Pre-States Trip

I was really busy leading up to our 7 week States trip, and posting pictures was not a high priority. School went on as usual until the day before departure. Here's a snippet of our work:

Science: Identifying matter attracted to magnets

Can a magnet attract through plastic?

Can a magnet attract through glass?

 Kirsty did a fantastic lesson on birds.

British birds - Color by number

Painting a Robin

We found the mass of pebbles using our balance bucket and hexagrams.

2011-2012 Curriculum

Yes, I'm just now updating our curriculum pages from last year. This post is a record of curriculum we used for the 2011-2012 school year for students in first grade and kindergarten. Check out the resource pages on the right side of the blog soon for what we've been using this year.

History

We studied Ancient Times, using The Story of the World as our primary text.

Check it out here.

There are some great activities in this book.

View here.

Science:
We used Nancy Larson Science 1 last year. I'm really pleased with this program! 

You can view the tool kit, samples of the workbooks, and purchase here.

  

Math:

Noah completed Saxon Math 1.

Cooper completed Saxon Math 2.

 Music:

We focused on composers from various periods.

This was our primary text.

Geography:

View here.

Language Arts:

This was our primary text for reading/phonics. 

This was our primary text for language work including grammar.

We used All About Spelling.

Noah used this workbook.

Cooper used this workbook which can be found here.

Literature:

and all of the books covered in the guide (Madeline, Nate the Great, Nate the Great and the Lost List, Miss Nelson is Missing!, The Biggest Bear, A New Coat for Anna, Stone Soup, Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea, Henry and Mudge, Little Bear, Little Bear's Friend, Amelia Bedelia, Peter Rabbit, and The Emperor's New Clothes).
Buy it here.

  
Bible:

This is a great pack of Scripture verses (ESV) that the boys are memorizing.

They can be purchased here.

Our copy was purchased at the First Presbyterian Church, Jackson Bookstore. 

Art:

This book will be our guide.

We supplemented with biographical books about the artist being studied, samples of his work, etc. We continued to use the book below.

View here.

French:
The boys joined several other children for a weekly French class with a native-speaker for a teacher. We supplemented with the resources below.  

 

    

Wagner

We listened to Ride of the Valkyries while coloring a picture of Wagner from our Dover Coloring Book.

Enthralled.

Matter

We learned that there are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. We examined an ice cube, melted it, and watched it evaporate.

 Our following lesson covered transparency.

Water is transparent.

Milk is opaque.

Juice is translucent.

Read, Build, Write

I'm trying to have more independent work for Caleb. He loves to join us for group lessons (Latin, science, history, etc.) and often wants to work at the table while Cooper and Noah are working on lessons. I recently used an idea from Homeschool Creations.

Laminated letter tiles

Hard at work

Success! I've printed a number of picture/word cards (visible at the top under "read" and in the container at the bottom right of the photo). Caleb reads the word (often with help), builds with his letter tiles, and then writes it at the bottom.

Math

Our days typically begin with Latin or theology followed by math.

Noah working on some math skills.

Thursday, September 26

Jolly Music lesson...

Caleb keeps beat with his new claves.

I believe they're using yelling voices here.

The little guys are captivated by their French teacher.

 Kirsty led a fantastic lesson on leaves followed by several activities and crafts.

The younger group did a matching game with leaves and Usborne identification cards.

Caleb shows off some of his collected leaves.

Noah works on his leaf rubbings.