Everyday Life

Tirzah Mae has now finished up her first official year of school as compulsory education in the State of Kansas begins at age 6 (and she was six as of September 2021.) For the most part, we continued on with what we’d been doing for her kindergarten year, except that now she wasn’t the only student working (which somewhat dampened the cries of “not fair”, albeit not as much as I would have liked.)

As previously mentioned, we do the majority of our “subject work” together as a family, with only the “skill subjects” of reading, writing, and arithmetic done individually.

Phonics and Reading: American Language Series K (part 2)

I learned to read using this program, then called Little Patriots Read. My mom had me do it all in my kindergarten year, but I chose to slow it way down with Tirzah Mae. The ALS-K order of phoneme introduction is single letters (CVC), consonant digraphs and blends, mother E words, r-controlled vowels, vowel digraphs, and then diphthongs. We completed all the short vowel work in kindergarten and did the rest (mother E words on) here in 1st grade. I also opted to do only the phonics and readers without the spelling, writing, and vocabulary workbook.

I spent way too much energy the first semester trying to make sure we were reading the stories that matched the phonics lesson (really using skills that had been taught several days or weeks prior) and asking the provided “comprehension questions.” Midspring, I finally came to my senses and just had her read and narrate whatever stories came next.

Handwriting

I started the year giving some instruction on the placement of letters on three-lined paper (you know, with the dots in the middle) since we’d focused on letter formation without the use of lined paper in kindergarten.

Then it was copywork, copywork, copywork. She copied the autobiography she’d (spontaneously) written in kindergarten (with mama’s edits for legibility.) She copied the ten commandments. She copied some catechism questions and answers. And she copied lots of happy birthday greetings for cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Mathematics: Math Mammoth 1

I won an electronic copy of the entire sequence of leveled Math Mammoth worktexts back before I’d started schooling any of the kids. I was impressed by what I saw – a well-organized mastery-approach curriculum that I am able to print for about $25 per year at The Homeschool Printing Company. I had intended to switch to Math Mammoth once the kids finished the Shiller Math kit 1 (somewhere around 3-4th grade), but Tirzah Mae’s “wanna do a workbook” from last year made me bite the bullet and get her started on it this year. I did have her use some of the unit cubes from the Shiller Kit to help her conceptualize things a little better (rearranging is easier with 3D objects vs drawings on a page!) – but found that the 1st Grade workbooks are pretty good at making math concrete.

So What’s Next?

Now that Tirzah Mae has finished all six of her ALS-K readers, she is also the proud owner of her own library card (I remember well when I finally completed Sounds of Joy and could get my own card!)

1st Grade was mostly a continuation of kindergarten for Tirzah Mae – but next year we’ll be using all new curriculum. She’ll be learning cursive with Logic of English’s (LOE) Rhythm of Handwriting, doing phonics/grammar/spelling/vocabulary/etc. using LOE’s Essentials, and doing writing using projects/ideas from Brave Writer’s The Writer’s Jungle. She’ll be reading to me, to her younger siblings, and on her own for reading fluency practice. For math, she’ll be continuing on with Math Mammoth AND doing some Shiller Math kit 1 (because she saw the Shiller stuff at the Great Homeschool Convention and regretted giving it up.) She and Louis will also work together through the Core Knowledge book What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know.

We officially called wraps on the 2021-2022 school year in the middle of June – we’ll be back at it next week, Lord willing. But even once we were officially “done”, we continued morning time – it’s something of an anchor for our days.

For us, morning time has been a matter of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I started doing morning time as soon as I finished breakfast but while the kids were still dawdling over it sometime in the 2019-2020 school year and it has continued to work well for us.

Morning Worship

We start morning time with the Scriptures. I open with “Let’s hear what God’s Word says” and then read a passage, closing with “This is the Word of the LORD”, to which we all reply “Thanks be to God.” This is our church’s customary formula for Scripture readings and we want our children to be comfortable with the format.

I added Scripture memory to our rotation in January – I had been intending to do so but had a hard time arriving at a perfect system. Finally, I decided that, despite not having a perfect system we were going to just jump in. We practice the children’s current memory verses from Sunday school daily and then practice 2 “back verses” from the preschool repertoire at church and 2 back verses from the ones that go along with Tirzah Mae and Louis’s Sunday school class.

Also in January, we started working on the New City Catechism as a family during our evening worship, so I review a couple of back questions and answers and we listen to and sing along with the song for the current question.

