1st Grade Spelling Units #14-26

This time around for Spelling I decided to do something different.  They have two workbooks that have pages in them specifically geared towards spelling and vocabulary so I decided that we would do those this quarter - and take a break from spelling quizzes - and then next quarter we'll see about upping their vocab list.  I also decided to do some Sight Words with them, so we now have a "class" dedicated to that.  Some of the sight words we already did but I figure that is no big deal, it'll be review.

So we will work on their spelling words five days a week and their sight words two days a week (a new sight word each day).  Here are the lists for those two subjects.

Spelling (words in parentheses are ones that we have already done):

Unit #14 - Colors & Food
orange
yellow
brown
(green)
(red)
(blue)
bread
cookie
apple
(cake)
(milk)
(egg)

Unit #15 - Vehicles
car
truck
train
bike
plane

Unit #16 - Clothes
shirt
pants
jacket
socks
shoes
dress
hat

Unit #17 - Numbers
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten

Unit #18 - Verbs
sleep
run
make
ride
play
stop

Unit #19 - 5 Senses
taste
touch
small
hear
(see)

Unit #20 - Weather Words
sun
rain
water
wet
hot
snow

Unit #21 - Nature
tree
grass
flower
pond
sand
sky

Unit #22 - Body Parts
head
arms
legs
feet
hands

Unit #23 - Opposites
old
new
big
little
lost
found

Unit #24 - Verbs Part 2
paint
catch
color
eat
grow
fly

Unit #25 - People Words
man
woman
people
children
they
(boy)
(girl)
(he)
(she)

Unit #26 - Days of the Week*
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

Sight Words (broken up by week):

all
and

at
big

can
come

down
fun

go
had

he
her

it
in

like
little

look
make

me
on
play

* Note - This post originally did not contain Spelling Unit #26.  I had miscounted the weeks and thought that there were only 12 weeks to this quarter.

Two Week Review: October 11 - 24

Big news for Scooby-Doo, but not much for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee.

Scooby-Doo knows how to count to 11.  I had no idea that he knew his numbers.  He has never said a single number to me ever, then out of nowhere I can hear him counting.  I was stunned.  Then, I was even more stunned when he pointed to the correct numbers in his brother's schoolwork and counted them out.  I'm not sure if he actually recognized his numbers, though, or if was just a coincidence.  Anyway, counting out loud was a source of great amusement to him for about three days, and now he refuses to say any number at all.  Sigh.

This led to a big debate over what to do with next quarter's schedule.  I had already written it up to do Colors & Shapes as well as the Alphabet with him.  I debated for a few days about tossing our Alphabet schedule and writing up a numbers one instead, but I decided he knows how to count, it's time to focus on his abc's.

As for his Colors and Shapes schoolwork, it's the same as always.  Even if it wasn't the same nothing I have to say could top him counting (in my book, at least).

Meanwhile, I have nothing super exciting to report for Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.  We did our Ancient Egypt Concept Week (I know Outer Space was on the schedule, but Optimus Prime begged to do Ancient Egypt instead - we'll do Outer Space next quarter) and that post will go up as soon as I have the time to do it.

Handwriting was the same as always.  I'm thinking about dropping it soon.  Not next quarter, we still have a bunch of pages in their old kindergarten workbooks that we never got around too, but as soon as those workbooks are finished up we're dropping the class.

Spanish we finished up our Shapes and moved on to the Spanish alphabet, which is just pages of practicing letters (in Spanish, honest).  More handwriting, sigh.

Science is onto Central and South American animals.  Geography is still landforms.  Logic and Art are the same as always.

We finished up our English book and are onto another one.  I'm loving the new English book because it deals with very simple and basic sentences, which means they usually get to read the sentences out loud to practice their reading and sounding out words.

We got through Math okay.  Optimus Prime panicked, just like I said he would.  Next week it gets even harder when they have to add to totals greater then 10 and subtract from numbers greater than 10.  That means no fingers for help.  I don't think either one of them are ready but we'll do them anyway.

