Week 4 - A focus on first grade

This week, I'm showing a peek into how we do first grade. I took apart all of the workbooks that I had chosen and put the pages into a big, expandable folder. LB has a folder for each day of the week which I stuff on Sunday night. Easy peasy.

I put the work that requires me on the left side and work she can do alone or with someone other than me on the right side. I added in some busy work to what I had originally planned so that she could have things to do on her own when the rest of us were busy. The busy work includes Lollipop Logic and reading mazes.  I put the reading book for the week in the Monday folder then pass it to the next day.   The other things in the folder are a page from Artistic Pursuits, the ETC lesson for the day, the Saxon sheet for the day, a page for Math In Focus, and two copies of her handwriting sheet.  On the occasional day when everything in the folder isn't finished, the leftover work gets put into the next day's folder.  This only happened twice so far, and she didn't balk at the "extra" work.

It all works pretty well unless we don't get started first thing after breakfast.  If I let her wander off and do something else before her work is done, she's a bear.

Daily Folders, the Pencil Box, and my folder

The contents of Wednesday's folder

LB's folders contain the written work for the day.  Not included in the folder is my Saxon teacher book, the Saxon meeting book, the book we're reading for history, the poem she's working on, a myth, and a story.  Those are stored on the bookshelf with her folders for the week.  In her pencil box are two pencils, a pair of scissors, a red checking pencil for me, and a glue stick.  I don't know why I never thought of using pencil boxes before, but this year each girl has one which has saved me from looking for pencils every day.

Where CC spent the week

This was a very strange week. Hubby put the new bookshelves in the basement corner that will become our library nook. CC spent most of the week moving, sorting, and shelving books plus reading, reading, and reading. It isn't her normal school work, but it was a terrific way for a bibliophile to spend a week of school. I'll post a picture of the finished space once she declares the library open for business. She did do her "core" work most days this week which includes math, cello practice, pottery class, poetry memorization, and a written report on a science topic.

We have  95% decided to drop CC's enrichment school. It isn't meeting our expectations. We'll need to replace the Spanish and the writing, but I think enrichment school is more clutter in our lives than an important part of our school.

I still need serious work on my Wednesday. It just isn't working out for us. I have three work meetings that day and for the last two weeks, we've had first grade tears on Wednesday.  I think this week I will add more stories and poetry and less written work to Wednesday to see if that is better.