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Saturday, October 2, 2010

1st Grade: How the school day works and Curriculum

Here is how I work with Sweet Boy and what I use.




1) I have a folder with 5 pockets for him.  In that folder he will find work that HAS to be done that day.  He does this folder work any time he chooses in the day.

2) He chooses work from the shelves.

3) He gets one or two lessons a day from me.  I TRY to do a minimum of ONE Geometry, Fraction, Geography, History,  Language Arts, Grammar, Botany, and Zoology lesson A WEEK.
I use the following curriculum.   Montessori Research and Development Elementary Manuals.
These lessons are done in both Spanish and English.

4) I also have one Artist and one Musician we study a month.  I do not have a curriculum for this.  I use free resources on the Internet and check-out books from the library.

5) We have 30 minutes of planned physical activity when we do not attend Co-op.  Read about our Co-op here.

Folder Work

Here are the works in his folder.

1. Spelling words.  Some options I use for spelling.  Only one of these is used a day.

a) A list of 5 words.  He reads these to me, I then say the word and he spells it out loud and then either writes them on paper, white board or in a spelling notebook, OR paints them, OR writes a sentence with a at least 3 of the words, OR whatever else I figure out to get him to practice.  I really try to make this fun by making silly sentences and finding fun ways to practice spelling.  I always ask him how HE wants to practice.  I will give him choices.

b) We could also be talking about something in the morning that he is interested in and we make a list of whatever it is we are talking about.  He loves this.  Like what he wants for his birthday or Christmas.  Things about Baseball.  Lego sets he wants. Animals from a country, etc...


c) A little container with objects for spelling or match the word to the pictures and use these for spelling.

OR

d)  Finally, we could be writing a little research about something from the Cultural area and these will be our spelling words.  Example:  Writing a little about each of the water and land forms.

2.  Math Problems.  These are switched between: Math Facts (He uses the beads to help him if needed), golden bead or stamp game addition/multiplication, fraction work, money work or geometry work.  Some times he does 2 or 3 of these a day. For example: he could do golden bead addition, fractions and money work.  BUT he needs to work on addition daily (could be two or three problems).

3. Logic Worksheets from Lollipop Logic.
I am actually not doing one a day on these any more.  More like two a week.  But when they were easy we were doing one a day.


4. Fun Worksheet.  For fun I put a connect the dot, maze, or search worksheet.  He loves these.

5. A book to read to me.

In this folder he also puts work in progress.  For example:  currently he has a little book of fractions, parts of the plant and the continents that he is slowly working on.

Not in the folder but daily work.



He also has a Spelling Workbook (McGraw-Hill Spelling Level 1student book) he works on every day.  He does at least 2 pages a day.

We are currently doing 10 sight words a day because he knows many of these and it is a review.  We are working from the Dolch Word List. 
Once he gets to words he does not know I will scale down to 5 sight words a day.

Sounds like a lot?  If I were to add up how long it takes him to do this, I would say one hour.  The exception is on days when we work on research.  He writes a lot more and it takes longer. 

Throughout the week we work on memorizing a prayer, the date in Spanish and English, and the weather in Spanish and English.  Regarding the prayer.  I am working on us memorizing mass prayers so the kids can be more involved during mass time.  This should help with them not getting bored.

We also have computer time when we can get it in, usually 2 or 3 times a week.

I question myself weekly if my son is doing enough, not enough or too much.  I just don't know.  How do you know?

My First Link Up!

What do you do with your 1st grader?  What is your curriculum?  Link up, I would love to see! Please link to the exact blog post and not just to your blog using Mr. Linky below.

9 comments:

janie said...

this is great! I can't wait to check back and see more ideas from other bloggers :)

Annicles said...

I'm interested by how much you jump around, particularly with maths. Is this the way your son likes to work? I am teaching 5/6 year olds and they all seem to want to do a big maths work each day they choose maths, but they don't necessarily choose it every day. At the moment I have an addition drive going on. I don't know waht would happen if I introduced something different in the middle of that!

Michelle said...

Sounds like just enough to me!
We have the five pocket folders like that and use them the same way. Love them!
As soon as we get a little more settled, I really want to add an artist and musician once a month, too. I originally planned for one a week (not necessarily every week), but that seemed overwhelming. Once a month sounds much more doable.

Insightful Brain said...

This is a great idea... very organized! We do something similar at our house also, but I wasn't familiar with some of those other great resources you pull from... I especially love the logic additions. I love doing critical thinking activities and expanding that part of my children's brains!

Aly in Va said...

Hope you don't mind us "afterschoolers" linking up?

Gigi said...

Janie, I hope we get link ups!!

Annicles, I wondered how to do Math so I asked one of the Elementary Montessori teachers at his school. She said that he needed to work on some Math daily. He usually pics Math daily but I want him to work on a little of addition, multiplication or subtraction daily. At least two problems. We decide in the morning what he will choose like a daily workplan but we don't put it on paper since I just have two students! I may start to put it down on paper for him to check off. He likes to check off things.

Gigi said...

Michelle, like you I've been adding things little by little. I need to get used to teaching all of this! We just started the Artists and Musician about 2 or weeks ago.

MFL - We love the logic sheets. These along with the spelling book are used at the Montessori School the kids attended last year.

Gigi said...

Aly, please do link up! I love to read what your daughter is doing in school.

Susana of Montessori Candy said...

So Cool Gigi! I scanned the post and really would love to come back and read it through. Thanks for sharing the inspiration!

-Susana
http://www.montessoricandy.com