Are you thinking about homeschooling your first grader and wondering which homeschool curriculum to choose? With so many options available on the market it may seem like an overwhelming task. However, our few little tips will help you navigate through this challenge with grace.
What Is a Typical First Grade Homeschool Curriculum?
When determining what your child should learn in their first grade, it is always a good practice to look at curricula that established homeschool companies offer. Even though you may not decide to use these at the end, they will give you an overall picture of what a first grader should learn.
The typical first grade homeschool curriculum should include the following:
- Math: Your child will learn to count to 100 by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s. They will add and subtract up to 20, solve simple word problems, work with measures, identify simple fractions, and learn to tell time.
- Reading: Unless your child has learned the basic reading skills in kindergarten (which is not mandatory), they will do so in the first grade. By the end of the first semester they will be able to read simple books and sound out even words they cannot recognize. By the end of the school year, they will read even more complicated sentences.
- Writing: Your child will learn to form letters properly and write simple words and sentences, including capitalization and punctuation.
- Science: Your child will understand their senses, classify animals into groups, learn about life cycles, differentiate between living and non-living things, etc. Hands-on activities will help them understand the world around them.
- History: There are two main approaches to teaching history. Depending on which approach you choose will determine what your child will learn in their first grade. The two approaches are:
- Teaching events that are closest to your child’s understanding, i.e. your country’s history.
- Teaching events of the world’s history and how your country fits into the entire world.
Some first grade homeschool programs also include spelling, phonics (if not part of reading), English, music, and others.
How to Choose the Best First Grade Homeschool Curriculum?
In How to Choose the Best Homeschool Curriculum we describe the best practices for choosing a curriculum based on your state’s laws, your purposes and goals, how much time you want to spend teaching, etc. In addition to the basic points, there are three specifics to keep in mind when choosing the curriculum for your first grader:
- Is the curriculum engaging and taught in a clear and fun way?
- Does the curriculum include regular reviews in order to reinforce the material taught?
- Does the curriculum encourage problem-solving skills?
Keep in mind that your child is only six or seven years old. They have their whole learning career before them. Unless they absolutely LOVE workbooks, include more hands-on activities rather than sitting still at the table with pen and paper.
Our First Grade Curriculum Journey and What We Would Do Differently
We very much enjoyed our first grade. Our primary focus was on ensuring that we loved learning. Before you read about the seemingly overwhelming number of books we used in our first grade, please keep in mind that:
- We didn’t study every subject every day. We may do science and history on Mondays and Wednesdays and geography and arts on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
- Many of the subjects didn’t take us more than 15 minutes.
- Many times we combined several subjects together to provide a link in learning.
- You don’t have to do it all! When our days presented us with other learning opportunities, we left the books behind and studying geometry by building a snowman or watched squirrels build their nests.
Following are the first grade homeschool curricula that we used:
Reading:
My son continued to build on his basic reading skills from kindergarten. You can find the curriculum which got him started on his reading journey in Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum. We used two main curricula in the first grade:
- Days Go By & More Days Go By by Pathway Readers, including workbooks: This curriculum presents a child with beautiful, real-life wholesome stories and keeps the reader excited to continue reading. [Please note that before you start with these two books, First Steps, Preprimer should be completed.]
- We Learn About God’s People and We Learn More About God’s People by Rod & Staff Publishers (Grade 1 Reader, Units 3-6): We Learn About God is a completely Bible based reading program that we used not only as additional reading but also as a Bible program. We didn’t include workbooks with this curriculum.
Note: All these readers can be found for purchase on second-hand sites like Ebay or Thriftbooks for a fraction of its original cost.
Math:
Primary Mathematics 1A & 1B, Standards Edition by Singapore Math: This curriculum is slightly different than other math curricula. To learn more about its benefits, please read a detailed description at Singapore vs. Saxon Math – Which Is Better?. Looking back, I have to admit that Singapore Math was very challenging for us. If I could make my choices all over again, I may have chosen Math-U-See instead. However, I cannot deny the fact that we reaped the amazing benefits of choosing Singapore Math. Plus my son tells me he is glad he completed this math curriculum in spite of its difficulties. [You can read about our math journey in Singapore Math? Really?.]
