Last 6 Weeks of 1st Grade

We finished! I wasn’t sure if we would be ‘done’ before Sept due to having a baby in the middle of the year, but we did it. It wouldn’t really have mattered if we hadn’t, we would just roll it over. Beauty of homeschooling. We do still have a little bit of left over science activities to finish and we are going to be doing a sewing unit (at Hannah’s request) in August before we start 2nd grade in September.

Bible – It is fun to say that Hannah is tagging along with Benjamin for our morning devotions. She completed her Leading Little Ones to God devotional and we just listen in on Ben’s children’s bible reading. She has a weekly assignment to write a bible verse in cursive, so we’ll continue that through the break with verses she memorized this past year.

In history/social studies, we finished up the first half of world history with our studies of Ancient Rome. Our culture has so many roots in this time period for sayings and words and references. Hannah enjoyed learning how we got the names for the days of the week and the months of August and July. 🙂 We had a fun supplemental reader called Detectives in Togas that gave us a glimpse into the life of young Roman boys. We are halfway through Usborne Book of World History and Child’s History of the World and finished the section on Rome in Usborne Time Traveller. We read a biography of George Muller that was really good and we are currently reading a fictional story based on a real boy who ended up in one of the Muller orphan houses. We also finished up our year long trek through Favorite Poems of Childhood reading one or two poems a week.

Hannah read aloud these assigned books: Frog and Toad Together, The Big Balloon Race, The Fire Cat, The Sword in the Tree, Wagon Wheels, and The Titanic: Lost . . . and Found. She also reads lots of other stuff for book discussion club and our Highlights magazines. Lately, she has been reading to Joel and he seems to like that a lot.

In LA, Hannah finished Explode the Code Book 6 as well as Wordly Wise A. I think this may be the end of our ETC journey, moving on to a different phonics book for 2nd grade. Her spelling seems to have gotten a lot better recently. A couple of her creative writings included adding a new ending to a book she read, creating a map with directions, and writing a play. She always does a great job with her creative stuff.

For Science, we finished up our health and body section and all we have left is a section on space. She has been doing light and mirror activities and experiments. She had fun making a ‘secret’ message for Daddy that had to be held up to a mirror to read and we made a kaleidoscope.

Math has been going well. Mostly because I think we are in the review section of her book. She has a few lessons left and then we are going to take a break and just do drills for awhile.

Extras are still going strong. We’ve been on blockout from Disney, but had purchased Knott’s Berry Farm / Soak City passes when our friends were in town, so have been doing those about once a week instead. Hannah wanted to do a sewing class, so we have started that and she is continuing with drawing clothes for her fashion design industry. We have a monthly book report presentation, monthly chess club, and monthly book discussion group. Hannah and Ben went on a field trip without me because there was a limit on the number of adults, so that was a fun experience. All in all, 1st grade wrapped up nicely!

All her recent school type photos are here