First Grade: Week 1

First Day of First Grade:  Couldn't seem to get that "cute" student photo, but they're pure Robbie!

   
It was a fun week, but it was a bit of an adjustment to move from break into so much work. He was a trooper and finished his work quickly (with minimal whining) and I hope that we'll have our routine established in a few weeks.

Here is a recap of Robbie's first week...

Language Arts:  I seem to be too involved in the process of these to get pictures regularly.

His handwriting seems to have slipped a bit over our unexpected break, but I know it will come back.  Grammar is dry, but some things just are, I guess. Robbie still enjoys spelling, but dreads copywork.  I know that we just have to plug along, but I wish everything could be fun.

Oh, and we started reading Charlotte's Web together this week.  Many of our literature choices this year will be part read-aloud, part shared reading.
 

Math: Wipe off multiplication drills, followed by a happy dance on the chair when he finished.

Math was filled with skip-counting, addition/subtraction review and some easy multiplication drills.  As you can see above, he was very happy when math was finished one day.  He stood on his chair and shook his bum in a happy dance.
 

History & Geography:  Narration Page, Map and Archaeologist pottery reconstruction

Digging up History
Robbie learned what historians and archaeologists do.  We read from our history "spine" books as well as a few supplements.  He also reconstructed a small clay pot from shards as a hands-on archaeology project.  (You can download a free pdf file of the "Where In the World" maps here.)

Books used this week:

Science:  Microbe model, craft and "Germs Make Me Sick" book

Germs and Other Microbes
First grade science has a focus on life and living things.  We started by studying germs and other microbes.  He did a "design your own germ" craft and we made a microbe model out of homemade air-dry clay, a zip-top baggie (filled with hand sanitizer, glitter and pieces of string), toothpicks and some ribbon.  I love when he can touch and poke and smush things.  It's so much more interesting than a picture in a book.

Books used this week:

Greek Alphabet Tools

I know, I know... most classical homeschoolers begin with Latin, not Greek.  I had planned to do the same, but Robbie begged to learn Greek.  He thought it looked like a secret code.  I figured that we still have time to start Latin, so why not let him learn something that really excites him?

We are using Greek Alphabet Code Cracker this year.

So far, we are both enjoying the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker book.  The child is a detective who must solve a robbery using witness reports.  These reports contain English words written using Greek letters, so the student has to decode them and eliminate suspects.  There are other exercises and practice, throughout.  It comes with the Cypher Wheel (seen in the collage above) and I purchased some blank dice with stickers to make some for games and such.

We didn't actually use any educational apps this week, but we did watch a few tie-in videos for science and history:

History
• Magic School Bus: Shows and Tells
• Bill Nye the Science Guy: Archaeology

Science
• Magic School Bus: Inside Ralphie
• Magic School Bus: In a Pickle
• Bill Nye the Science Guy: Germs

The Magic School Bus episodes are on our Complete Series DVD set.  That is one of my favorite educational investments this year.

We are all enjoying the Bill Nye videos on YouTube.  Click the image below to view the channel.

Guitar and drawing.. I swear, he's just concentrating on the DVD.  He loves playing guitar.

While I can play guitar, I've never taught anyone.  I was a bit intimidated when Robbie asked me to teach him, so I found a DVD (plus book and audio CD) program to use with him.  I am relieved to not have to map out what to teach him and when.  We also started the preliminary exercises in Drawing With Children.

Robbie made homemade pizza and donut holes.  They were both yummy!!

Water fights with Tyler, Minecraft with cousin Ethan and movie snuggles with Tyler and RockerDad.

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