First Grade Weirdness

Today's preschool lesson went really well -- the children made nice dipped candles although they were small and took forever so then I tried the pine cone fire starters to see if those were quicker and turned out a nicer product. They aren't as beautiful as the candles but definitely faster, as well as using less wax, so that makes them a better candidate for a fundraiser. I don't think there's any way we could make a substantial number of candles in 45 minutes on Sunday. So firestarters it is.

The "Autumn" story was wonderful. The children absolutely loved it and I think it will definitely be done again and again, both with me and in free play.

Moving on to the Natalie question. It has been a weird year for me so far. I definitely have no problem with her learning the content she's doing in the private school kindergarten (since I know from evaluating her that she's ready) but there are 2 problems still. First one is that I want to be more involved -- and I really love the Waldorf way of doing things and I don't want her to miss out on some of the cool learning strategies. So I'm trying to figure out a way to complement her content in a Waldorf way at home. Second is, if I go ahead and do Waldorf 1st grade stuff now, what will I do next year? Next year the state is going to come and say, this child needs to move up from K to 1st and I can't really say, well she's done with 1st. It's strange to think that's she actually ahead of the standard ages, since Waldorf evaluations so often have kids "behind". What I am thinking is to do her school year with her age, ie. she is in Kindy now but the entire year she is 6 we will do first grade. Then when she turns 7, half way through her official first grade year, we begin with 2nd grade work. The state won't know the difference anyway, since the curriculum doesn't match the standard plan, and one of the advantages of homeschooling is that you don't always have to move your kid up in September, you can do it whenever it seems warranted. However, if I have to register my curriculum in advance, I will have a hard time doing that and then switching. Right now, I am using Live Ed's first grade and I really like their work. But I will, of course, supplement with all the other stuff I have.

So the current plan for N is that we will move into main lesson books. She has her hands on lessons and so on during the day, so I will just do a little bit with her at night before bed. That's our special time anyway. I chose 4 main lesson books: red, blue, yellow and green. Red is Language Arts. Blue is Mathematics. Yellow is Social Studies. Green is Science. Now, I'm not sure what to do about form drawing -- if that is its own book or if it goes into one of the subjects. Alan Whitehead has only 4 each year and travels in rotation, doing each one three times. I have never seen him mention FD. I know that it can go either in LA or in Math -- I guess we will put it in Language.

The first four blocks will go like this:
October - Red - learning the capital letters
bedtime story: The Wise Enchanter
begin in main lesson book with form drawing

November - Blue - numbers 1 to 12

December - Yellow - around the world
Natalie's school does a World Tour at this time of year so I will go along with that. I don't know if they focus on the cultures or geography; we'll have to wait and see. And whatever part of the world Natalie is presenting on will of course go in her book.

January - Green - four seasons

Then we'll see how it's going and begin again. Short poems in the LA, 4 processes and math gnomes in the Math, 4 elements in Science, and I'm not sure about S.S. I am not really clear on S.S. for this age, but I like Whitehead's organizational system and I see no reason to ignore it. That way the main lesson book colors can stay consistent from year to year and make a nice collection. Let's see what he has for S.S. in the first year: local geography, four temperaments, flood stories, aboriginal stories. So I guess that would be stories and legends from around the world.

September was socialization and a brief introduction to the four subjects she'll be learning this year. Now in October we begin. The problem, of course, is that the school will run the 4 subjects concurrently and I want to focus on one at a time, but I still think that will be OK reinforcement wise and next year I am pulling her out of the school, if our lessons go well and there's no personality conflict, and continuing at home. It has been dreadful having 2 kids at home, so I can't work full time, but needing to come up with $10,000. Either all in school or all at home seems a better plan.

I'm wandering -- you can see that I'm figuring this out as I'm writing -- and I can't decide whether to stretch first grade out over a year and a half, make second grade a year and a half, make third grade a year and a half, or just not worry about it. I guess what any homeschooler does is just graduate their child to the next grade when they have mastered the previous content, and it doesn't matter. It will all fall into place when we do it...

The other thing I'm going back and forth on is the form drawing. I completely forgot about it before doing the letters, and you are always supposed to start the school year with forms. We have never drawn any of the letters, so there's still time. I guess we will do the language lessons, through story, at night and draw forms in the afternoon, and then in November or December, when we begin to compose things for the MLB, we will get into the part where she dictates, I write, and she copies. I know that we are supposed to take the time to draw each letter in the MLB with full illustration. I don't know where we will find time for that! I really think that FD is its own subject aside from the others and should have its own book and be its own block. Or, you can put it in with Math... dunno. If we do it with Math, we would have to push back the numbers, which I don't want to do. AARGH! I wish I had never put her in school -- no, that's me being selfish. It's what she needs right now. Just because it makes it harder for me to come up with a "perfect" plan doesn't mean it is a mistake for HER and she is what matters most! I will continue with The Wise Enchanter at bedtime --- no wait. The forms are supposed to be done with accompanying stories. Like so and so went up a mountain. Does that mean that I can't do it at the same time? Because it is just one story per day? Do I wait to get through the rest of the book, then do FD, then do the alphabet, then do the numbers? I do have one purple book. I'm confused because you do forms all year long. So that means it has to be its own book. There's also orange but I don't have any left, all my students grabbed them. OK
OK
OK
OK

Let's think here.