll see...

I haven't started his music yet. I wanted to wait until we were further into the school year and had a set schedule. We'll be moving from our apartment into a rent house next weekend, so that whole week will be a break from school. Once we get back into the routine, my bi-weekly Bible study group will get started up, then our little homeschool co-op will get underway. (More on that later.)

Well, it's time to get the boys up and begin our day... I'm not looking forward to the timed test this morning. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised!

I'm back, and I'm hoping to be much more diligent at keeping this blog updated this time around. Things just got busy last year, and I reached a point where I didn't feel much like posting anything. I guess we all get that way from time to time...

C and I finished our kindergarten year in mid-July and will be starting 1st grade next week. We completed Saxon Math 1 and will be starting on Saxon Math 2 with the same basic idea - if things get too difficult (which they probably won't), we can take our time with it and stretch it over two years instead of one. We did some studies of continents and countries and touched on some science topics, but nothing like I had planned. That's okay, though. We had fun with what we did.

This year we'll start our morning with math, then go on to language skills (spelling, grammar, reading, and writing), history (3 days a week), and science (2 days a week). I'm also going to work in some piano lessons for him. I took lessons for several years and taught it briefly while in college, so I think I'll do a fair job of getting him started. If it's something he does well and wants to continue with, I'll look into finding someone else to teach him once he surpasses what I can teach him.

I'm wanting to start J with some sort of structured activity during part of our school time. He likes to practice writing some, so I'm going to buy him a preschool workbook that he can work on while C does his work.

We're still following the guidelines of The Well Trained Mind for our studies. I can't wait to get into the ancient history (The Story of the World). There are several other homeschoolers in my Bible study group who will be using the same thing this year. We would like to get together to do some of the history activities together. We're also thinking of forming our own mini co-op this year. I don't know what all that entails, but I'm eager to be a part of it.

For science, we'll be studying basic biology: 20 weeks of animals, 10 of the human body, and 6 of plants. Since we have a zoo membership, we can take a trip there any time we want - for free! We can also get into the small aquarium for free. The larger aquarium is much nicer and has a big rainforest exhibit and a penguin exhibit, but it costs quite a bit to get in. We haven't been in over 2 years, and I think it's almost time to make another trip. I'd also love to take a day trip to Fossil Rim for another field trip. Sea World in San Antonio would be great, too, but I only have so much money - or rather so little! Fossil Rim is definitely on the list; Sea World is a dream for now.

For our language studies, we're going to be using Spelling Workout A, Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind, My Printing Book, and various library books that correlate with our history and science studies.

What are you using this year, and when will you be starting? Can you give me any ideas about our co-op? What about any suggestions about the curriculum I'm using? Tell me!

I taught C to read last fall using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which I highly recommend. For reading this year, we'll read tons of library books, just like we've been doing all summer. We'll cover fun fiction as well as science, math, and social studies topics. One of my goals is to keep a blog list of all the books he reads this school year and have some sort of ranking system for them. There are some books I've run across this summer that weren't worth our time, and others that I'd love to recommend to everyone.

For math, we'll be using Saxon Math 1. C is very bright and already knows most of what is in the kindergarten book. I figure we can take our time with it if we need to and even carry it over two years if it's necessary. I taught 6th and 7th grade Saxon math for a few years and loved it.

Since we won't be having to focus so heavily on learning to read, I thought we'd pick up science and social studies once a week. For science, we'll be using 3 different books recommended by TWTM: Everybody Has a Body, Mudpies to Magnets, and More Mudpies to Magnets. One thing I'm working on now is a schedule of some sort for what we'll learn when. We'll start off with health and nutrition so we can carry it on throughout the year. When we've covered the basics of that, we'll study animals and make a trip to the zoo (when the weather is cooler!). Next will be things like earth science, chemistry, and physics - things we can do indoors when the weather is too cold to be outside. When spring rolls around, we'll study plants and maybe plant our own patio garden. (We don't have space since we live in apartment.)

As for social studies, we'll learn our geography (one of my weak areas) by watching The Amazing Race and plotting the teams' travel path on our super-size laminated world atlas. Then on the pages with the individual continents, we'll locate the cities the teams visit and learn about some of the things about those cultures. We'll also do community studies and take a few field trips to places like a farm, a dairy, a fire station, a post office, etc.

I'm not the only one excited about getting started. C is chomping at the bit to start. He keeps wanting me to give him the math workbook so he can go ahead and get started on it. He doesn't like the fact that when we do start, he'll only be doing one math sheet a day. He'd rather go through it like he goes through the activity books we get at Wal-Mart - finishing the whole thing in a matter of days. When I pulled out the science books this morning to look at a few more things, he asked, "Are you going to teach me something right now?" He was disappointed when I told him we had a few more weeks before we got started. Fortunately he's got a full schedule over the next few weeks, so he won't be too bored while he waits!