The First Grade Line-up!

The line-up for this year's curriculum includes:

Bible: Foundations Bible Curriculum 1.

It's broken into Preparation for Christ (1), Christ, Our Messiah (2), and Christ, Our Hope (3) - We'll be starting at 1. This is a wonderful resource, as it is really just a guideline, and I find it easy to go with the flow. My responsibility is to raise my child up in the way she should go, and to teach her about God and His laws. Fortunately, He didn't dictate how much each day, or what order (altho the beginning is where we started), or how long to spend on it. Of course, I teach her always and all the time, according to instruction from the Lord - Deuteronomy 6:7 - "And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up." But teaching (& learning!) doesn't hafta be boring, so we try to make it fun anywhere we can. If that means drawing and coloring a scene from Creation while Mommy reads about it, (and it did), then that's what we do.

We will also continue with Leading Little Ones to God. We've enjoyed that a good bit... it really is an amazing book.

A decent chunk of our curriculum will be Horizons by Alpha Omega, including:


* Reading/Phonics 1
* Math 1
* Spelling/Vocabulary 1, and
* Penmanship 1


I did consider trying a different curriculum this year, but for the most part, my daughter enjoyed Horizons, and did extraordinarily well with it. So, as tempting as it was to try this new curriculum, or that one, I decided, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (And yes, I do realize that 'ain't' ain't a word. ;-)


I probably over-selected for Social Studies/History this year. I purchased A History for Little Pilgrims, complete with Teacher's Manual (its so good!), as well as the accompanying coloring book. This is the SS/H we will begin the year with.


For later in the year, I plan on incorporating A Trip Around the World. I also got Beginning Geography by Evan-Moore. This looks VERY fun, and we'll toss that into the mix, too, at some as yet undetermined point in the coming year.


For the Science, we will continue using those amazing little "Let's Read and Find Out" books that we began with last year. Admittedly, last year we just casually used them, often reading them at bedtime or quiet time, as opposed to school time. This year, tho, we'll be learning more from them, and the learning will be FUN! As you can see, much of the above (especially the boxed curriculum) is paperwork, or, as we homeschoolers like to say, "seatwork".


Well, a significant part of reason I chose to homeschool is that I wanted my daughter to *have fun* while learning. It's not enough for me to 'get it all in her head'. I want her to *enjoy* learning. To that end, Science is where the REAL fun will begin. My Precious is one crafty little gal, and I've truly never met a child who more loved crayons, markers, paint, glue, scissors & construction paper! So, we'll be doing 'lapbooking' to each of our Science books, as we go along thru the year. It will give me a subject to start on, and I can add more learning info as I see fit. She will get the amazing text & illustrations to hold her interest, and free reign to be her creative little self by creating her lapbooks. We are, admittedly, MOST excited about this part of the upcoming year.


And, I do believe that's the Line-up Wrap-up!