You know how you’ve heard that you evolve and grow every year as a homeschooler? Well, maybe I’ve never heard those words for it before, but basically you learn along with your children every year as a homeschooler. You may learn the content with your kids or you may learn what works or doesn’t work for you in the homeschooling process. Either way, our first grade curriculum choices were chosen based on what I’ve learned… and our state requirements.

NYS requires a lot for first grade. It’s the first year that we’re required to start reporting (although parents can choose to start their 6 year old as a kindergartener, the regulations are about 6 year olds in first grade… also to note: I had to report for kindergarten because my daughter was receiving speech therapy services), and there are many subjects required. I’ll list each requirement as a header below as I share our choices. choices. But first, PK3 for my son!

Preschool Curriculum for My Three-Year Old (PK3)

I recently purchased an all-access pass from My Teaching Library. I think this is a great resource for homeschoolers creating their own curriculum or who need additional resources to supplement their curriculum. Since my son is so eager to learn, we’re going to start going through their 36-week Preschool Curriculum. It includes letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and more. Each week includes a unit overview, 4-5 lessons, and bonus lessons. There is plenty of reinforcement included and it encourages reading to your child. I’m not sure if this curriculum is meant for 3 or 4 year olds, so we’ll see how far we get… It’s probably under 10 minutes of lessons each day, though it’ll be more if he’s interested or wants to color more.. My son will also be listening in on most of my daughter’s lessons (because that’s what he likes to do at his age!), but I plan to include him in the health, music, art, and physical education “lessons” with my daughter, as well as all of the natural learning opportunities that come up in life!

Math (including Arithmetic)

Last year, we chose not to use a math curriculum. I let my daughter’s interests guide her learning when it came to math. We had several workbooks that we occasionally used, but I wasn’t stressed about it. She could count to 100, count by 1, 5, or 10, and several other specific things I thought were important. We worked a little bit on currency and other math concepts through conversation and Girl Scout badge work. At the end of the year, she took a placement test from The Good and The Beautiful. Her score showed her as not ready for first grade, but then I taught her even and odd numbers and her score was high enough. We also reviewed several other things from the test that we hadn’t reviewed during the year (tallying, etc.).

This year, I decided to use The Good and The Beautiful’s Math 1 curriculum. Not only is it a free download, but it also looks worthwhile. There are three units with 120 total lessons. The lessons include learning, reinforcing, testing, and retesting of missed materials. We don’t have to start doing standardized testing until fourth or fifth grade, but this will be a good introduction to the idea and allow her to learn test-taking skills with minimal pressure.

Language Arts (including Reading, Spelling, Writing, and English)

Just as last year, our big focus this year will be handwriting and continuing to practice reading and learning phonics. My daughter usually asks me to spell things for her as she writes, but I plan to have her practice writing how she thinks things are spelled to broaden her experiences.

We will be using The Good and The Beautiful’s Language Arts Level 1 curriculum. Just as with their math curriculum, it’s a free download with three units totalling 120 lessons including learning, reinforcing, and so on. This curriculum also comes with Booster Cards which are used to teach phonics and sight words, as well as Books that are used alongside the Booster Cards for reinforcement. Since we didn’t use TGATB for kindergarten, I also downloaded that curriculum so we can go over those booster cards and books before starting Level 1 to make sure she’s learned each of those concepts before we move onto the next concepts from Level 1.

Additionally, for handwriting, she has an Alphabet Writing and Drawing Tablet that I got at Ollie’s a few years ago. It has 92 pages of writing practice to supplement what’s in her curriculum. I also plan to do additional writing practice to ensure she’s writing daily.

U.S. History & Geography (including Patriotism and Citizenship and Traffic Safety)

Last year, my daughter basically took a break from “history” aside from learning about Pearl Harbor and other places on our vacation. We were planning to finish Bede’s History of ME then move onto Bede’s History of US, but she ended up with a full curriculum from Catholic Heritage Curricula. Instead of learning history per se, we focused on the specific history that’s talked about in the Bible, focusing on religion instead. NYS requires US History and Geography beginning in first grade, so we’re going back to the same plan.

Bede explains the concept of history by teaching timelines as the basis. And then it moves on to the specific events of history. US History is required every year from 1-6, so I like how Bede is more of a simple introduction to various events and people which we can expand upon as she gets older. There were 32 lessons in the first book and 30 lessons in the second book.

