A Day in First Grade Part One

Bubba is really enjoying first grade. His day begins with waking up about 8 o'clock, getting dressed and having breakfast. Then Bubba and Princess play together for about an hour. About 10 o'clock, Princess is ready for a nap and Bubba begins school. While I am getting Princess ready to go down, Bubba pulls out all of his getting started activities to start without me. Getting started activities include a newsletter, calendar, weather report, word wall, tally sheet, money jars, math journal, writing journal, pattern journal and dictionary. Phew, that sounds like a lot, but it only takes about an hour.

With so much to do, I made a check list to help keep track of what has been done.

His newsletter is pre-written by me, copied from my Guide Book. A typical newsletter will tell him what we will be doing in school that day, ask him to fill in the blanks of what today is and what yesterday was, and give some kind of encouragement for the day. This is noticeably his least favorite activity.

This is the first page of a typical newsletter.

I added to his calendar routine. The curriculum only requires going over what today is: month, day, year, and singing the days of the week or month of the year song. I took a white board with writing lines wrote in perminate marker an outline for him to fill in. It includes today's full date, what today's weather is and what his prediction of tomorrow's weather will be. 

At this point we are using phonetic spelling. He wrote that it is sunny outside.

This leads into the weather report. This year it varies from month to month as to how he tracks the weather. At first, like last year,  he filled in a chart reporting on the weather. Currently, he is filling in a graph telling what the temperature is. He loves going to the local media site to find out today's weather and current temperature.

Tracking the weather

Tracking the temperature

I was really skeptical about the word wall. We didn't do it last year but I thought I should give it an honest try this year and Bubba really enjoys it. I took a poster board and labeled it Aa-Zz. Every Monday we add new words to the poster. The words we add are the sight words he will be working on this week and the dictionary words he will be learning this week. He loves putting the words up on the wall. The rest of the week he reads all the words.

Proper names have been hidden to protect the guilty. Uh, I mean innocent.

The tally sheet is a real simple way to track what day of school we are in. It is another white board that he adds one tally mark to every day and then counts the tally marks to determine how many days he has been in school.

Bubba likes to use lots of colors!


The tally sheet leads right into the money jars. Well, cups really. I took five paper cups and labeled them pennies: 1c, nickels: 5c, dimes: 10c, quarters: 25c and dollars: $1. Every day he adds on penny to the penny cup. When he gets five pennies he trades them in for one nickel, two nickels for one dime, etc. Then he counts how much money he has. This is also how many days he has been in school.

Looks like tomorrow we get to do a lot of trading!

Bubba's favorite activities are his journals. In his math journal he has one word problem to solve everyday. The problems range from addition and subtraction to patterns and number words.

In the begining I drew the basic picture for Bubba to add to. Now he does the whole picture himself.

In his writing journal I have started a sentence for him to finish and then he draws a picture to illustrate the sentence. These are usually silly things like "My favorite kind of pizza is..." or "When I grow up I want to be..." This is a hit or miss for him. Sometimes he gets really into it and sometimes he doesn't like the question and doesn't want to do it. I am finding I love his answers and this is going to be a great keepsake!

This is Ruffman. The superhero he created.

The pattern journal consists of a pattern I have started for him that he needs to continue everyday. He spends a week on each pattern, adding one or two more things to the pattern.

The dictionary is a notebook that we add new vocabulary words to every Monday. I write the word and the definition and he illustrates it. The words added to the dictionary are concepts we will be learning about that week in school. Although he doesn't always understand the concepts yet on Monday so I am thinking of changing this activity to Friday after he has spent a week on them. Words we have added to our dictionary include: citizen, community, work, matter, mass, motive and force.

Well that is our first hour of school. I will talk about what he does for the rest of school in my next post.

Cyber School Report

I just read a great report on cyber schools in Pennsylvania from The Commonwealth Foundation. It dispels many myths and misinformation out there. If you are truly interested in cyber schools, it is a very interesting read that will help you defend your position with facts and figures.

See it here.

Messy Fun

This week we had lots of messy fun. It began with painting.

Bubba was supposed to make "feelings" faces. I cut out four circles, one yellow, one blue, one red and one pink. He was supposed to paint the faces showing the feeling each color represents.

Bubba is painting his "happy" face.

Princess got in on the action. I drew faces on her circles and let her finger paint on them. It took a little convincing to get her to try it, but once she started, she didn't want to stop. She was still painting long after Bubba lost interest.

Princess is painting her "angry" face.

Later in the week, Bubba practiced writing his spelling words in pudding. To be honest, this wasn't the assignment. He was supposed to make the words with clay. However, he had played with clay the day before and I was afraid he'd lose interest too soon.

Refering to his spelling list.

Princess had a ball playing with pudding too. She obviously wasn't writing words, just having fun playing with the texture and making a mess. She also dicovered that pudding tastes a lot better than paint!

"Momma, when I clap it goes EVERYWHERE!"

I remember writing in pudding when I was in elementary school and I had so much fun, I wanted to pass on that memory. It was a hit! This is definitely something we will be doing again.

What is a mixture?

Today's science lesson was about mixtures. A mixture is a combination of several ingredients that can be separated into their original substances.

Wow! That is really technical for a first grader. This is what we did to break it down for our experiment. We started with our fruit bowl. (Which is rather empty since it is the day before grocery shopping.) We observed how the lemons and limes were mixed together. Then Bubba separated them into their original groups. Two lemons and two limes.

