School’s Out for Summer!

Samuel and I are finished with our school year.  He is officially done with 1st grade and will be starting 2nd grade in a few weeks.  We are only taking a break till July 16th so we can have more time off during the year.

I neglected my blog badly this past year and don’t have any pictures, but we loved our year with Sonlight.  Samuel really enjoyed the books and loved the science experiments and the DVD that came with the science program.  We had a great time learning about different time periods and cultures all around the world.  I’ll do another post soon showing what we will be doing for next year.

Fieldtrip to Ripley’s Aquarium

We went on a fieldtrip with our homeschool group to Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies.  We hadn’t been there since they had added the penguin exhibit.

Touching horseshoe crabs

Trying to touch a stingray

First Grade–Week 5

We had another great week with Core A!  Samuel memorized his Bible verse for the letter E – Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right – Proverbs 20:11.  He is doing a great job saying all his verses from A to E.  I even tried to confuse him the other day and made him say them out of order and he still remembered them all.  He gets very excited each time he adds a new verse!

In history we’ve been learning about Vikings.  We had briefly talked about Vikings last year when we talked about Leif Erickson, and Samuel was excited to spend more time on them this year.  His favorite project was making a Viking ship!

We finished reading My Father’s Dragon and Samuel and I were both a little sad that it was over.  Samuel was so excited that Elmer and the Dragon finally got off the island!  I need to get to the library and get the sequels soon.

In math, Samuel’s been learning order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) and also learning how to draw pictures depicting addition and subtraction problems.  We had fun making a train and practicing with his stuffed animals.  I made up stories for him like “The train stopped and 3 passengers got on.  They sat in the 2nd, 4th, and 5th seats.” Then at the next stop different passengers would get off.  He had to draw pictures to show what happened and let me know how many passengers were left.

We also worked on counting with pennies and our hundred chart. 

In science we learned about rivers and how they flow to the ocean, mountains, and deserts.  Samuel especially liked looking up the highest mountain peak on each continent and marking them on the markable map.

First Grade–Week 4

I got a little behind on blogging so I’ve been playing catch up with our weeks-in-review.  Hopefully, now that I’m caught up, I can stay on top of things.

We added another Bible verse, and can now say verses for A-D.  Our D verse is Matthew 7:12 – Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.  I’m so proud of Samuel for remembering them all!

In history, we’ve been learning about Ancient Rome all week.  We made a chariot for our craft on one of the days.

We started a new read-aloud, My Father’s Dragon, and Samuel and I are both loving it!  Evidently there are 2 sequels to this book and we will definitely be checking them out from the library when we finish this one!  Samuel begs me to read more than one chapter per day, but I’m too much of a box-checker to deviate from the schedule.

We’re trucking along in math and Samuel actually had his first test this week.  Since everything on it was review from last year, he made a 100!  He was very excited about it!

In science, we learned about fossils, earthquakes, and volcanoes.  Samuel especially enjoyed making a volcano and watching it erupt!

Science at the Zoo

I had planned on signing Samuel up for classes at our homeschool co-op, but then we found out that they have science classes at the zoo on Tuesdays also.  I gave Samuel the choice between co-op and the zoo and he chose classes at the zoo.  He had his first class this week and absolutely loved it!  They talk about a different topic for 3-4 weeks and for these first weeks the topic is chemistry.  They learned about monomers, polymers, and cross-linkers and then got to make slime and bouncy balls.  Samuel had so much fun!  He can’t wait to go back next week!

Showing off his slime

Mixing up his ingredients to make a bouncy ball

Doesn’t look like much yet…

Pretty cool!

First Grade–Week 3

Another fun week with Sonlight Core A!  I completely forgot to take pictures this week though. 

We memorized Colossians 3:20 – Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.  Samuel is doing a great job with his verses and can say all 3 of them together without any prompting!

In history, we finished reading about the Ancient Egypt, touched briefly on Ancient Greece, and then moved on to Ancient Rome.  Samuel is loving learning about all the different cultures!

