Our 1st week of 1st grade

We just finished up our first week of school!
The kids enjoyed it and so did I. :)
One of the best things about this year so far is, I didn't spend much. Woo hoo! I'll share with you how that happened.

This is not in any particular order.

I forgot to put on the table, Charlotte's Web, Little House (On the Banks of Plum Creek), our Bible, a few Italian books, a science project book ($1) and some other shapes and Blue's Clues workbook (preK) stuff for Nathan (that I had already bought for Kiera) to have fun with and the Handbook of Nature Studies. And also the books we'll be reading for the Five In a Row. I'm sure there's more that I'm not able to think of right now.

Music for Little Mozart's is an introduction of music geared toward children ages 4-6 ($0). I've had these books for a while, I bought them when I took my piano pedagogy courses at Fullerton College. I was planning on using this curriculum for group classes but that didn't work out last year. This year Kiera and Nathan get to enjoy the journey of music and maybe I'll do classes in the near future. :)

This is a book that my mom gave me that she said she used ($0). It's more to see where your kids are at, kind of where they should be and just to see what we need to work on.

Since we're following mostly AO year 1 schedule this is the daily poetry reading for term 1. I found this at a used curriculum sale for $3. :) We take turns choosing the poems.

My mom also had the McGuffey speller and readers so we're using the speller and reading primer this year ($0).

I have Kiera do her copy work of our weekly memory verse. For copy work we work on quality instead of quantity. If it takes all week for her to finish her copy work that is fine with me. I tell her to stop when her hand gets tired, though I don't require much for her to write at one time ($0 already had and Grandma gave me a couple more notepads).

The write on wipe off boards are for me to use during phonics and math. Nathan usually does this with us ($2, $1each, already had the markers).

These ($2 workbooks) are what I'm mostly using for Nathan though Kiera will also be participating with the FIAR ($30, volume 2) fun and co-op that we're in. 

The top is a math workbook with puzzles, codes, games that I picked up for $7. It's supplemental to what we do on the wipe off boards.

The middle envelope that says "My Annual Progress" is a letter from one of the children we sponsor through World Vision. Her name is Pranita and she is from India and shares the same birthdate as Kiera. Kiera practices her letter writing and likes to draw pictures for her little friend.

The Spanish workbook (less than $7) is more for reference since I know enough spanish to teach my kids. I mostly use it for visual purposes since the words are by the pictures.

This is part of our Artists notebook. We study a different artist each term and term 1 is Jean Fragonard. I printed out his biography and read only a small portion of it to the kids every few days (it's 2 pages). I've also printed out (4 for now) images of his paintings. We looked at 2 during our first week. I have the kids look at the painting and then I cover it up and ask them what they think the picture is called and what they remember in the painting and where they think the people are at. I don't want to ask too many questions because I want them to give me their opinion and thoughts without much of my leading. They remember a lot of details.

This is Kiera's nature journal on the right. We were sitting out front while Robert was painting a gate, so I got the kids journals out and this is what Kiera wanted to paint. She hadn't seen the painting in a couple of days. Pretty good memory!

These are the only two books that I've had to buy for this year. Fortunately there's a good amount of books that I can read online or hear on librivox such as Parables of Nature, An Island Story, Tales from Shakespear and Thorton Burgess Bird Book. I'll also be using the library for a few books that we'll only need for a time. This is the part that has saved me $$, that and already having books that I've purchased three plus years ago or my mom had it already in her library. Make sure to buy used. I got the original unabridged hardcopy of The Jungle Book at the Goodwill for $1!

This is my weekly schedule that I designed. I had looked at many and finally came up with one that works for us. I printed out 12 copies for term 1 and will update a few things like our artist, composer and poetry book for term 2 and then again for term 3.

As you can see not everything on the schedule is suppose to get done every week. Like I said I'm following Ambleside's year 1 week by week. Though we're not reading the Blue Fairy Book we're reading AO Nine Tales which I can access online. There are a few other books that I haven't included on our schedule because I felt these were sufficient for us. I did a lot of praying while preparing our schedule!

Behind the 2 page weekly schedule I put a couple pieces of lined paper to add anything extra we've done during the week. Every day we did a little something extra. And... I did forget to add handicrafts to the schedule so I'll be writing them on the lined paper.

Our topical Bible study guide we do during our devotionals with the kids. We are also reading a chapter or portion of a chapter out of Matthew right now with them.

A couple things I didn't mention that are on our schedule are the hymns which we find online and our composer. We listen to compositions online through grooveshark that another wonderful mom put together to make it easy for us mom's studying the same composer.