In this post I’m going to outline our basic plan for 1st grade homeschooling, share our weekly schedule and give links to the resources I’m using.

I also want to start by saying that the educators in our school district are AMAZING. AND they have been asked to do the impossible. The school schedule for our 1st graders was mandatory online instruction from 8 – 11:15 with 2 short breaks, and then online again from 12:15 – 2:30 (no breaks). What teacher could possible hold the attention of 21 six year olds for 5 hours a day? We gave it a shot for a few days but in the end it was just too much – too much yelling (me), too much crying (them and me), too much stress (everyone). Plus, my husband and I work full time and making sure the boys were sitting, paying attention, minding their mics, keeping their pants on, participating, and using the right website or app (of which there were many) was a second full-time job. After a lot of reflection and tears I called up close friend who homeschools her 3 boys and asked for help, which she delivered. What would we do without our friends?!?! (Thanks Michelle!) Anyway, I’m hoping to document some of our journey here, for those of you who may find yourselves in the same boat.

Here’s the basic plan. We’re focusing on reading, writing and math. We try and do some art a few times a week, incorporating it in to the lessons. We do quite a bit of science type stuff anyway (that’s kind of my jam) and we have some fun puzzles and map games to cover social studies / geography. I’ll provide links below to some of the resources we’re using, as well as an example of our schooling schedule.

Math

For math we’re using Dreambox, an online web tool, which is what the kids used at school. We had to get new accounts since their school account won’t transfer to a personal account. They like it because it seems like games, and they can earn coins to play in the arcade. The instructions are verbal so I don’t have to hang over them to tell them what to do. I like it because it shows me how much time they’ve spent learning, what concepts they’ve mastered and what concepts they’re struggling with.

We’re also using workbooks (below) as well as flashcards.

Writing

I’ve gotten several workbooks to help with reading, writing and math. So far I really like the Big 1st Grade Workbooks (and this one). We also have the Kumon 1st grade complete set but haven’t used them yet as they arrived yesterday. Every day we do 2 or 3 pages in Printing Without Tears and we haven’t had tears yet so it seems to be living up to its name! I also got white boards they can use on their laps, and that’s what we use when we practice our spelling words.

Reading

We discovered these Bob books at the library last year and the kids really took to them, but since we’re trying to stay home as much as possible I went ahead and got the complete set so we don’t have to go to the library. We’ve also been practicing reading using these First Little Reader book sets and the Marvel, Meet the SuperHeros books. We also have several books on Phonics, like this one.

Other

I also have been collecting games and puzzles for things like science and social studies. We just finished doing this World Map Puzzle. We used to pull this US States puzzle map out every time we were going somewhere, back when that was a thing people did. We also have a puzzle of the human body, Sight Words Bingo, Telling Time Game, and Silly Sentences. We also have this awesome microscope that my parents got them for their birthday. We recently got a trampoline at the advice of my friend, and it’s been amazingly helpful for practicing things like skip counting. They jump as they count which gives it rhythm and keeps them busy. Then they have contests to see who can count the highest without messing up.

Weekly Schedule

I looked at what they need to know going in to 2nd grade, along with a different resources in the educational literature and the resources sent to me by my friend showing what she did for her kids in 1st grade and came up with weekly schedules for Phonics and Math until the end of January. These are super loose and likely to change but it’s helped me to think through what I want them to learn based on what they need to know going in to 2nd grade (which will hopefully be back in the classroom). Keep in mind that I am not an elementary educator – that is a specialized field of study, knowledge and expertise – but this is just something to help me think through our learning path. I’m planning on doing some testing around Christmas to see what skills they need to learn and then planning out the rest of the school year, which will likely include things like short book reports, reading comprehension, multiplication, etc.

A day in the life

Just to give you an idea of what our days look like, I’ll run you through last Friday. We’ve been having a “Letter of the Day”, and the letter of the day on Friday was “C”. So we had Cheerios for breakfast (I had coffee, also “C”), wrote “Cc” on paper bags and went around the house looking for objects that start with “C” and then drew Crazy Cats. We watched a video about cats, and then learned about coronaviruses. We did a spelling test of the words we had practiced all week (rat, hat, mat, sat, fat and got them all correct!), did 3 pages in the “Printing Without Tears” book and then did 30 minutes of Dreambox. This took about 2 hours, give or take.

Not having to pay for childcare for the last 6 months has left our energy depleted but our bank accounts a bit fuller than usual, so we’ve been able to hire a tutor to come a few times a week. She came on Friday afternoon and they used popsicle sticks and jewels to practice adding and subtracting by 5’s. They did a few math worksheets, focused on adding and subtracting numbers greater than 10 and practiced letter sounds. Then she read some books to them and had them read some books to her (see books above). Then they did the human body puzzle and practiced the names of some of the bones (femur, tibia, fibula, etc.).

Hope these resources are helpful and I’ll update as time and energy allow. Take good care, friends!