Fellini 1st Grade Evidence Blog

“Behind every child who believes in themselves, is a parent who believed first. ”

Subjects

Here is a list of subjects we taught this school year. Click on the button to take you to the subject and the grey arrow to bring you back.

Mathematics Language Arts Reading Spelling History Geography Spanish Science Music Physical Education Art
While you’re here, check out our 1 second video of the first semester of the school year

Mathematics

This year we started with Life of Fred mathematics series. I read each book out loud to both of the children and then the kids answered the questions at the end of the chapter. It was writing, math and reading all in one! LOF was a great way to get the kids interested in math and they really enjoyed Fred’s story. After book two “Butterflies” the concepts got more and more complex for Fellini so it was a good point to switch to Singapore.

I’ve added videos documenting all his work below.

Singapore math is a rich curriculum and teaches mathematical thinking versus “drill and kill”. It’s an intensive way of teaching math but I feel my children are benefiting from this foundation. Honestly, when I saw it I was reminded of the GRE prep course I took years ago! I always wondered why they hadn’t taught it to me that way from the beginning so when I saw the series, I was immediately convinced. It is simple, yet effective. Since this is our first time with Singapore Dimensions it was a bit of a learning curve on how to teach it, and I’m honestly learning along with them at some points. It often took more than the recommended amount of time for their attention spans so it has been slow progress.

My son however really enjoyed the more tactile ways of learning the number line and how to add up to 10 as recommended in the manual. The next school year my goal is to add more games and tactile learning as it keeps it fun and fresh. The games in the teacher’s manual are great but limited since it is geared towards the classroom and not the homeschool environment.

Last but not least, we started to incorporate Dreambox. It served two purposes for me. One, to warm up their brains for math in a fun and engaging way and secondly, to make use of the “down” time while I’m teaching the other child. Yesenia had used it during FLVS and really enjoyed it. She learned better that way and I decided mid-year to incorporate it.

Woodworking Class

Dreambox adaptive learning

Language Arts

We used First Language Lessons Level 1 as our grammar curriculum. It was just enough for him and his attention span. I like how they laid down concepts in a simple and direct way without overwhelming him. The program included dictation, letter writing, basic rules of grammar and poem recitation (memory work).

Work while you work Poem:

Spelling

For spelling, we started with a spelling list but found that some of the words he couldn’t even read yet, so there was a lot of understandable frustration from him. We were doing the All About Reading Program Level 1 at the time and since we had success with that I decided to start using their All About Spelling program. The program teaches spelling as phonics. So ideally, they have more of an understanding of spelling than just basic memorization offers.

The structure is great. It uses tactile learning in the form of tiles and tokens. First, we introduce old topics, then new. Spell the new words with tiles, then on paper. Over the next few days, we introduce phrases and sentences and new words to reinforce the lesson.

The video here has a mix of First Language Lessons and AAS program.

AAR spelling with tiles

Reading

All About Reading Program Level 1 uses flash cards, phonics, books, games and worksheets to help teach reading concepts. We are also advised to read for 20 minutes a day, so as part of his reading, we read The Burgess Book of Birds as he is keenly interested in animals. We’ve finished chapters 28-45 as an audiobook. Here is also a link to his reading log from Epic, a digital repository of children’s books

We also really enjoyed the How to Teach Your Kids Shakespeare book. The kids really enjoyed listening to the passages on the website and dissecting the meaning of the poetry or verse. Here is Fellini reciting a Midsummer’s Night’s Dream passage

For this verse, I made a couple of printouts for them so we could understand some the visual poetry of the scene. Like the flowers that formed the canopy that Titan was laying in. We also explored some to the meaning behind some of the more antiquated terms of Shakespeares time like enameled skin (snakeskin) and weed (undergarments). We also listened to the play on Hoopla Digital, as much as they enjoyed this one passage, the entire play was a bit too much to take in. We went scene by scene describing what exactly was happing but their interest did wane. Suffice to say, I’m very glad we introduced Shakespeare because it definitely demystifies his writing.

The second half of the school year we still worked on some Shakespeare but we used this book more and more. It is 101 Best Love Poems that we got from the library. It was a great way to start the beginning of the day and gave them a large range of poems to digest in short format.

 

Fellini also participated in an event called “Poetry in Pajamas”. It was an event for young kids to come out, in pajamas,  and present their poetry! Fellini is typically a shy guy so I was very impressed he had the courage to go up there and recite poetry. Go Fellini!

History

This is probably Fellini’s favorite subject!

We listen to The Story of The World Vol 1 audiobook as our primary lesson material.

For each lesson, we did either a small activity, color sheet or short Q&A.

