One week down, thirty-five to go! That is IF we go along with your typical 180 day school year. Because we can do whatever we want! That's the beauty of homeschooling!
In case you don't know us personally, let me tell you a bit about us. Big K is almost six years old. He went to public kindergarten last year and we didn't have a great experience. I didn't feel like the school was even attempting to meet his needs. They refused to have him tested for OT or Speech since it "wasn't affecting his learning" even though he does need extra help with his fine motor skills and has some speech language issues. I also had him tested for the gifted program, and he didn't qualify by ONE POINT. So they refused to offer him any special services. Because of ONE POINT. And with first grade being all day, I didn't feel it was in his best interest to sit in a classroom where the academic work was below his ability and let them neglect the areas he needs extra help. We had debated HSing last year, but since we live in one of the best districts in the state we were hoping we'd be blown away by the awesome-ness. We weren't. As far as interests, Big K has a very type A personality. He loves logic and math. Recently he has developed a strong interest in maps and already knows all the states, capitols, and a large percentage of the major countries in the world. He is also a very fluent reader, although he really struggles with his comprehension skills.
Little E just turned three years old and she is as busy as any other three year old. She is as smart as her big brother and has already mastered the alphabet and numbers to 20. She is a VERY hands-on learner and loves to be in the middle of the action. She especially loves science everything. Animals, plants, dirt, rocks, you name it and she wants to be a part of it! She loves to learn about the world around her!
There is also Baby W, but he is only two months old so his major interests are nursing and snuggling right now. The jury is still out on his level of genius, but as his mom I can already tell he is a little Einstein. (Totally kidding. I'm not one of THOSE moms, I promise.)
We plan on taking the first couple weeks to kinda ease into a structured school time. That's what they do in "real" school anyway, so why shouldn't we! We will be using a mixture of pre-made curriculum, momma-made curriculum, and kid made curriculum. Here are some of the choices we made for this year:
Math - Life of Fred.
http://lifeoffredmath.com/ I am in love with it already! We will be doing LOF two days a week and supplementing with some momma-made stuff and math games the other days. We will also be doing a daily calendar and working on calendar skills as well as incorporating line graphs and bar graphs with the weather as well as tally marks counting to the 100th day of school. We found this free printable calendar for Big K online which is perfect!
http://www.ouraussiehomeschool.com/2012/03/calendar-notebook.html I also found one for Little E where she will be working on patterns and number recognition. You can find the one we are using for her here:
http://moneysavingmom.com/2013/07/free-preschool-calendar-notebook-pages.html
Reading - This will be mostly momma-made. Basically we are going to read. Read together, read alone, listen to books on CD, watch shows silently with closed captioning, just read, read, read. And do a lot of story stretchers and comprehension activities to go along with it!
Writing/Spelling - I found a spelling list for first grade that is acceptable enough for us. It uses some sight words and the phonetic word families each week. I probably won't do spelling tests, just make sure he uses the words in his writing correctly
http://www.k12reader.com/first-grade-spelling-words/ . Big K is also doing a daily writing journal where he will write whatever he wants. I'll share some of his entries as we go through the year. It will be his place to document his learning, but everything we do in the journal will be unassisted. We are really going to back up and learn a lot about sentence structure this year and making sure capital letters are in the right spots and making sure we know how to use punctuation correctly. We are also going to spend a lot of time learning how to write letters. Ideally, I'd like him to write a letter to someone each week and I think we will spend some time writing to famous people, politicians, and people from all over the globe. Which brings us to....
Science/Social Studies: Our theme for the year is going to be 'Our World'. Since Big K is into maps, we will expand on that knowledge and learn about places all over the world. And since Little E is really into animals and science, we are going to learn about the different biomes around the world and which plants and animals live there and how their needs are similar and different. I'm sure we will be spending a lot of time at our local zoo experiencing the animals first hand!
One of our favorite activities this week was "Silly Sentences." I wrote a bunch of words on sentence strips and cut them out and laminated them. Then Big K uses them to make silly sentences and then record them on the white board. At this point the sentences are VERY basic (for example "The duck ran." "The shoe jumped.") and I give him a specific order to put the cards. But this will be an activity we use throughout the year to talk about sentences and we will add in lots more words and more complex punctuation. This activity will also help Little E start to recognize some basic sight words!
The weather this week was also gorgeous, so we did school outside one day. (Again, yay for the benefits of homeschooling!). We did an exercise using Q-tips and paint to help our fine motor skills. Of course, Big K took the opportunity to create patterns with his paper! Always the math thinker! You can find the Q-tip printable here:
http://www.freehomeschooldeals.com/free-q-tip-prewriting-printables/
Have a Happy Weekend! Bring on week 2!
We also kept observing our beans we planted last week. It is amazing how well they are growing with just a paper towel and a sandwich baggie in the window. We read several books about the life cycle of plants and also learned about the different parts of a plant and what they do. Big K also planted a few beans outside and has been comparing to see which set of beans is growing the fastest. The outside beans are currently winning, and Big K has decided that's because plants really need dirt to grow their best. It's pretty amazing they are growing at all since it has been so hot and dry here! He must be sneaking water out there to his bean plants! 
Have I mentioned how much we love our local library? Once a month they hold a program called "Tail Wagging Tutors." A group of local volunteers bring in their therapy dogs and the kids can sign up for a half-hour of reading to the dogs. We go almost every month. At the end of their session they can collect bookmarks from the owners with the dogs names and pictures of them. Big K collects those cards and treasures them like other kids do baseball cards. He looks forward to it every month! Little E loves it too. She always sits and listens so patiently while Big K reads to the dogs. We have a dog at home he could read to, but our Charlie isn't a big fan of sitting still long enough to listen to a book!