Spelling was the same as always and for Reading we did the short story "The Magic Fish" and had some reading comprehension pages to go along with it.

Looking forward to starting our new quarter soon.

1st Grade Reading List Part 2 & Book Reports

So my reading plan for last quarter was a bit of a success.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee learned quite a few words and picked up on a ton of sight words that we didn't cover.  They do a decent job of reading Level 1 books on their own.  They still need help, they aren't quite there yet, but I feel like we are making real progress so I'm happy.  Hopefully they will have Level 1 books down on their own by the end of this next quarter, but I'm not going to push.  I want them to enjoy reading, not find it stressful.

Since we're making progress, and to avoid boredom, I decided to make some changes in our Reading/Reading Comprehension schedule and to our book goals.

First, for the next quarter we will just be doing Reading Comprehension.  I have a bunch of one page worksheets with simple sentences in a paragraph that you read and answer questions about.  We'll be doing those, where they can practice their reading with help from me and each other.  We'll also work on our large Reading Comprehension workbook.

For our individual book goal we won't have one.  I'll work on the Level 1 books with them in our one-on-one time, but it won't be strictly limited to that. I'm trying to make this upcoming quarter easier than our last one.  There are a bunch of holidays - Halloween (the day before the quarter starts), Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's - a bunch of sugar, relatives, traveling, big meals, baking, excitement, decorating, and shopping.  We'll work on reading in our one-on-one time (as well as whenever they want to of course!), and we'll keep working on Level 1 books together, but I'm not going to force a goal on them, not with everything else going on.

We're also going to drop the Book Reports for this quarter.  I'd like to bring them back next quarter, but we'll see.  They did like doing them, but it was too much writing for them - especially when I had to spell most of the stuff out.

One thing that is not changing, however, is our family book goal.  And here it is:

• Clue Jr: The Case of the Secret Message
• Clue Jr: The Case of the Stolen Jewel
• Clue Jr: The Case of the Chocolate Fingerprints
• The Magic School Bus: The Truth About Bats
• The Magic School Bus: The Search for the Missing Bones
• The Magic School Bus: The Wild Whale Watch
• Pokemon Junior: A Pokemon Snow-Down
• Pokemon Junior: Snorlax Takes a Stand
• Pokemon Junior: Bellossom's Big Battle
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Television Monster
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Living Doll
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Batty Vampire
• Scooby-Doo's Super Case Book 2

We're going to start some new series, which I'm excited about!

Quarterly Curriculum August-October 2013

I completely forgot to post this after I was finally done updating (back in September) so now I'm stuck posting it today since I want to start updating the Optimus Prime & Bumblebee and Scooby-Doo pages.

First, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's curriculum for the past thee months:

School on Friday & Saturday, off on Sunday, school on Monday & Tuesday, weekly quizzes and review on Wednesday, off on Thursday.

Letter Practice - Practicing handwriting, reviewing the alphabet, etc.
Days - Friday & Monday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic letters and/or words workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Number Practice - Practicing handwriting, working on counting to 100, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic numbers workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Spanish - Practicing Spanish vocabulary (broken into different units) and comprehension.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Starter Spanish Grades PK-1 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 2

Science - Learning about different animals (broken into units) with some reading comprehension thrown into the mix.
Days - Friday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Animals Grades 1-3 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 1

English - Learning the difference between vowels and consonants, learning how to sound words out, synonyms, antonyms, compound words, rhyming words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentences, punctuation marks, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - English Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources)
Number of Pages - 2

Math - Addition, subtraction, time, measuring, fractions, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Spectrum Math Grade 1 (Spectrum)
Number of Pages - 2

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Saturday & Monday
Quizzes - The Wednesday after the unit ends
Textbooks - Beginning Geography Grades K-2 (Evan-Moor)
Number of Pages - 1

Reading & Reading Comprehension - Learning to read level 1 books, as well as some reading comprehension & activities with some short stories.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - A book report due every Wednesday
Textbooks - Listen, Read, & Learn Grade 1 (American Education Publishing) for the reading comprehension stories and activities, Step Into Reading Level 1 books for learning how to read.
Number of Pages - Will vary from day to day.

