1st Grade Reading List

Spring time is the perfect time to come up with your next year's curriculum.  I've been doing a lot of digging and if you've been following my blog, you'll know that I've come up with a few things for language arts, math, and piano lessons.  Lately, I've been trying to come up with a list of books that I can read to the kids.  A lot of them are classics and I'm super excited about that.  I remember reading The Hobbit with my mom at a young age, and what I want my children to remember are the good times you can have as we read together.

It's a lengthy list, so bear with me.  Here we go:
Green Eggs and Ham
Chester
Goodnight Moon
Sammy the Seal
Nate the Great
The Cat in the Hat
Danny and the Dinosaur
Amanda Pig and Her Brother Oliver
Little Bear
Amelia Bedelia
The Bravest Dog Ever
Curious George
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Henry and Mudge, The First Book
Mr. Putter & Tabby Pour the Tea
Floss
Frog and Toad are Friends
Angus and the Ducks
George and Martha
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Swimmy
Little Red Hen
Poky Little Puppy
The Egg
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Madeline
Harry the Dirty Dog
Caps for Sale
Stone Soup
A Chair for My Mother
Bread and Jam for Frances
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
Horton Hatches the Egg
Where the Wild Things Are
Emperor's New Clothes
Corduroy
A New Coat for Anna
The Little Engine That Could
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
Doctor De Soto
Billy & Blaze
Millions of Cats
Velveteen Rabbit (abridged)
Thunder Cake
Andy and the Lion
And to think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street
The Story of Ferdinand
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Polar Express, The
Miss Rumphius
Story of Babar, The
Strega Nona
Blueberries for Sal
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Little House, The
Story About Ping
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
The Ox-Cart Man
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
John Henry
Flat Stanley
Make Way for Ducklings
If I Ran the Zoo
Tikki Tikki Tembo
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale
Little Red Riding Hood
Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
St. George and the Dragon
Librarian Who Measured the Eart
Charlotte's Web
The Trumpet of the Swan
Chronicles of Narnia
Any of the Ramona books
Pippi Longstocking
Dr. Seuss books
Eric Carl Books
(I hope I didn't repeat any)

I have a confession.  I love books.  I love old books, new books, picture books, and classic books.  But the problem is that I love OWNING the books I love.  I have issues with libraries.  They're good for when you want to read a book that you've never read before, but if you love the book- you can't keep it.  My point is: I probably spend way too much money on books.  Haha!

Some of these books that I listed, I haven't actually read myself, but the great thing about homeschool, is that you get to broaden your own horizons.  One of the great myths about homeschooling is that you HAVE to know things yourself in order to teach it.  How many times are we teachers of something and we actually learn more from the students?  I feel the exact same thing when I think about homeschooling.  If I don't know a thing about a certain subject, I simply say, "Hey let's learn about this subject together."  Heavenly Father never meant for us to stop learning.  He wants us to learn regardless of our age or profession.  Isn't that wonderful?!?

I'm so excited about this list!  I don't even know where to begin.  I'm always open to suggestions, too, so if you have a book that you just LOVE and would be appropriate for a 1st grader, let me know!!!

Math-U-See

I personally enjoy math, but finding a curriculum to teach math has proved difficult.  Curly Girly started Saxon math (http://www.christianbook.com/page/homeschool/math/saxon-math) in Kindergarten and it was really fun.  She loved playing with the manipulatives, which consisted of pattern blocks, teddy bear counters, linking cubes, tangrams, and all sorts of different, colorful things.  Then, the next year we started Saxon Math 1.  It became a drag.  Where did the manipulatives go?  We weren't hardly using them anymore.  Sure, we're learning how to count with pennies, dimes, and nickels (who doesn't like money?!?), but slowly and painfully, Curly Girly was losing the spark of discovery.

So, what did we do?  We started researching again.  What curriculum is fun?  and uses manipulatives?  We ended up choosing Math-U-See.

Math-U-See is a mastery approach to math.  It does not go by grade levels, but rather, the level at which your child is ready to learn.  If they simply aren't getting multiplication, you could be working on those lessons for weeks at a time.  And for those others who's math concepts come easily, you could work on one lesson in a day.  I loved this idea so much.  It is much better suited to our needs than the spiral approach that Saxon uses.

I can't wait to dive in.  I'm debating if I want to be one of those lame moms who "schools" during the summer or not.  Curly girly has been begging to do school, but I'm still kind of in newborn stage and recovering from all these bugs that we've been getting.  We simply just haven't gotten to it.  I have all these great ideas that I want to implement, but I think Math-U-See is the one I'm most excited about.  We'll have to see.  Ferdinand only has 2 weeks of preschool left, so perhaps when he is home for good, we'll get started and take breaks when the occasions call for it.  I'll definitely keep you updated with what I decide in a later post!

