Thursday, March 28, 2013

Secular First Grade Curricula 2013

Our Chinese curriculum choice: My First Chinese Words
**UPDATE** I've made a few changes since we finished our kindergarten level work and moved into the first grade work. I discovered The Logic of English Essentials curriculum and I love it! I am using it on my Chinese husband to improve his English reading skill as well as on the kiddo who is an emerging reader! So I have completely changed the way we were approaching phonics and reading for first grade. You can see some stuff is crossed out--we're not using it any more. And new stuff is marked with an asterisk (*).

So here's our new curriculum, to finish the end of kindergarten and continue through first grade. Yay! I'm so proud that I put together my first curriculum by myself. No more K12, "online public school" rules and regs. All the curriculum is secular. I decided we'll be homeschooling year-round, since last summer he was so bored. It is so hot here in the summer and we can't go outside anyway, so we might as well enjoy the air conditioning and learn stuff. Then we'll take a nice long break in the cool season when we can actually enjoy doing stuff outdoors. We've started already with this (except a few bits I haven't bought yet); and we found we are finishing school in 2 1/2-3 hours. It's just right! We don't use all these materials every day, but we switch it up and have some variety. Some subjects, like art and science, we're doing once a week. I'm really happy that we can do this!


Phonics/Reading/Spelling


Handwriting
Handwriting Without Tears, 1st grade (yellow book)

Math
Math Mammoth, 1st grade
Assorted manipulatives: base 10 blocks, snap cubes, school money

Literature/History
Build Your Library Curriculum, 1st grade

Science
Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (ebook)

Art
Home Art Studio DVD: Kindergarten

Mandarin Chinese
My First Chinese Words Curriculum (We purchased the subscription to the online component,
workbooks, games, and flashcards)
Fun Fun Elmo (Mandarin YouTube videos from the makers of Sesame Street)

Spanish
Salsa  (Free Spanish videos from Georgia PBS)
Spanish flashcards that I make myself

Multi-Subject
Brain Quest Workbook, grade 1

3 comments:

  1. I am so glad you found me on the homeschool group! This is so cool. I had NO idea about the Elmo videos, and I'm looking at My First Chinese Words right now. I am so excited about that. I also want my children to learn Spanish, but I'm not sure about starting right now while they're in Chinese school and I'm just desperately hoping they'll start speaking well soon. I really hope you all will come visit your husband's hometown sometime SOON and visit us, too!

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  2. What does your reading list for Build Your Library look like? How much will you end up spending on it? I'd love something like that if it was just doable for us, but I'm guessing it's not.

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  3. I really wish I could come visit! It's so, so expensive for airfare and our budget is always tight. :( I hope we can manage it someday.

    I like my first Chinese Words so far. We are only on lesson 3 (after several months) because we were taking our time learning numbers and tones and just practicing the new vocabulary orally as well as the written Chinese. It's a lot to take in when you are just starting. I'm so jealous that your kids get that daily immersion! Mine get it only when we visit their Nainai and Yeiyei in California.

    I counted up 36 books for BYL. You can check out her amazon bookstore through her website and you can see the books for each grade. I'm guesstimating they would be close to $300 on Amazon, not including shipping. She picks really good books though. You'd want to have these books in your home library for continued enjoyment. When I find them for cheap or get an Amazon gift card I buy one or two to keep. So if you could get them to China it's not like you wouldn't get good use out of them.

    I'm having this baby any day now so I'll be offline for awhile, but let's keep in touch and share any online resources and such. Feel free to message me via email: oneworldhomeschoolATgmailDOTcom

    Sigrid

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