Next we took some sugar and put it into the bottom of a pitcher and I added some hot water. Bubba watched as I mixed it all together until the sugar was dissolved. We observed that the sugar could not be removed from the water. Therefore it was not a mixture.

(We then added some tea bags to the sugar water to make some sweet tea. No reason for it to go to waste!)

Next, I gave Bubba a cup of popcorn, mini marshmallows, pretzels and raisins. He poured them all into a bowl and stirred them together.

We observed that it was a mixture because we could separate it into it's original parts. Which Bubba then proceeded to do.

After he was done sorting everything back to it's cup. Bubba poured everything back into the big bowl and we shared this yummy snack. (Made even a little sweeter since Princess was sleeping and he didn't have to share with her!)

School On The Go

We are a one car family. Once a week I drive Bruischi to work so I can have the car to run some errands. This past week I had a FANTASTIC idea! I took most of Bubba's morning activities with us for him to do in the car. Okay, I admit it is not a new concept for any school at home family, but it was a first for me. I have taken his school work with us on vacations and when visiting family, but never for the drive to and from Bruischi's work. GENIUS! That is almost two hours in the car that is usually "wasted" time. Add to it that I have to run my errands and leave in time to pick Bruischi up, the day usually turned into a non school day. Thanks to that little light bulb, now Bubba can get some work done in the car, do his computer work while Princess takes her nap, and get his workbook pages done while we are driving from place to place doing errands! I am so excited!

And, because she has such an early sence of fairness, since Bubba was "coloring" Princess had to color too!

The Ups and Downs

Yesterday was rough! Princess was sick on Sunday and still wasn't herself yesterday. She refused to nap and every time I tried to put her down she would scream. Therefore school for Bubba took a lot longer than usual. We normally begin the day about 9. Bubba will do his "Getting Started" activities while I play with Princess. By 10, she is ready for her nap and Bubba is ready for me to help him sign in to the school.

Yesterday, because Princess was so cranky and moody, I was not able to give Bubba my undivided attention. He did his best. He listened to all his "Adventures in Midlandia" and watched all his video teachers, but he could not get the workbook pages done with all the commotion with Princess. We took lots of breaks and finally decided to wait for Bruischi to come home to finish his workbook. Ahhh, that was a weight off of both of us. Bubba was excited that he could take a very long break and I could focus on Crankasaurus Rex (AKA Princess). Poor Bruischii didn't know what he was coming home to.

Today is much better. Princess is almost back to normal. She went down for her nap with very little fighting. Bubba did all his "Getting Started" activities quickly and with out arguing. Now he is on to his computer work.

This week the focus is on feelings and family traditions. Today, Bubba has decided his favorite family tradition is going to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July. This surprised me with all the Holidays coming up, Halloween, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Christmas. He drew a picture of lots of fireworks exploding in the air while singing the "Veggie Tales" theme song. (The fireworks were singing it, not him. You have got to love that imagination!)

Why We Chose Cyber School

A little about us first. I am a 30 something stay at home mommy of two, Bubba (5) and Princess (1). Bruischi works a 8-5 job about an hour from home. Bubba is 5, soon to be 6 and is in first grade. Princess is almost two and is a typical toddler in the "terrible twos" stage of life.

When telling people that we cyber school I get one of three responses. The first, and most common, is "What is that?" The second is a look of "You're nuts." The third, and most infrequent, is "That's great!" Sometimes I feel I need to defend our choice and explain why we chose cyber school. Most of the time people are interested, sometimes their eyes glaze over from lack of interest and sometimes they still look at me like I'm nuts.

We chose cyber schooling for multiple reasons.

 My husband and I had very different schooling growing up. I went to a private school from first through eighth grade and then to public high school. While I immensely enjoyed my schooling, the christian values taught to me at school were not the same as those taught to me at home which left me confused. Bruski went to public school for his entire education. He was diagnosed with ADHD and was labeled a troublemaker. He never shook that label and his education suffered for it. We knew we didn't want to send our kids to public school and private school (religious or secular) was financially out of the question. So, if public and private school were out of the question, what about homeschool?

I tried homeschooling Bubba for preschool but found that I could not stay motivated. I would do really well in September and October but by November and December I'd be skipping days to do other things and by January we'd rarely get any school done at all. The cycle repeated every year. I knew I needed some form of external motivation to homeschool properly and I couldn't find one. Also, financially we could not afford to buy our own curriculum and teaching supplies.

This lead our search to cyber school. I was amazed when I started to do some research! Cyber school is technically public school. My tax dollars gets diverted from my school district and gets sent to my cyber school. (All this is done by the school district.) All work, while being done at home and supervised by me, is also supervised by a teacher at the school. A few times a week we need to scan and submit a workbook page or two to Bubba's teacher. Being a public school, the school is responsible for the curriculum, the teaching supplies and anything else we may need. They provide workbooks, reading books and teacher's guides. They supply the computer, printer and internet service (Yes, they pay for my internet!)  Also, my school provides pencils, crayons, scissors, paper, even tissues! I'm saving money just by cyber schooling by not having to go to the store with those back to school lists every school sends home! I was sold!

Add to that, last year when I was looking to start Bubba in school he was not yet 5. The cut off in our school district is September 1, no exceptions. They would not allow him to enter Kindergarten even though he was already starting to read. If we wanted him to go to school we had to send him to a private preschool. My district does not have public preschool or a K4 program. My cyber school allowed him to enter K4. It is a self paced program and he finished K4 in one month! He started Kindergarten two months before his 5th birthday. This year he is in 1st grade and loving it!