Science

My hubby loves to buy things that he thinks would benefit our family and our homeschool. Last year he got us Life Cycles (Everything from Start to Finish) from DK publishing. There are 60 life cycles that each fit on 2-page spreads and they span Space, Earth, Plants and Fungi, and Animals. It looks fascinating and I figured that would be a great book for first grade.

Health (including Substance Abuse and Fire Safety)

I have no specific curriculum for health, but I did come up with 30 topics that we can discuss or find books at the library or YouTube videos to learn more about. There’s actually a school district that I found which has a simplified curriculum map online that shares what topics are taught during each of their four sections in each grade and subject. I found many topics from their first and kindergarten programs and then came up with more myself.

Music

This is going to be fun! My daughter wants keyboard lessons, so I plan to teach a little of what I know on my keyboard (my parents bought it for me 20ish years ago). But that’s just part of our curriculum that I made. I came up with 15 music genres (or topics?) for us to listen to for exposure to all sorts of music. They range from Classical to New Wave to Rap to Christian. My in-laws are from Laos, so that’s an area we’ll explore. And to honor my little Swiftie, we also have Country and Pop along with TS Country and TS Pop.

Visual Arts

Once I split each curriculum up, I came up with a bunch of related (and unrelated) art project ideas. We usually do extra art and crafting, but these ideas will ensure that we’re not just doing the same thing over and over again and oftentimes they’ll relate to the lessons for the week. In addition, the Home Depot and Lowe’s Kids Workshops are a favorite in my house, so we’ll keep attending those each month.

Physical Education

Now this is where I’m likely to struggle. I’m not really sporty, but I did come up with a list of activities we can do throughout the year. Some will be special trips, like mini-golf, bowling, swimming, or going to the playground. Others are easier, like walking outside, playing at the “treehouse” (swingset with a little house area when you climb the ladder to use the slide), or using the trampoline.

Lesson Plans (Not Required by NYS)

Although lesson plans are not required by NYS thankfully, I did take all of the curriculums and record their topics/lessons in order to evenly split them up throughout the school year. A big difference I noticed between preschool and kindergarten was that the lesson plans for kindergarten significantly helped me keep on track, view our progress, and not feel behind even when we missed time due to vacation and sickness. Even more, I didn’t necessarily follow the lesson plans to the letter and do everything on the specified days (or even the specified weeks). Instead, I was more likely to either use the weekly plan OR use the lesson plans to check off what was done when we did extra work in a subject or fell behind. This made me realize that the best lesson plan format for me at this point would be a list of everything split up equally to indicate what could be done in each subject, each week, to keep on track to do everything by the end of the year. Thinking about it, this is more like a syllabus I received from college professors since they actually let us know what would be happening every week. I haven’t split my plan into daily lessons, but I think that it would be easier to plan each week based on what we have planned, if we fell behind, or moved ahead. Also, considering there are some LA lessons that you should wait to do until your child has mastered a specific LA Booster Card, I think it’s better to see how that goes before planning too far ahead.

Caveat: when I was in school, we rarely finished an entire textbook. Our teachers always had the best of intentions, but sometimes they skipped a chapter or we’d take longer to work on a topic than expected. I know we may not get through everything and that the plan may easily go off track. But the plan will help me get back on track and stay consistent. I’m a procrastinator and planning is one of the ways for me to overcome procrastination and succeed.

Extra Stuff (Not in My Lesson Plans)

In addition to everything else, I also have a ton of resources I’ve picked up along the way.

• For language arts, we’ll also be going to the library and borrowing books. Many times, I’ve also found read-alouds on YouTube and plan to continue to do so. I’ll share some of the reading helpers I’ve gotten recently in another post.
• I have a set of Highlights 15 Minutes a Day books for first grade that cover a bit of everything. I also have a Brainquest book for first grade and additional books for the summers before and after.
• For geography, we have a National Geographic Kids Beginner’s U.S. Atlas.
• I have a bunch of classroom posters and books and supplies from Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Ollie’s, Amazon, and more
• Our art bin is filled with fun items
• Girl Scouts (either continuing independently or potentially starting a homeschool troop) will help with science and math
• My daughter should be starting religious education classes this year (currently working on getting the info)

It definitely feels like more than last year, but that’s why I organized everything and made the weekly lesson plans. In order to fit in all of the subjects that NYS requires, I know I’ll need to be more organized. NYS requires 900 hours of school, so it makes sense that they have so many subjects to fill that time. Last year, we started school on August 23. I’m going to let my daughter choose the date again this year, and then we’ll see how it goes!

Thank you for joining us today In Our Homeschool!