We also listened to some other great books that fell in line with the Ancient Times Vol 1.

  • Julius Ceasar and The Story of Rome
  • Egyptian Treasures: Mummies and Myths
  • Anansi the Spider

We watched this fun video on the history of China

We made some fun crafts too! We made an Egyptian crown for the white king and the red king. A shield for a Roman soldier, a puppet show for Anansi, we also drew in cuniform and Chinese calligraphy! The culmination of the school year we put together this really fun lap book!

Cuniform Creation

Geography

Geography this year started out with the basics. The continents, the oceans, the cardinal directions. Then we switched to a week by week study of the US States. We kept it very simple. Watch a video (Homeschool Pop US States), draw the state then drill the states and capitals. I don’t expect the kids to remember the capitals since that doesn’t normally happen till about 5th grade, but I think a good introduction is great will the lay the foundation for when we do.

Spanish

We used Rosetta Stone for just about 20 min 3x a week. Mid-year we added Homeschool Spanish Academy. I don’t think we will continue after the credits we purchased are used, as I don’t like the teaching style. There isn’t a whole lot of teaching, it’s introducing the words then quizzing them. My kids don’t work like that. They can’t retain information that quickly and it only caused frustration. We will continue with it until our credits run out but Rosetta Stone works for my daughter. Fellini has a harder time with it.

This year we also were privileged enough to participate in Spanish Tea Time! It was a neat way to get the kids interested in learning Spanish and actually using it. Here are some pictures.

123

Science

Science-wow there is just so much. We started the year going to NASA Kennedy space center. We were fortunate enough to catch the Parker Solar Probe blast into outer space before it headed to the Sun.

We continued with the space theme and learned about the planets with videos from and the book Exploring Our Solar System by Sally Ride. We made models of the planets, learned about the different forces of nature such as gravity, electromagnetism, and friction.

Last year May, I personally went to NASA Johnson and participated in the NASA SUITS project as a student. So the kids had a really cool personal look at what kind of work goes into the technology of our mission to outer space. They even participated as user testers during our end of year show for the Augmented Reality device the team created! Here is Fellini modeling the Hololens

Weekly, we had a Surf Skate Science class, that taught science along with surfing! It was a cool way to get their minds and bodies involved.

The second half of the school year, we switched to different topics of study for the kids. Fellini focused on Animals. We learned how to classify different types of mammals and then did small studies of different animals. We first started with copywork and a drawing but he seemed to really dislike the idea of copywork so we switched to just making clay models.

We went into depth with birds with a Birding 101 class offered by the South Florida Audobon society. With our reading time, we read from the Burgess Book of Birds and he really seemed to enjoy learning about Peter Rabbit and his friends.

As part of the Nature Scouts homeschool group, we did a monthly Ocean Adventure where we found all different types of flora, fauna.

In this group, we also had a monthly gardening class using the Fairchild curriculum to learn about the plant world.

Lastly, as part of the group, we participated in the Junior Ranger program where we visited national and state parks learned about the history, plants, and animals of the park and earned our Junior Ranger badges while doing it!

Also on the list, we participated in a Butterfly study with FIU. Our job to was to catch and tag all the butterflies we could find to help scientist study the migratory patterns/population of the butterflies on campus. This was also with Nature Scouts.

At FIU we had the opportunity to visit a real deal chemistry lab with real scientists! We got to look inside microscopes to view different types of bacteria and learn all about the lab.

Looking at Apgar

Needless to say, the kids have a very enriching science fueled school year!

Real microscope

Music

This year we used Hoffman Academy for piano lessons. We also listened to Stories of Great Composers for Children by Thomas Tapper podcast.

This is him playing to his friends.

Physical Education

PE is pretty simple. We have a park day every Thursday and once a month beach day with Nature Scouts. We did Yoga every Wednesday up until March then switched to Parkour once a week. We also had a weekly Surf Skate Science class in the first semester. They had swim classes twice a week, then Fellini switched to Soccer classes twice a week with a game on Saturdays.

We went Kayaking at Oleta State Park and bike rides to the nearby park! We try to keep them active and moving their bodies.

Sometimes they did Cosmic Kids Yoga on Youtube and Go Noodle to get some exercise when we have a home day.

Art

We incorporated art into other activities mostly, although we did have some days solely dedicated to it. We used our nature journals to draw what we found during the day. We also used art in science making slime and in History making hats, pyramids and dioramas.

We had a great time learning about Jackson Pollock and Joan Miro. We watched a video on how to paint like Miro and I like to think it influenced these drawing Fellini made.

We also visited the Perez Art Museum and found some great hands-on activities and of course, the Miami Children’s Museum where we created little pieces of art.

The tounge of concentration