Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Our curriculum for Year 1

Well, it's about time I actually posted about our home school curriculum! This may or may not interest you but thought I'd post it just in case:)

We are following Living Books Curriculum which we also used last year as a "kindy" year for Rebekah and I posted about that briefly here.

We decided to stick with LBC again for Year 1 as I liked what I saw for year 1 and I love all the "help" they give you in the Teachers Manual. I am not a very "creative" person when it comes to thinking up some of the hands on type activities etc (that they include in the Teachers manual)that most other mothers find easy to do. The more I use this curriculum the more I find how close to Charlotte Mason in a package it truly is and also it is definitely in my opinion Charlotte Mason for the 21st century (as they say on their website). The only bits I changed was their Geography (I will be using an Australian book to focus on Australian geography), also I decided to substitute Australian history for American history and add some Aussie books for read alouds and poetry.

You can read all about it at their website under year 1 but to make it simpler I'll break it down into subjects as follows:

Language Arts:

This is broken down as follows:

READ ALOUD:
Adventures of Bobby Raccoon, Thornton W. Burgess
Adventures of Grandfather Frog, Thornton W. Burgess
Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack, Thornton W. Burgess
Adventures of Prickly Porky, Thornton W. Burgess
Hey, Listen to This: Stories to read aloud, Jim Trelease
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Treasure of the Snow, Patricia St. John
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis

We will be adding many more books to read aloud to Rebekah this year from our personal library!

STORYTELLING:
Aesop's Fables, Sheila Carroll, ed.

POETRY:
A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson

PENMANSHIP:
Italics: Beautiful handwriting for children, Penny Gardner

For Aussie read alouds and poetry, I added for this year:

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs,
Dot and the Kangaroo by Ethel Padley,
The animals Noah Forgot by A B PAterson,
Stories of Henry Lawson and
The way of the whirlwind by Mary Durack.

Science: There are a list of living books and activity books here:


A House Is a House for Me, Mary Ann Hoberman
First Guide to the Universe, Usborne
Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Volume 1, Florence Bass
Usborne Book of Science Activities: Volume 1, Various
The Reason for a Flower, Ruth Heller
A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison: Young Inventor, Louis Sabin
Wild Places: Mountains, jungles & deserts, A. Wilkes
What’s Alive?, Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

Nature Study:
Handbook of Nature Study, Anna Botsford Comstock
We also use: The wonderland of nature by Nuri Mass and various field guides for Aussie birds, flowers and trees.

Art:
Little Hands Art Book, Judy Press


Picture Study:
Come Look with Me: Animals in art, Gladys Blizzard
Come Look with Me: World of play, Gladys Blizzard

Music:
Stories of Great Composers (Book and CD),
June Montgomery

Geography:

Are we there yet by Alison Lester

World History:
The Story of the Ancient World, Christine Miller

Australian history:

My place by Nadia Wheatley
You and Me Murrawee by Kerri Hashimi and Felicity Marshall
Greatest events in Australia's history - Boardman and Harvey

We also are doing Spanish as Rebekah has taken an interest in Spanish from watching "Dora"!
For this we are using: Play and learn Spanish, A Lomba


Next I will try to post our weekly schedule and how we do "school" here:)

p.s. How embarassing - just goes to show, I shouldn't be trying to do any blogging late at night (which is when I was working on this - late last night!)
Anyway, I forgot to include our "Bible" component and "maths".

For our Bible study we use the one that came with this curriculum - "Early Reader Wonder Devotional Book" by Lynda Pongracz but we also use "Leading Little Ones to God" by Marian M Schoolland which is a much better one in my opinion!

Maths does not come with LBC, so we are using (and absolutely loving) Singapore Maths!

13 comments:

Amy said...

Wow! That sounds like a lot of fun for Rebekah!! What I wanna know is, where are you keeping all these books?? Sounds like they need their own room. :)

Great job putting all this together. I bet a lot of people will find this a great resource. Well done!

Joyfulmum said...

:) indeed I would love to have a separate room for all our books! until then we squeeze them in where they fit:) (as you know) :)

Amanda said...

You seem very organised Rosemary! What a wonderful learning time your little one will have. Oh, I do miss homeschooling some days. We only did so for one year, but it was the best year!

Ganeida said...

How exciting for you! These early years are so wonderful & the kiddies are like little sponges, so eager to learn & you can get away with lots of fun hands on stuff. Waaaah! I wanna teach grade one again. It was so much fun. Teaching Star HS math is NOT fun ~ for either of us. *sigh*

Finding Joy said...

This sounds very interesting - just one question, I didn't see any maths, is this taught as part of other subjects?

Joyfulmum said...

Jo, I just came back on here to "edit" my post as oops, I forgot to include maths and Bible! (embarassed smile here). Maths does not come with this curriculum so I am using Singapore Maths and we are doing a devotional that came with this curriculum and another one of our own. I will edit this post to reflect that:)
Ganeida, yes, we are truly enjoying home schooling (both her and I)!
Amanda, I didn't realise you only home schooled for one year. That was interesting to hear!

Clara said...

Thanks for posting about this, Rosemary - I'd been wondering what you're doing for your homeschooling. It was interesting to see what you're doing - some of your resources sound very interesting. We're doing a totally different program, but I'm taking it as I go and might try some other products as the years pass... :) Might even get some ideas from your curriculum!! :)

Joyfulmum said...

Clara, yes, I was thinking of you when I did this post:)

Finding Joy said...

Isn't it fabulous that you all can share ideas in regards to home schooling:)

Amanda said...

Rosemary, I had a look at the link you provided to Living Curriculum... it looks wonderful! If I had any further children to homeschool, I would definitely look at this one. Lauren and I loved 'living' books for history etc when she homeschooled and I like the way this curriculum is set out. I noticed it only goes up to Grade 8. At least you have a few years until you need to find something else! lol.

Jeanne said...

What book of Henry Lawson are you using, Rosemary? The ones I have are all full of low level coarse language! Do you have one especially for kids?

Joyfulmum said...

ah Jeanne! Ron's looking after that dept:)
He is / will be reading "selected" stories and poems from "Henry Lawson an illustrated treasury" illustrated by Dee Huxley. You are right, the language is rough / coarse in a lot of his stuff so Ron will probably only read a very small amount from this.

Jeanne said...

They're great stories, aren't they? Be sure to listen in!!