First Grade Common Core

One of the challenges of homeschooling is figuring out exactly what your kids "need" to know.  Here in Oregon we only have to face standardized testing a few times (3rd, 5th 8th and 10th grades) and otherwise it's really up to us how we choose to home educate.  There are several philosophies about this, some folks choose to make it up as they go along, or trust that the curriculum they are using is enough.  Some prefer to ignore the "requirements" and allow their children to learn at their own pace.  The rest of us just have to KNOW!  :)  Whatever your philosophy, here's a great resource that's worth a peek.  

This First Grade Common Core workbook is the largest collection of resources for teaching the Common Core State Standards. This workbook includes reams of worksheets, activities, and posters that cover Language Arts and Math.   They have the Common Core Standards Workbooks for Kindergarten through Grade 5 (though the Grades 3-5 aren't available just yet).

I took a peek at a sample (you can download it, here) and the worksheets seem easy to follow and read.  The directions are straightforward.  Even more exciting are the colorful activities and posters that could be used for homeschool-style folder games or even lapbooks.  Lots of fun ideas, here.  

It's always up to us as parent educators to decide what and how our kids should learn.  But sometimes it's nice to get a look at what our kids really need to know.  If my kids need to go back to public or private school, I want them to be ready to meet the standard.  

I was offered a free copy of the First Grade Common Core Workbook in exchange for this blog post.  Thanks to http://www.hipmamasplace.com/2012/05/summer-reading-programs-for-kids-2012.html for the cute pics of the babies reading, too.  :)

Summer School and Flowers, too!

Summer School on the deck

Don't freak out.  We don't force school all summer long. Grace-girl really wanted to learn about plants and flowers and how they work.  I knew she was ready for an in-depth study that was more than pretty pictures and fun books from the library.  We've planted seeds, watched them grow, learned basic plant stuff and now we were ready to tackle flowers and pollination.  SO I put together a lapbook, of course!

We had several books from the library about plants and flowers and especially about bees and pollination.  But the best resource I used was Anna Comstock's The Handbook of Nature Study.  This one book has been my go-to resource for so many science questions (you can see it on my patio table in the picture above).  We could have spent days reading about flowers and pollination and different types of asexual reproduction, but we moved on to completing the lapbook.

Lapbook with closed elements

I didn't find a free lapbook I loved for this topic, so I took things from many places.

Lapbook with open elements

This place has tons of great mini-book and foldy fun stuff for lapbooks.  Great for making up your own stuff, which is what I wound up doing for some of this lapbook.

Sunflower Growth Mini-book.  1 inch per day.  Wow.

Simple wheel book describing a plant life-cycle

Grace-girl loves sequencing, so I just had to turn this mini-book into a sequencing activity.

The Itsy-Bitsy Seedling accordion fold

 And I wanted to find a way to use some pressed flowers from our own garden.

A math/measuring mini-book

 It is really amazing how much a five year old can memorize and retain.  She loved this project and actually learned and remembered the inner-workings of a flower and the purpose for each part.

The back of the lapbook.  She assembled this by herself.

 My favorite little element from this lapbook was a special poem that Grace-girl wrote a couple months ago.  (She narrated, I wrote).  I kept it and did this little petal-fold piece to surprise her.  She loved it.

"The Seed"

When the walls grow and sprout

The little people come about

And when the walls get all tattered and torn

and fall off

Then the people find another home.