We finished reading The Boxcar Children.  Samuel enjoyed it and I know our library has the rest of the series, so I may see if he wants to read anymore of them together.   We also read a few stories from the James Herriot Treasury.  I remember reading James Herriot’s books and loving them, so I enjoyed getting to revisit the stories with Samuel.  I’m glad that he seemed to like them too.

We also started Saxon Math this week.  The first few lessons are mainly just review so it’s been easy for Samuel so far, but I’m sure he’ll be challenged once it gets to new material.

We continued learning about weather in science and I wish I had remembered to take pictures because we did several experiments.  We made a tornado in a bottle and a weather vane which were both really cool.

First Grade–Week 2

This week we started learning a new Bible verse, Acts 16:31 – Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household.

In history, we finished reading about the first people, and began learning about the Egyptians.  We made an Egyptian collar one day, which Samuel loved!

We continued reading The Boxcar Children and are now over halfway done…

In science, we started learning about weather.  We did a couple of fun experiments including making our own rainbow, but I forgot to take pictures.

First Grade – Week 1

We finished our first week of first grade this week.  So far, we are both really enjoying Sonlight and are both looking forward to having a great year.

This week we…

Started reading through the Bible using Egermeier’s Bible Story Book…

Started memorizing Romans 3:23 – All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  One thing I’m really excited about this year is that Samuel is going to learn a verse for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, and by the end of the year will have to recite them all in succession…

Learned about the first people – what they wore, how they lived, what they ate, how they traveled.   One thing I added to Sonlight, is a history notebook.  I found these composition books at walmart and each day I have Samuel tell me one thing he learned, I write it down, and then he draws a picture to go with it.  Evenutally, I’ll make him start writing his own sentence, but I wanted to start slow.

Started reading The Boxcar Children…

Learned about the seasons in science and also did an experiment to show how air makes things move…

We are also using SL LA & Readers 1 which involves spelling, reading, explode the code, handwriting, and weekly creative writing assignments.  I probably won’t mention that much on here because it is basically just doing the next thing.  Nothing exciting to record.  But, if Samuel has a particularly great writing assignment, I’ll probably include it.

Ch-ch-changes for 1st Grade

We are making some changes in our homeschool for Samuel’s first grade year.  He has been begging to study more about world cultures.  He is fascinated with all things Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Japanese, Chinese, etc. anything that is different culturally than us.  Since part of the reason we homeschool is to individualize his education, we are taking a year off from Heart of Dakota and are going to be doing Sonlight’s Core A – Intro to World Cultures instead.  We had our box day a couple days ago and Samuel was so excited to see all the books he would be using.  We haven’t been able to keep him out of them! 

Here are a few pics from our Box Day:

To sum it up, here’s all the curriculum we’ll be using for 1st Grade:

Sonlight Core A – Intro to World Cultures

Sonlight LA & Readers 2 – Included in this we will be continuing with Explode the Code and A Reason for Handwriting

Sonlight Science A - Samuel is asking for more experiments, and Adam wants him to have more science than what he was getting in HOD.  Adam looked at the samples, and at the guide and books now that we have them and wants us to stick with this.  Since he’s the resident scientist, I trust his judgment.

Saxon Math 1 – Samuel was having a hard time with Singapore Math because there wasn’t enough practice on a concept and he wasn’t able to fully grasp it before moving on to something else.  I think this will work better for him.

La Clase Divertida 1 – I meant to get started with this last year, but we never were able to fit it in.  Hopefully we will fit it in this year.

Samuel will also be taking 3 classes at our co-op – Health, Music & Movement, and a science class covering Insects & Light (1 each semester)

So, we are looking forward to an exciting year.  Depending on how this year goes, we will either go back to HOD next year and pick up with Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory (Samuel is on the younger side of the guides so he will still fit in) or we will continue with Sonlight.