DONE with 1st Grade!

We are officially done with the 1st grade. We have finished our planned
curriculum for this year. There was reading, math, science, handwriting, experiments, activities, bug club, TaeKwonDo, and questions, lots of questions.

This was a fun year and I felt a more comfortable homeschooling this year. I have already started getting ready for 2nd grade. I wanted to list a few things I felt we did right and some things I want to change for next year.


Things We Did Right

1. I was more laid back about scheduling class time. After lunch worked great for him.

2. Breaking up the day by having some play time between school time.

3. Letting Dad so science experiments with LittleBit on the weekends. Having Dad help with schoolwork is good for everyone.

4. Slowing down to take our time on interesting topics such as the Olympics, mummies and pirates.

5. Reading, Reading, and more Reading


Things I Want to Work On

1. School back in the school room! Somehow we started doing school in the living room instead of the wonderful school room we converted my office to. He does great working in the main room of the house but it is driving me crazy! I want to at least get back into the school room for our "official" work time.

2. Just a little independent work time. He wants me to be there and helping with every single thing. While I don't mind, I would like to see just a little independent work, maybe one worksheet by himself.

3. More hands on work. He does so well learning through visual and hands on learning. I want to make sure we incorporate as much of it as we can.

4. More googling and research! He comes up with so many interesting questions while we are reading or studying a topic, I want to spend more time looking up what something looks like, what causes that to happen etc. It leads to so much learning and interest in new things.

5. Be willing to stop our forward progress to study a subject in depth. We did this some this year and it was great. It is easy to get caught up in, we need to get this far in the book or we need to finish this workbook by a certain date. Being able to study something in depth is one of the big advantages to homeschooling.



We will offically start 2nd grade in mid-July but we will still be learning. We are doing Apologia Botnay this summer along with a little math, handwriting and of course reading.