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - No set textbook, however Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing) has a spelling unit section that I will be pulling pages from and Brain Quest Workbook: Kindergarten (Brain Quest) has a spelling section that I plan on using.  I have also printed up sheets from education.com and schoolexpress.com to go along with the spelling units.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday (twice), Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), generic 1st grade logic workbooks
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Art - Coloring, painting, activities in coloring books, etc.
Days - Saturday & Monday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Cheap coloring books from the dollar store of their favorite cartoon characters, as well as cheap paint with water books
Number of Pages - 2

Why are all subjects not covered everyday?  Why are some subjects skipped?

• I don't want to overload them their first quarter.  They're going to have enough on their plate as it is.
• Also, do we really need to cover some of these subjects everyday?  And I'm not just talking about Logic and Art.  Our Science book is neat, and it talks about a different animal on every page, but do we really need to learn about a new animal everyday?  Or should we take some time to make sure they have some other concepts down?  Their Geography book is neat, and doing more would of been nice, however it's a short book and I'm not sure how well they will understand it at first.  To even things out and because of the lack of pages in the book it just made sense to only cover this subject twice a week.
• Why is there no gym?  Someone asked me this the other day so here's my response: they already get plenty of exercise!  They play sports, they do yoga, we go to the pool, we take walks, we are signing them up for football soon - why on earth do we need a gym class?!?
• No mythology still?  Too true.  I'm working on this problem.  I'm having a hard time finding stuff for 1st graders.  I might just have to make something myself.
• Where did Arts & Crafts Day go?  Well, this isn't kindergarten anymore!  I'm not saying we will never do arts & crafts again, but we won't have a whole day dedicated to it anymore.  We needed to make room for all of the quizzes that they will be doing, and a day to write up and review their book reports.  I'm hoping that their book reports will help them learn how to read and right now reading is my biggest priority, more than anything else.  
• Where did Magazine Day go?  It also got tossed.  Like I said, this isn't kindergarten anymore.  We'll still read the magazines and do the activities in them, it just won't be for school anymore.

Scooby-Doo's original post about our goals for the past three months:

Scooby Doo isn't preschool age yet, but he loves watching his older brothers do their schoolwork, and he likes to feel involved so I decided to start doing schoolwork fairly regularly with him.  When Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were three we did one page (front and back) of schoolwork everyday.  Since Scooby Doo isn't three yet I'm not going to go with such a set schedule but I do have some "Colors & Shapes" workbooks that I picked up for him at the dollar store.  I figure we'll tackle however many pages he wants each day, whether it is zero pages or ten pages.

I also set a book goal for us.  We read everyday as a family (see our Reading List page) and I'll read any book to them that they bring me, but I decided that Scooby Doo needs some more "us time" to read more board books together so that is one of our goals for the next three months.  We'll set aside time everyday to read three books together, without his brothers.

Average for everyday of the past three months:

• 1 page from a "Colors & Shapes" workbook (Dora, Care Bears, Minnie Mouse, and generic).
• 3 pages (front and back) coloring books.
• 3 board books a day

*all page number refer to the front and back of one page.  Example, 1 page means the front and back of one page, 1/2 page means just the front (or just the back) of a page, etc.

Concept Week #5: Seasons & Weather

So I logged in this morning to talk about Ancient Egypt and work on putting up our new schedule when I realized that I never put up a post about Seasons & Weather.

Whoops.

So, a quick post about this topic (since it's really rather self-explanatory).

Like I said before, this Concept Week was an extension of the previous one, Calendars.

