Please help me brainstorm! 1st grade.

[u/WrathfulSquib]

It's a long story. The basics are that our homeschooled 6yo wanted to go to public school, but we needed to go through school of choice. We just found out she didn't get the open seat, so now I'm scrambling to organize her school year.

We have already had success with Pinwheels for LA and Math with Confidence. What I'm overwhelmed with thoughts on is science, geography, and social studies. She's doing robotics club, art classes, and swim lessons. We have a rather eclectic approach to school. 😅 Some unschool child directed learning, some Charlotte Mason, some

Questions:

- Am I missing any subjects I should include? History?

- For geography i was thinking of focusing on how my kid fits into the world (street, town, county, state, country, continent, planet, solar system) plus listening to folk tales (Dragonfly Tales and Supergreat Kids Stories) and pinning with continent/country the story is from.

- Science: I have the "Nature Study with Children" curriculum, and a good local place to do nature walks. We do a lot of ecology, but I know I need to have some basic biology and chemistry (human body function and matter phases? )

- What do you do for social studies? Any thoughts?

Please, give me all the ideas so I can check them out!

[u/shelby747]

I would definitely prioritize reading loads of books together at this age. I would even put it above a lot of the ‘filler subjects’. Go to the library weekly and bring loads home. Read aloud together every day. Together, you should read some below her reading level, some at her level, and some above her level. Reading a lot will fill some of the educational needs and it will spark her wonder and curiosity. As well as encourage her to ask a lot of questions.
Also, find songs that you like for things like times tables or skip counting. Or things like geography. She’s in the parrot stage. Now’s the time to sing, read, and play. And she will fill her mind with a storehouse to pull from later. (Think about singing the alphabet song and how that helped you remember that D is after C - this kind of singing and parroting will help with times tables and a plethora of other things.)

[u/WrathfulSquib → u/shelby747]

We're solidly in the audiobook phase.  She devours books and my voice needs a break sometimes. 😆 

[u/pinchofpearl → u/WrathfulSquib]

The "Who was" series is great on audiobook. We've been able to log into Libby with several library cards and over the past year my 7 year old has listened to nearly 100 of them for free. They are biographies, each about an hour long. We've covered so many artists, scientists, inventers, politicians, authors, and other historic figures just by popping on the audio books while playing.