Can I get some advice on my schedule

[Asma_08]

My son just turned 6 and we start the new school year on his birthday. I am not sure if I am doing enough. I know many here advised to take it slow at this age but I have a strong laziness streak so I never know if I am taking it way to easy. We seem to be weak in the language arts and should he be reading more?

So for first grade:
Italic Handwriting C
FLL
ETC 2
Phonics Pathways
SM 2A/supplement with horizons 2
SOTW 1
Reads one reader daily
WTM life science
Read aloud 1 hr daily
Memorize scriptures(in our case Quran)
Beginning Arabic(very basic just learning letters and pronunciation)

TIA

[Sue G in PA]

:) IMHO, you are doing PLENTY! Doesn't look weak in the LA to me. You have phonics, grammar w/ FLL, reading, hw. Looks good. My advice...take it slow at first. Do the "core" subjects for a few weeks to acclimate him to the new work load. Add SOTW, then science, etc. He is only 6. Like I said, if I could get my ds6 to do half of that I'd be happy. :)

[Trivium Academy]

I just did first grade, we're in second so here's my thoughts.

Italic Handwriting C √ need
FLL x don't need until *after* phonics instruction
ETC 2 √ need
Phonics Pathways √ need
SM 2A/supplement with horizons 2 √ need
SOTW 1 x remember this is *extra* and not the focus for the year
Reads one reader daily √ need
WTM life science x remember this is *extra* and not the focus for the year
Read aloud 1 hr daily √ need
Memorize scriptures(in our case Quran) √ need
Beginning Arabic(very basic just learning letters and pronunciation)√ need

You can really do handwriting, phonics, ETC and math with reading daily and call it a day. The other stuff is gravy, except for your faith items of course. You can read aloud history and science, practice narrations with any interesting books you read to him not necessarily SOTW.

The focus of first grade is to learn to read, learn to write and learn math- everything else should be focused on those goals academically. Your hour of reading aloud can be 1/2 hr. of SOTW and 1/2 hr of a science book. I made the mistake of bogging us down with too many books in history.

Just my 2¢

[Asma_08]

Thanks so much for your replies. Thats just what I needed to hear. I was worried about the history and science. I definitely would prefer to be more relaxed in that area.

I am not a crafty person so I don't do any lap books or anything like that. So whatever I schedule thats what they get. Do you think me just reading to them can make up for the lack of projects or are projects a necessity.

[Alana in Canada]

Do your children enjoy projects? Do they learn from them? That's the only time they need them. At six kids are still relating to the world physically--so certain projects are better than others like printing their name in cuniform, for example, rather than making a mosaic to simulate tessere--but it depends on the child. It helps make school "fun" too.

[Faithr]

Hi Asma,

I am not crafty either, but I've found that if the kids know where the craft supplies are, they'll dig into and come up with their own thing. I have a basket that has crayons, coloring books, paper, scissors, stamps, ink pad, stencils, playdough, various paper dolls. I keep this basket in the family room. Sometimes they'll do crafts while I read aloud, other times they just listen (or snack!) and sometimes they'll dig into it during their free time. You can also buy occasional kits that might correspond to whatever your doing during history. My 6 yo dd loves paper dolls. I got her Little House ones when I read Little House in the Big Woods, Alice in Wonderland ones when reading that. That was as crafty as I got!

So you aren't alone in not be crafty but there are ways around this!

[Soph the vet]

Seems like plenty. Any music plans? I just think music is such a great thing for their little brains.:)

[Kate in Arabia]

When I did 1st grade with my older ds, for history we did SOTW 1, which took us 2 years because I included correlating stuff on the Qur'anic prophets. There's a yahoo group where everyone pitched in ideas for studying the prophets, are you already a member?

Anyway, for history we took it slow, and we made a scrapbook. Nothing very crafty, lol. Ds would write a couple of vocab words from the chapter, dictate his summary to me, and we'd look at reference books for pictures we liked and xeroxed/scanned those and cut them out. Really simple.

For life science, I used the Usborne book as a guide, and we did different animals every week. I found, for me, that if I had a very basic format laid out it was really easy to pull together materials from the internet -- especially Enchanted Learning. We also read a lot of Zoobooks, and we made little "mini-books" of what we read about. Very basic, nothing fancy, lol.

At this age my kids (both my now-older ds, and my ds 6 who is doing 1st grade this year) are/were so excited to have things that they created that reflected stuff we did in school.

Looking at your schedule, I think you are actually heavier in English than I am with my ds 6 -- he does Spelling Workout A, reads a reader a day, and the Zaner-Bloser handwriting book. I was prepared for him to move faster through SWO, his brother finished A & B in one year, but he is not going at the same pace (fine by me). I didn't start a grammar/writing book with my older until he had finished SWO A.



Kate

[Asma_08]

Hi Asma,

I am not crafty either, but I've found that if the kids know where the craft supplies are, they'll dig into and come up with their own thing. I have a basket that has crayons, coloring books, paper, scissors, stamps, ink pad, stencils, playdough, various paper dolls. I keep this basket in the family room. Sometimes they'll do crafts while I read aloud, other times they just listen (or snack!) and sometimes they'll dig into it during their free time. You can also buy occasional kits that might correspond to whatever your doing during history. My 6 yo dd loves paper dolls. I got her Little House ones when I read Little House in the Big Woods, Alice in Wonderland ones when reading that. That was as crafty as I got!

So you aren't alone in not be crafty but there are ways around this!

Thanks so much for the suggestions. I am looking into the Evan Moor history packs. I definitely like the idea of a craft basket.


Seems like plenty. Any music plans? I just think music is such a great thing for their little brains.:)

Well the Quran memorization takes up a lot of time. I may start some sort of music appreciation next year, I haven't sorted that out yet.

When I did 1st grade with my older ds, for history we did SOTW 1, which took us 2 years because I included correlating stuff on the Qur'anic prophets. There's a yahoo group where everyone pitched in ideas for studying the prophets, are you already a member?

Kate
Kate, thanks for your comments. Is that the IslamicWTM group? I am on there and I am looking through some files now to plan out how to incorporate the stories of the prophets with SOTW. I definitely think I will take two years as well. I have an almost 4 year old who sits in on the history read alouds so I don't want to move to fast.