I found a TON of worksheets at education.com talking about seasons, however they were mostly about the holidays that occur during the seasons.  It worked out, though, since I was able to tie in what the holidays meant, and why they were celebrated when they were.  They also had some weather worksheets, but most of them were above my boys or were supposed to be done over the course of a month, so I only printed up a few.

It wound up being a really easy unit, but truthfully that worked out perfectly for us since we had just recovered from falling behind and were looking at doing Ancient Egypt within a few days.

We had another jigsaw puzzle book (called "Wonderful Weather") for our project.  For our story book we used Chip's Favorite Season by Scholastic.  It's a short, rhyming book that talks about how all the seasons are Chip's (from Disney's Beauty and the Beast) favorite for different reasons.  The book actually worked better than some of the worksheets, since the season's weather was fully described.

Even though the unit was real easy and didn't quite work out the way I was planning on I'm still glad we did it.  My kids definitely needed a refresher on some things, and for other things they didn't realize or never made the connection before.

Two Week Review: September 27 - October 10

You know I completely forgot about this post.  It's a good thing that I had most of it written up already and I only had to polish it up a bit, otherwise I would of had no clue what I was supposed to be talking about!

So, Scooby-Doo is completely caught up according to his "schedule."  He's back to liking coloring books.  He'll color in them, put stickers in them, give the pages polka dots instead of coloring them... whatever, at least he doesn't hate them anymore!  I guess it was just that Batman coloring book that he didn't like.

I wrote up the new schedule and I've decided to start doing Alphabet workbooks with him next quarter, on top of his Colors & Shapes workbooks.

Lastly, Scooby-Doo has gone book crazy these past two weeks.  Instead of one favorite book he now has a dozen.  He follows me around the house carrying at least one of them, demanding that I read it to him no matter what I'm doing.  So far the only place he hasn't ambushed me is the shower!

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee did their September Concept Week - we did Seasons & Weather.  I'll work on getting the post up in the next couple of days here.

Nothing really new went on in the way of curriculum.

Handwriting is Handwriting.  In Spanish we did Shapes (let me tell you that Colors unit was unbearably LONG!).  Science we learned about Asian animals.  We're onto landforms in Geography, which they are really excited about.  They really love Geography.  Logic and Art are the same - they love Logic and always want to do more, Art they are indifferent on.

We're almost done with our English book, which is nice because it means we can move onto something new.  I was both glad and irritated that our current English book is the same as our last one.  On one hand I'm like "That's sheer laziness on the publishing companies part" but on the other hand I'm like "Thank goodness we can go over these exact same pages again since only half of it sunk in the first time."

We started a new Math book and had nothing but easy review pages.  It was a nice break, but next week starts with real Math pages and I'm cringing while looking at some of them.  It's all stuff they know, and Bumblebee will do fine, but the pages have a lot of problems on them and I'm worried about Optimus Prime getting frustrated and just giving up.  Math is not his strongest subject.  There are pages in there that are nothing but 36 addition and/or subtraction problems with no pictures for help.  Bumblebee will see it as a challenge to get through the whole page on his own, and he'll get at least 75% of them right.  Optimus Prime will either be relieved that he's getting his brothers help or he'll panic.  We'll see.

Spelling had a change.  I decided to drop the Spelling quiz.  I decided to try something different next quarter for Spelling, and that included dropping the quizzes, so I decided to take pity on them and figured their last four quizzes they don't have to do.  We'll see how it works.

Big news in Reading/Reading Comprehension!  Optimus Prime is starting to guess what sentences say based on the words he does know and the picture on the page!  I'm excited.  He might not be super good at Math, but he has other strengths - like Spanish and Reading.

Thoughts On Unschooling

I just found this blog today, by following a link on facebook, and on it I found this very interesting post about unschooling and this (also interesting) post about unschooling (same blog, a very good blog too from my glance, I want to add).  After reading these posts it got me thinking about the schedule that I just wrote up for next quarter (and haven't gotten around to posting yet because it's still a bit too early, start looking in a week) and some of the big changes I had made to it - and it also got me thinking about unschooling in general.

