Joel has 12 weeks of 1st grade under his belt. He has a good attention span and enjoys most of the selections Sonlight has scheduled.
For bible, we have morning devotions together. Usually we do some Girl’s Ministry readings or something from a children’s bible. For school, we are working through The One Year Bible for Children. Joel also does a good job memorizing his verse for the week for school and Rangers.
In history, our main spine is The Usborned Internet Linked Children’s Encyclopedia supplemented with Living Long Ago. We are mostly looking at different time periods and what they wore or ate, their houses, and transportation.
Read alouds have been fun. We had Here’s A Penny, Book Uncle and Me, and In Grandma’s Attic. For poetry we have The Bill Martin Jr big Book of Poetry.
Joel is still in the ‘learning to read’ phase, though he is doing well. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to sit through some of these limited vocabulary books. He has finished I Can Read It Book 1 and been working through I Can Read It Book 2.
Our language is lined up with LA1. We have weekly spelling words, reading lists, grammar with Explode the Code 1, cursive with Handwriting Without Tears, and a weekly creative assignment.
Joel does fairly well in math but is easily distracted. I think he could get his work done much more quickly than it takes him usually. We are working through Horizons 1.
We completed weeks 2-8 in science because we have Ginny and Joel combined right now. We do a little bit extra every now and then and will eventually have the weeks line up with the core. During this unit, we studied weather and frogs and did a couple experiments with air and water.
Extras are always fun. We spend a lot of time at Connections and Active Love Church events and have weekly karate and Ranger activities. Joel received his spring merits for Rangers in May. He started piano lessons in June but have been a little inconsistent with all the summer activities. We had multiple trips home to prepare for and hold PawPaw’s memorial service. We also had a Diltz trip to the beach. Joel joined us in our week long service project to OKC for a mission trip in June and we got to go to 6 Flags on the way back. Had a couple zoo trips, a field trip to a tabernacle replica, and VBS in there too.