Choosing the right 1st-grade homeschool curriculum for your child is one of the most important. The first-grade homeschool curriculum sets the stage for education and learning for many more years to come.
There are 4 basic subjects that students learn while they are in school: Math, Language Arts, Science, and History. With each of these different subjects, there are some things that your child is expected to know in order to be able to move onto the next grade level. Here are the guidelines for first-grade students, along with some websites that will allow you to be able to piece together a year’s worth of curriculum for free.
Math 1st Grade Homeschool Curriculum
Contents
In first grade, children should learn the following about math:
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- Adding and subtracting up to the number 25
- Completing word problems that require you to add or subtract numbers up to 25
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- Understanding what estimating means and being able to estimate simple numbers
- Identifying pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters then being able to use them in combinations of up to 25 cents.
- Understanding whole, half, one third, and one fourth by shading in circles, squares, and rectangles
- Having a grasp on shapes, including three-dimensional shapes (i.e. cones, cubes, spheres)
- Being able to tell time by both the hour and the half-hour
- Understanding how to identify inches on a ruler
- Being able to read both the half and 1 cup increments on a measuring cup
- Being able to read the days, weeks and months on a calendar
- Being able to tell which months go with which seasons
- Understanding and recognizing patterns
- Understanding simple charts and graphs (i.e. tally charts, bar graphs)
- Writing numbers through 100
- Counting by twos, fives and tens
- Being able to understand what greater than, less than and equal to means
There are some great websites that you can use to teach your child these things. One of the best is HomeschooMath.net has free worksheets available that cover: addition, finding the missing number (i.e. 2 + _ = 7), rounding numbers, counting to 100, subtraction, telling time by both the hour and the half-hour and using money
Language Arts First Grade Homeschool Curriculum
First grade students should learn the following whenever it comes to Language Arts:
- Learning phonics blends (i.e. br, sl, ch)
- Recognizing and writing sight words
- Being able to easily read first grade readers
- Being able to understand a story and repeat it once they have heard it
- Being able to label a story’s parts (i.e. what comes first, second, third, etc.)
- Learning new vocabulary words
- Identifying words that have more than one meaning but have the same spelling
- Identifying a story’s main idea
- Beginning to use punctuation and capitalization
- Being able to create journal entries
- Being able to write their own short story
- Practicing neat handwriting
You will find that there are actually lots of great websites that you can use to help teach your child these things. For a 1st grade curriculum, they include:
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- TLSBooks is great for phonics. They have worksheets for long vowels, beginning sounds, reading comprehension, beginning consonants, rhyming words, word families, syllables and letters.
- AllBooksFree.com is an open-source website for reading materials. While there aren’t any mainstream titles here, there are a lot of great selections, which include novels, short stories, and poems. Some of the ones that you might want to check out include: “A To Z Animals” by Maya Ray, “The ABCs of Fruits and Vegetables” by Steve Chaney, “The Adventures of Super Cow” by Danielle Bruckert and “he Baking Contest” by Ingrid Holtshausen.
- The International Children’s Digital Library is another great open-source site. Here you will find that books are organized by age. There are 331 titles for children in first grade. You can completely download each book so that you can read it just like a regular book. Some of the ones that you should check out include: “Alexander The Great,” “Adventures of a Nepali Frog,” “Cat In Boots,” “The Christmas Tree Ship” and “Cinderella.”
- FreeReading.net is a high quality, free reading intervention program for children up through third grade. Some of the areas that are covered include phonological awareness, letter sounds, word recognition, irregular words, spelling, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency and writing.
First Grade Homeschool Curriculum Science
Whenever it comes to science, first graders should learn about:
- Understanding the steps of investigation
- Understanding some scientific terminology (i.e. hypothesis, observation)
- Identifying the 3 principals of matter (solid, liquid, gas)
- Understanding the concept of motion
- Identifying living and nonliving things
- Reciting the 5 senses and giving details about each of them
- Researching animal behavior
- Having a grasp on the animal life cycle
- Having a grasp on the plants’ life cycle
- Comparing and contrasting rocks
- Comparing and contrasting land (i.e. mountains, volcanoes, valleys)
- Understanding weather and its effect on the earth
- Understanding the seasons and the weather that each one produces.
- Understanding machines and how they make life easier – comparing this to a time when there weren’t any machines
- Having a good grasp on recycling and why it’s important
One of the best websites for learning about science is TLS Books. Some of the topics that it covers include:
- Sea Turtles
- Whales
- Farm Animals
- Hibernation
For Social Studies, first graders need to learn the following:
- Recognizing the United States on a map
- Recognizing what state they live in on a map
- Understanding the President’s role
- Fully grasping the concept of a community and each person’s role in it
- Being able to explain what makes a good citizen within a community
- Discussing other cultures and comparing them to their own culture
- Discussing the concept of a family
- Being able to understand and point out places in your community on a map
- Being able to use a compass and point out all 4 directions
- Begin reviewing oceans and continents
- Understanding the difference between needs and wants
- Understanding the difference between goods and services
- Understanding what money is and why it is so important
- Being able to recycle and explain why it’s important to do so
- Understanding about pollution and what you can do in order to minimize it
- Knowing who community helpers are, what they do and why this is so important
TLSBooks is also a great place for first grade Social Studies materials.
Piecing It All Together For A 1st Grade Homeschool Curriculum
While there are a lot of things that your first grader needs to learn, there are also a lot of free resources for learning it. You can easily piece it all together to meet first-grade educational guidelines and your state’s standards. Doing so will give your first-grade student a rich, homeschool education.