For those of you who don't know unschooling is one of the most controversial, misrepresented, and misunderstood (by both the pubic and, oddly, unschoolers) form of homeschooling that there is.  Essentially what unschooling is, is homeschooling by following your child's interests.  There really is no structure, you just let your child play, learn, and explore largely on their own but with you there every step of the way to guide them, support them, and nudge them if you have to.  You don't force, you don't threaten, you don't write up lesson plans, and you don't quiz or test.

I say that it is misunderstood because a lot of people - unschoolers included - believe it means a completely hands-off approach to homeschooling your child.  You don't do anything with them, they have to figure out everything on their own or you only teach them when they ask, you never check on their progress, you never make sure they are actually learning anything, etc.  Some unschoolers don't even read books to their babies because they argue that they are waiting for their child to show an interest in reading and books.

This could not be further from the truth.  True unschoolers may not buy textbooks and force their kids to sit at the table for six hours a day with a lunch and recess break, but they are VERY involved in their child's learning process.  They go out of their way to provide their kids with the resources and tools that they need to learn, they step back and watch, and step in to help when needed.

With all that said, while we have a semi-structured schedule and workbooks I actually do consider myself an unschooler.  Some unschoolers probably would not consider me one, and that's fine, everyone does have their own opinion about what unschooling is or means and even though I just wrote a couple of paragraphs about "real unschoolers"  there are some unschoolers out there that stand by their refusal to read to their kids so that their kids can figure it out on their own.

Just like with everything else there is a right, a left, and a middle ground.  There is no one right definition for every single person, and what it ultimately comes down to is unschooling is about doing what works best for you and your family even if it's the exact opposite of what other unschoolers do.

Which is why I consider myself an unschooler even though we have a schedule, workbooks, and quizzes.

We do this because, as I've explained to my kids before, I want them to have a good foundation for when they play, learn, and explore.  When we did our Dinosaur Concept Week Bumblebee learned even more about dinosaurs then he already knew.  Optimus Prime is always picking up new Spanish words and he uses them around the house in place of the English ones.  We just finished up our Seasons Concept Week and my kids learned about Kwanzaa and Hanukkah because of it, holidays that I didn't even think to mention to them because we know no one who celebrates them.  As a matter of fact, they decided to make Hanukkah cards to mail to Santa!  In our Science book we learn about animals from all over the world, animals that I had never even heard of before we started.  Geography taught them how to read maps, something that they had asked me multiple times to show them how to do.

All of their structured schoolwork is based on their desire to learn these topics - even the dreaded Spelling lessons!  They might hate Spelling, but they are desperate to learn how to read, they are so eager and impatient, so while they might hate writing out their spelling words they are so proud of themselves when they get them down and are able to pick the word out of a book all on their own.

My kids LOVE workbooks.  They love getting reward stickers on the pages they do really good on.  They love when I ask them questions about what we just learned and they get to show off how smart they are.  They love discussing a topic (sometimes to death!) after we've just learned about it.  They love debating, forming opinions, thinking things through that weren't mentioned in the books, and making (quasi-educated) guesses.

One day we will drop the workbooks because we won't need them anymore.  One day they will be able to completely read on their own, figure out math problems on their own, etc and sitting at the table to fill in workbook pages about addition, handwriting, dinosaurs or lemurs will just seem silly.  Yes, we'll still have some sort of basic structure to our homeschooling, but they will have the basic foundation that they need to go new places without me holding their hand anymore.  Workbooks?  Nope.  Quizzes?  Nope.  Book goals?  Maybe.  Book reports?  Maybe.  Zoo and museum trips?  Yes.  Discussing and debating books we have read?  Yes.  Discussing and debating current news stories?  Yes.  Discussing and debating every other new thing we learned?  Yes!

So while we can debate til the cows come home just how far you should take unschooling one way or the other, what it is really about is teaching your child all of the topics that they yearn to learn in the way that works best for you and your child.