A quick note about a resource you may like:
This resource also answers many questions that new homeschoolers have, such as What are my kids supposed to learn? What resources should I use? How do I meet other homeschoolers? And much more.
Thanks so much to my readers for inspiring me to write this. I hope it helps.
Click here to view the Table of Contents and Introduction.
Now back to the original post….
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This is my second time homeschooling 1st grade, and it’s so much easier. Once you gain experience homeschooling, you realize how little you need to worry about first grade, and you’ll already have most of the resources you need!
It could be that my youngest child is a little easier to work with too. Since he has the advantage of watching his older brother do lessons, he accepts it as part of our day. (He still groans about them a little, though.)
I spend about an hour with my 1st grader approximately 3~4 days a week on lessons that are just for him. Our curriculum is very simple, and we usually do one lesson or two pages at a time.
Reading
We started Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons again. If you want more information about this book, click here. Last year I attempted it with him, but it got too hard, so we stopped, worked with Starfall.com & the Brainquest Star Wars workbooks, and now we’re back at it. I think it’ll go smoother this year.
He is working through Handwriting Without Tears’ My Printing Book.
As far as language arts, I read many books to him. I’m not going to go into that here since I’ve written about our “readalouds” many times before.
Math
We are using the U.S. Edition of Singapore Math. We are almost finished with level 1A, and we’ll be moving into 1B next. These levels do not necessarily correlate with grade level, so you’ll need to read their website to see where your child should start, if you want to try this program. You’ll need to purchase the teacher’s manual, textbook and workbook for each level.
I have enjoyed using Singapore, and I think it’s a thorough program. I go slow, making sure we do all the activities, textbook, workbook and games, but I could easily go faster, if I wanted to. There is some prep time involved, but it has been pretty easy once I got the hang of it.
That’s the core of his curriculum! In the first grade, I don’t think we need to do more.
But remember: He joins his older brother for some work too, such as listening to books, memorizing the times tables, or watching a 15-minute educational video. We also watch science and nature documentaries everyday as a family. When I do art projects, they are usually for him because he’s the one that likes doing art. He also has had a long-time interest in birds, which I just wrote about.
This year, I also signed him up for a once-a-month homeschool nature class at the botanical garden. (I’m the one who asked the garden to create a homeschool class!)
Do you have a first grader? Tell me how that first year is going. 🙂
Mama of Letters 
My oldest is in second grade and his brother is 2 years old. This is our fourth year homeschooling (pre-k, k, 1st, 2nd). We have a good routine going now. I am already thinking that my 2 year-old will have such a different experience. I don’t know if I will use the pre-k or k materials that I did with my oldest with my youngest. My youngest is learning so much from his brother. We followed a curriculum for pre-k and k because I wanted to make sure we could do this and now I see we can and it is much easier than I thought it would be. All that prep was mostly for me I guess and totally unnecessary for my older son. We love Singapore Math. And Life of Fred and use both to change things up. I am curious about one thing: I don’t see any social studies/history or physical education/health in your curriculum. Is it not required by your state? Just curious. So many differences between states.
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Hi Emily ~ Thanks for your comment, and I’m so glad everything is going well for you. I think it’s great how every sibling will have his or her unique homeschool story 🙂 To answer your question: The state of Georgia requires that homeschoolers teach reading, language arts, math, science & social studies. But they don’t tell us how to teach it, and no one checks up on us. So, no, they do not require physical education, but I include that in my progress report for my own sake. We go hiking and run outside a lot, which I count towards that. I have also taught both my boys about the food pyramid and talk about eating healthy and exercising, but I’ve done very little with it, so I haven’t mentioned it on my blog. As far as history, I have not felt like we need any formal curriculum yet. The boys have not been very interested in history (the 10-year-old is just now starting to show some interest), so I’ve been waiting until I feel they would digest the material more easily. I feel that while homeschooling, there’s no need to follow the same pattern of learning that they would receive in a traditional school. Having said that, we do watch history documentaries occasionally, and we read books about history. I started a timeline on our wall that I intend to use through their whole K-12 education: https://mamaofletters.com/2015/09/22/how-to-make-a-big-history-timeline-for-your-wall/ Simply put, I feel this is a subject that we could come to on our own terms. In addition, my husband is a history professor, so I know by the time they finish high school, they will have much more knowledge in history than most kids! I guess in other words, there are things we learn through our interests and activities, and then there are things we learn through the “formal” work, and the “formal” work is what I’m writing about in this post, but I consider it all part of our homeschool. I hope that answers your question. 🙂
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Great post! This is our first year homeschooling (and thank you for your email to me after I commented here on another post – how sweet!) and since it’s so new I can’t tell if I’m totally screwing up or legitimately getting it right. My daughter is 6 and in first grade. We spend an hour (or so…) every weekday doing morning activities (calendar, days of the week, seasons, weather – etc), math and writing.
For math we are using singapore math as well and the format fits our family nicely – I can do the lesson, help her with some worksheets and then dad or gramma can pick up in the afternoon for a little more work (we are an intergenerational home so gramma is very good resource!)
Writing we are using a modification on “Doing Words” by Katie Johnson. This book is more an orientation to understanding how kids write and learn to love reading and words – I make the lessons up as we go. Everyday my daughter has a word that is all hers – we talk for a bit and figure out what she is thinking about and what’s important to her that day. As we talk, we find her word or words for the day, write them down and proceed from there. Katie’s book is AMAZING and her premise is that kids get writing quicker and with more meaning when it comes from the inside out – something I wholeheartedly agree with.
Rest of the day is house and farm tasks, play, some classes at the YMCA or our homeschooling group. And art. Oh, the art. So much of the art. Because I’m an art JUNKY and my daughter learns really well with projects. And I run my therapy practice 3 days a week.
I want our house to be slow, warm, creative and full of fun things. So I’m trying to work like a mystery writer – know the ending first and work backwards from there.
Although with a bit more glitter and some chicken poop on our porch. 🙂
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Lindsey ~ Wow, you’re a good writer! “I want our house to be slow, warm, creative and full of fun things. So I’m trying to work like a mystery writer – know the ending first and work backwards from there. Although with a bit more glitter and some chicken poop on our porch.” ….That just gave me a big grin! I love it! It sounds like you’re doing an AWESOME job, so just keep it up! And oh my gosh…I envy you for having a Gramma!
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