Because we finished first grade Singapore Math earlier in spring, rather than jumping in the second grade curriculum right away we opted for xtramath.org and ixl.com math practice. It was lots of fun and it kept the numbers rolling in my son’s brain.
English:
Climbing to Good English 1 by Scholaid: This is a Christian based curriculum, easy to use and very economical. The series takes the student from the first grade all the way to the eighth. It is very complete and thorough and encourages independent learning. We used it for several years before switching to more hands-on English program in middle school, which became more suitable for us at that time.
Penmanship:
In the writing area we primarily focused on writing letters, simple words, and numbers. We didn’t follow any specific curriculum to start with but printed free online worksheets as needed. Once my son was able to write the basic letters we followed up with Writing with Diligence by Christian Liberty Press and later on I Can Write – Manuscript by Christian Light Education.
With the experience of 11+ years of homeschooling and research, I can confidently say that I would skip manuscript printing in the early years all together and start my son on cursive right away. The space of this article does not allow me to go into details to explain this statement, but I believe we would have saved ourselves many tears if we had done so.
Science:
A friend of mine lent us a cute curriculum called Earth Science. We created a little lapbook with the information we learned and were able to use it for reviews.
Next, we read Nature Reader, Book One by Christian Liberty Press. It describes, in the most beautiful way, life of various insects, arachnids, and birds that can be found in your back yard. I can heartily recommend this exceptional book.
We also tried Singapore Earlybird Start Up Science. It is a full color curriculum aimed at introducing students to scientific concepts. The lessons include subjects about living and non-living things, the human body, different creatures, plants, and more. For some reason, my son didn’t like this particular curriculum and we struggled through it quite a bit. It just didn’t seem to be the right fit for our family.
History:
We dove into history by studying various historical figures. We used Meet (Name) … series by Landmark Books (for example, Meet Benjamin Franklin). I have created a list of review questions so that my son would remember the person, what they did, the time they lived in, and how they influenced the world around them. You can find a sample of these questions at Meet George Washington: A Comprehensive Question Guide.
We enjoyed learning history this way very much. We would sit on the front step of our house when weather permitted, read a chapter at a time and talk about it. We found it much easier to remember and connect events based on specific people. I should probably add that my son grew up loving history and if he didn’t like engineering even more, he would probably end up being a historian.
Towards the end of the school year we also read History Stories for Children by Michael McHugh and John W. Wayland. This book presents children with a wide variety of wholesome stories based upon famous historical events and personalities from the Bible, America and around the world. It is an excellent read and will engage any young child.
Bible:
We started our school year with reading the parables in the Bible, Psalms, and continued with the studies on the Tabernacle of Moses.
Arts & Crafts:
To ensure further development of my son’s fine motor skills, we continued with various hands-on projects. For example, finger and foam painting, making collages, doing lots of cutting, learning to draw animals from YouTube videos, etc.
Later on in the school year we purchased Art with a Purpose, Artpack 1. This curriculum includes simple coloring skills, color-by-number, cutting and pasting, and simple drawing. I can highly recommend it.
Geography:
Geography is one of the subjects vastly under taught in the US society. Because I absolutely love geography, I wanted to make sure my son was well-versed in the geography of the world. In the first grade we didn’t follow any particular curriculum but played with many map puzzles, read books and watched videos on various places. We also poured over maps, learned continents, etc. You can read about our entire geography journey in Homeschool Geography Curriculum Choices 101.
In summary:
Whether you choose one box first grade homeschool curriculum or decide to piece it together from various resources, please make sure that you don’t overwhelm yourself and your child. First grade can be so much fun! If you keep in mind your overall homeschooling goals, consider your child’s age and teach them to love learning, you will have succeeded in your first grade journey.
