I recently wrote about our Kindergarten and 2nd Grade Schedules for next year, and realized I haven’t written much about what my kids have done in this past year!

 

This was Will’s last year of Preschool, and so he focused mainly on the Alphabet and beginning numbers.

This was Ellie’s 1st grade year, and she focused a lot on reading and writing!

 

Here are the materials we have used this past year. (Scroll down to see how we keep an online Homeschool Journal!)

 

PreK and 1st Grade Materials List:

 

English:

1st Grade Language Arts: Reading and Writing Comprehension

Spelling and Vocabulary Textbook, K-12 (Used sparingly)

Nature Based Writing, Cursive and Manuscript

Mad Libs, the writing game, for 1st grade Grammar

Brainquest

Hands on ABC Guide, Hands on Numbers Guide

Little Lessons Preschool

Preschool Journal

Beginning in April, Will started our Reading program and will carry through that into the next school year

 

Math:

We started with Singapore Math, and Ellie decided she needed something more hands on. So we started making K-2 Math units.

Several of the units from our shop:

Graphing in the Kitchen

Place Value & Shopping in the Kitchen

Skip Counting in the Kitchen

Hands on Numbers

Hands on 4 Operations

Fractions in the Kitchen

 

We will be doing Hands on Measurement, and Hands on Geometry before the school year is finished as well.

 

Science:

We are Gardenschooling now, and will be learning about Natural Disasters.

 

History:

K-4 American History

 

Extras:

We love to do Tea Time, Cook, and Art.

Other extras we have used are Learn and Play Calendars, Little World Wanderer Units, and Christmas on the Prairie.

 

 

How Do We Homeschool Journal?

 

 

We homeschool journal in 2 ways.

First way is a scrapbook type journal, where I keep some of the kids’ work and put it in a binder. Here are some pictures of those:

Every month I take some of the kids’ school work, and put them in the binders. The other work I take pictures of, and keep in trello!

 

 

The second way is using Trello! We loooove using Trello, and have been for just this last year. (We even shared a YouTube video about how to use it! Click here for that)

Trello allows you to make “boards” kind of like Pinterest, and to each board we save certain materials. Here is a photo of what our main Trello board looks like for school.

 

 

Within each board, you can make “lists”. We use the following lists every week/month:

Schedule

Read Alouds

My Journal

Completed

 

 

And from time to time we will add other lists, like for the end of the year:

To Finish Preschool

To Finish 1st Grade

 

 

In my YouTube video, I take you step by step through making a board with customized lists. But basically, I either plan out a week or month ahead; and make little notes in each piece of my list like: “Our plans today are:”, and then at the end of each school day, I upload pictures and videos and write down what we actually did. (Sometimes I dont write it down, and just upload- it is whatever works for you!)

Here is an example of our pre-planning, and filling it out:

 

 

Click here, or watch below:

 

And here is a glimpse at our Homeschool Portfolio!