First Grade Curriculum Choices

It is almost time to start a new school year at our house. We are changing up everything. I am also happy to report that, wile it was not the determiner, we were also down by half for our budget too. We are really looking forward to trying out our new goodies, but for now I will just share with you what they are...

Illuminations 1 is our core model this year. It is kind of strange because it is just a downloadable file that includes your curriculum choices to buy separately and the year planned out for you. It has set up for 3-8 grade and high school as well as adjustments for younger learners. If we like this curriculum we can use it 3 times over! That is something I can wrap my mind around!

Mystery of History is the glue that will be sticking our whole year together. MoH is a chronological whole world history from a Christian world view. Bible history is included and put in with more common history for a chance to see what order it all happened in. Mister is a huge history buff, at 5, and so a curriculum focused around history is going to be right up his alley. All the readers on the reader list build upon the lessons learned in MoH. This can also be used 3 times.


Life of Fred is our math focus for 1st grade. Mister has fantastic reading comprehension and learns so much from reading books. Life of Fred teaches math through the story of Fred's life. It also shows how math is used instead of the typical worksheet format he will be learning the practical uses of the math he is learning. We can run through the books each year till he moves up in 4th or 5th grade.

The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide is one I don't know much about. It can be used through graduation. I will have to give you more information when I have started using it.

Grammar Punk looks fun. We are going to give it a shot. It uses dice to write sentences. It can be used through 3rd grade. I don't have this one yet, so I can't give you much on this one either.

For Science we will be reading through the mass of free kindle books I have been collecting over the last year. Mister will be learning all about animals from all over the world.

Bible is going to be covered a bit in our history lessons anyway so I think we will just read a chapter from Mister's bible each day. Of course, we will also have to watch What's in the Bible too. After all it is fun and we all learn from it!

We will continue working with Alpha Phonics and then we have agreed to let him have Magic Tree House and Boxcar Children books to practice with after that. We are really looking forward to the next school year but for now we are just having fun finishing up kindergarten!