(If you would like to explore Math-U-See some more, please visit their website at www.mathusee.com)

Image taken from (https://www.google.com/search?q=Math+u+see+alpha&safe=active&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=775&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz2MmAxarMAhUN-mMKHVsBA8YQ_AUIBygC#imgrc=SnJIUyZdaw5OcM%3A)

The Best Thing About Homeschool Is...

Homeschooling has its perks.  I love being able to see my children's progress.  Curly Girly's eyes glow with anticipation as we learn new concepts.  She reads from the scriptures every night and she's at the point where we don't hardly need to help her anymore.  I owe the credit to All About Reading.  If you need a supplement or full out curriculum, check it out at https://www.allaboutlearningpress.com

Another thing I love is that you can get them started at any age.  The Sprite has recently showed interest in coloring, like her big sister.  I showed her how to hold a pencil while coloring and while she isn't doing it the best in the picture below, she's now holding it like an adult.  She's 2!  I see another artist in the making.

I'm not sure if we'll continue to do notebooking or not in this fashion.  I love the idea of the 3-ringed binder with tabs separating the different subjects we cover.  I think it will be fun for Curly Girly and Ferdinand to see their work that they've done throughout the year.

With a newborn baby, I've really tried to implement lessons on how important parenting is.  Babies take lots of time and I hope that as they grow older, they will know how important a calling it is to be fathers and mothers.  I'm not perfect, and I'm pretty sure my children know that, but the absolute best thing about homeschooling is that we get to learn and grow together.  I love learning from my kids.  The best lessons to be learned are from the mouths of babes.

Revamping the Blog

I have officially REVAMPED my blog.  Here's a small list of the things that have happened.

• Baby #4 was born January 10th, 2016
• We haven't homeschooled hardly at all since November.
• Our horsey died.  :(  
• We got a new puppy named Bruce.  He's a lab/Austrailian shepherd, rottweiller mix.  Such a GOOD dog and very obedient and loyal.
• We moved into our house and are continuing to work on it.  Hopefully we'll have a private fence up soon.

Life has been SUPER crazy.  And I will honestly try to post some more with pictures.

Right now, I'm putting together next years curriculum.  Here's the plan.

Math:  Math-U-See, super excited about this.  Saxon was getting a little boring for Curly Girly and it would take her over an hour to do her assignments, so we're gonna try this out.  Very simple outline, doesn't take nearly as much time and the manipulatives are fun!!!

Reading/Language Arts:  All About Reading.  Once again, we are so excited about this one.  We're already almost done with level one and will be starting level two in the fall.  Curly girly is already flying through it.  Right now, it's mostly just learning and remember the rules.  Ferdinand the Bull will probably start level one in the fall only for letter recognition.  If he's ready, we'll start doing the sounds.

History: This has been a fun little series that comes from The Well-Trained Mind.  It's supposed to be read aloud and about 1st-2nd grade level.  Curly Girly has really liked it so far and it comes with an activity book.  We'll be learning about the early Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, etc.  Pretty excited about this.

Science: This is a little something I kind of put together myself.  We bought this science animal book and will choose a group of pages to learn about that week.  It's got a wide selection of mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish.  We'll do that for about 20 weeks of the school year.

Then we'll start learning about the human body.  Still not sure which book to do because I am not too thrilled about some of the pages in this one.  But, it's what we have right now, so it may just have to be the one we use this year.

After that we'll do about 6 weeks of gardening and learning about plants.  I got an Eyewitness book from the thrift store that I really like.  Pretty excited to do that with Curly girly and Ferdinand the Bull in the Spring of 2017.

Music and Art:  I will start piano lessons with Curly Girly.  I keep putting it off and I really don't want to do that anymore.  Her motor skills have developed more and she's gotten her alphabet down and is reading more fluently so I believe that she is ready.  We'll use Faber.  I've used this for years and years and it's what we have on hand, so hopefully it'll work and be fun for her.  Ferdinand isn't quite ready to do any music lessons so we'll wait a few more years probably.

Art isn't something I'm really familiar with.  Curly Girly is an avid drawer.  We'll be satisfied with crayons, markers, pencils, paints and pastels.  Fridays are going to be our art project days.  I plan on getting some rope and clothes pins to display their art in the kitchen.  Super excited!