Gearing Up for First Grade: Planning and Schoolroom

I will begin our (fingers crossed) weekly first grade postings next week.  I know!  What kind of mother starts a school year at the beginning of the normal summer holiday?  One of the biggest reasons is that it gets so hot in the summer months that we rarely venture outside.  Last summer, there were way too many days where it was unsafe to be outside for any length of time.   RockerDad and I decided that year-round schooling with breaks (scheduled and unscheduled) would work best for our family at this point in time.

With that in mind, I've been getting our materials purchased and organized.  The heart of our curriculum can be seen in the sidebar.  I've put together lesson plans and setting up a weekly schedule spreadsheet (blah, blah, blah... right?).  I guess I should just get on with it, eh?

I snapped this pic while I was in the midst of organizing our history books by civilization.  We will be beginning our first of the four year cycles outlined in The Well Trained Mind, so these are all books about and stories from ancient civilizations.

I did a similar sorting with our science books, but I didn't snap a photo.  Per our place in said cycles, we will be studying life science in first grade.

Robbie's Art Roll: Prismacolor Scholar colored pencils, several grades of graphite pencils, a pen, erasers and blending tortillions.  Crayons and markers are always handy.  Paints and other messy things are available, as well.

Our school area before (technically, this was while I was in the process of changing things over to first grade).  Why is it that you have to make things messier to clean them?

Ahhh.. much better!  You can see our little geography wall (with hanging inflatable globe... fun for tossing and such).  I also used brown shipping paper (from the Dollar Tree) to create a disposable bulletin board area for displaying... whatever.  I'm still using the yellow magazine files to hold our individual subjects (such a great deal.. they came from the dollar section at Target LAST year).  The red bins on the bottom shelf are used for tutoring sessions with my nephew.  Our math manipulatives have also been streamlined.

Here is our main school wall (before and after, of course).  The changes aren't major, mostly a tidy and such, but I think it will work better for us.

Robbie will be doing lots of weekly hands-on projects, most of which can be found on our Pinterest boards.

So... onward into the true grammar stage.....

Any other mean mommies out there who are schooling this summer?  Speak up!  Unite!  :)


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