Daniel and I have long agreed that we think memorizing extended passages of Scripture is ideal for retention, understanding, and application, so for our last interval, I added a longer Scripture passage for us to memorize. We practiced Psalm 1 right after our Scripture reading – and there’s little more delightful than hearing Shiloh leading the others in “are like chaff, which the wind drives away.” This seemed to work well and I hope to memorize one short passage per interval in our next school year.

This year, we read the Psalms and Proverbs, memorized Psalm 1, and memorized the first 22 questions of the New City Catechism.

Poetry and Nonsense

Our next section is on the silly side. We start with a nursery rhyme, then read a poem, then a few jokes, and end with some trivia.

We’ve read all of the nursery rhyme collections our library owns, so I’m just cycling through the three I own and enjoy: Kate Greenaway Nursery Rhyme Classics, Tomie DePaola’s Mother Goose,, and The Glorious Mother Goose. We got through all three this year.

For our poetry, I check out a book of poems from the library (Dewey Decimal system 811, Children’s Nonfiction). When we finish, I check out another. If I happen to not have another queued up when we finish one book, I grab a collection we own and read the next poem in that collection until we’ve got another library book to peruse.

Poetry Read:

• R is for Rhyme: A Poetry Alphabet by Judy Young
• Lots of Spots by Lois Ehlert
• You and Me: Poems of Friendship by Sally Mavor
• Dinosaur Dances by Jane Yolen
• Animal Fare by Jane Yolen
• Sleigh Bells and Snowflakes compiled by Linda Bronson
• The Stable Rat and other Christmas Poems by Julia Cunningham
• The Glorious Christmas Songbook by Cooper Edens and Benjamin Darling
• At Christmastime by Valerie Worth
• Bird Watch by Jane Yolen
• Water Music by Jane Yolen
• Dear Mother, Dear Daughter by Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple
• Birds of a Feather by Jane Yolen
• A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Reading jokes at morning time began when Daniel was traveling at the end of 2020 and would send the kids voice messages with knock knock jokes. The kids enjoyed them and I realized that puns are a pretty great learning opportunity too (hearing Louis giggle at a joke as he says “It should be ‘joke’ instead of ‘yolk'” is pretty great.) Just like with the poems, I check a book out of the library, we read it, and then I check another out. If I happen to plan poorly and run out of jokes, we just go without.

Joke Books Read:

• My First Knock-Knock Jokes by Jimmy Niro
• Bell Buzzers: A Book of Knock-Knock Jokes by Michael Dahl
• Nutty Neighbors: A Book of Knock-Knock by Michael Dahl
• Doctor, Doctor: A Book of Doctor Jokes by Michael Dahl
• Family Funnies: A Book of Family Jokes by Michael Dahl
• School Buzz: Classy and Funny Jokes about School by Michael Dahl
• Teacher Says: A Book of Teacher Jokes by Michael Dahl
• The Classroom Zone: Jokes, Riddles, Tongue Twisters & “Daffynitions” by Gary Chmielewski
• Let’s Eat in the Funny Zone: Jokes, Riddles, Tongue Twisters & “Daffynitions” by Gary Chmielewski
• The Medical Zone: Jokes, Riddles, Tongue Twisters & “Daffynitions” by Gary Chmielewski
• The Science Zone: Jokes, Riddles, Tongue Twisters & “Daffynitions” by Gary Chmielewski
• Ribbit Riddles by Katy Hall and Lisa Eisenberg
• ABC Animal Riddles by Susan Joyce
• Otter Nonsense by Norton Juster

Finally, we enjoy some trivia. I’m not sure when or how we started, but we began reading a “did you know” book at the end of morning time and discovered that we really enjoyed learning random little things. We’ve mostly been writing through the National Geographic Kids series “Little Kids First Big Book of…”

Trivia Read

• National Geographic Kids Little Kids First Big Book of Why 2 by Jill Esbaum
• National Geographic Kids Little Kids First Big Book of Why by Amy Shields
• National Geographic Kids Little Kids First Big Book of Science by Kathleen Weiner Zoehfeld

So What’s Next?

When we start up again, I plan to continue on as we have been with only a couple of adjustments. We’re going to add some extra memory work between our catechism review and nursery rhymes (we practiced my phone number and our address during our last interval and I think we’ll start with the books of the Bible for the next school year.) I also feel like morning time sometimes ends with a whimper when attention starts to wane on our trivia – I’d like to finish off more decisively with a hymn. Then there’s a clear “we’re done” to mark the transition from the table and to chores.