Monday, August 27, 2018

Curriculum Choices 2018 - 1st Grade

Alexi is a 1st grader this year.

Language Arts & Spelling: Abeka Grade 1
Arithmetic: Abeka Grade 1
Handwriting: A Reason for Handwriting A
Science: Abeka Discovering God's World Grade 1
Bible: Sonlight Core B - Leading Little Hearts to God
Bible Memory: I Can Learn the Bible - The Joshua Code for Kids
Read-Aloud Literature/History: Sonlight Core B - Introduction to World History
Music: John Thompson Piano Primer A

Last year we adapted Sonlight Core A to what we could accomplish with 2 toddlers in the house while trying to homeschool a Kindergartner. That covered Bible, Literature and History for Alexi.

We finished and loved A Reason for Handwriting K and I'm stoked that from here on out using that curriculum she is writing scripture. Honestly she loves writing and is always jotting something down in her many notebooks, so I'm not too worried about her handwriting.

Phonics and Reading was the subject that was a bit of a struggle bus for us. I chose Horizons for both Phonics and Reading and Math for Kindergarten, knowing that many people found it to be advanced. Math was great (and is by far Alexi's favorite subject), but Phonics and Reading was a drudgery. The concepts were easy enough for her to grasp but the entire workbook had so much writing that her hand would hurt after doing the entire lesson (and those were long too, sometimes 3-4 pages) and almost every lesson was set up the exactly same way. By the end of the regular school year we weren't even half way through yet and I had tried a bunch of different ways of tweaking what we did with the curriculum. So this summer we snagged Abeka's K5 Phonics and Reading (which is what I learned to read with) so we could be prepped to do Abeka's 1st grade this year. We are on track to be done with the K5 program mid October.

Because we are switching to Abeka for Language Arts, it just made sense to switch math as well. As far as I'm concerned, I'm thrilled that we have switched to "my" curriculum from my elementary years!

Mrs. Troyer

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