Year 1 Resources

I made a few more card type things for Aidan and Paddy this weekend:

Addition Board (pdf)
Addition Cards (pdf)
cards up to sums of 10
Addition Tables (pdf)
table of questions up to sums of 12, to use with the addition board.
More or Less (PDF)
basically, cat counters
Sizes (PDF)
circles of different sizes -- Aidan was having trouble identifying "bigger" and "smaller" last year at speech, so I thought this might help.
Days of the Week (PDF)
hollow letters, for handwriting practice for Aidan or to use to put in order, or to use for a picture schedule for him (he loves talking about time).
Color Words(pdf)

Below, I'm making a list of links I found when I was searching for other things and wanted to remember for the future:

• Science Kit (worksheets and other things)
• My Schoolhouse elementary worksheets
• Granny's Garden School "getting children in touch with nature"
• Learning Page free worksheets
• Kiddy House
• Play Odyssey -- colored printables
• Word Templates
• Little Book Lane -- booklets in different languages, look sort of cute.
• Monthome -- probably most are familiar with this, but it was new to me -- neat visuals and downloads.

I've been here before, but there are some printables and downloads, including a literature-based science curriculum and a history curriculum, at Los Banos Homeschool. There is also copywork in different fonts.

• Starfall, which my little boys like, has printables -- little booklets and worksheets.
• Finally, Quizlet, which I have been using for Kieron -- you can make your own quizzes for free.
• And some Quia Latin quizzes.

While I'm listing links, I was trying to figure out Aidan's speech therapy and did some hunting for that kind of thing, so here are some more links. If Aidan masters position words, more or less, and does a bit of sequencing, he will pretty much have met the goals they set at the IEP last year.

Positional words and directions

• Position Word Games
• Position Words (Math)
• Position Worksheet (PDF) Where's the Cat
• Three Bears position lesson
• Parent Handout on Position Words (PDF)
• Nursery Rhymes to teach position

More/Less/Same/Counting

• Math Worksheets
• Games for More and Less (Lesson Plan)
• unit on coins (more or less)

General Speech

• Mommy Speech Therapy (blog)
• Speech TX

Montessori

• AMI Primary Guide
• Maitrilearning Resources
• Montessori for Everyone (workplans and downloads)
  

Links for Year 0/1

I'm starting to think about planning for the two little ones. They will be starting off with a more "intentional" focus on Year 0 accomplishments, and then phase into a Year 1, probably around the time Paddy turns 6 in December, but maybe later than that depending on how it goes.

SCM: Early Years (CM)

Ambleside -- Year O
Piney Woods Homeschool
List of Attainments for a Child Age 6 and 12

Ambleside Year 0
AO Year 1

Mater Amabilis Prep
MA Level 1

Reading for the Little Ones

I still haven't gotten Aidan into blending, though he's known all his letter sounds for a couple of years and is now learning the phonograms. The concept of sounding out and then pronouncing the word just isn't coming to him, though. I have been doing a lot of research trying to find something that will click with him. He is stuck in 100 Easy Lessons and honestly, after teaching four kids with it I am just bored, especially since I can't get him past lesson 20.

Last week I found this online ReadKEY Vocabulary Program. It is a subscriber program but has a trial version which has a very interesting approach. You put words on a "word wall" and then have the children read them frequently during the course of the day until they are mastered. There are ten words a week, and it is based on the most frequently used words in English language. So in that way it is like Spell to Read and Write, but obviously without as much of a written component (writing has proved to be extremely difficult for Aidan though he has made progress).

I made a file with the first 6 weeks of word practice from the first grade section of the ReadKEY site. (the pages look like the gif above). The way it is set up on the site, the "word wall" words are huge, so you can see them from the back of the schoolroom, of course. So I retyped them to an 80 font which fits well on the page. I fold the paper in half lengthwise (a "hot dog" fold) and then tack it up on the wall in the kitchen. It is easy then to review whenever there is a spare moment. The highlighted words are called "word of the day" and they are the unusual phonetics or exception-words that are very common, but difficult to teach phonetically. The highlighting helps clue the kids in to treat them as exceptions.

I am thinking that I could use this basic method with almost any kind of reader. You can see that the vowels are contrast colors in order to give the kids some help with discerning vowels, but as time goes on obviously it is a good idea to use normal colors for the words. What I'm planning to do is print out the "old" words in b&w and tack them in a different place in the house, and keep the colored "new" words of the week up in the kitchen.

One more thing -- the words in SWR and in this ReadKEY are based on Ayres's Spelling Scale -- he figured out statistically the most common words in the English language and broke them down into levels of difficulty -- you can find his book here in its entirety. I was glad to find it because I didn't realize it was in the public domain.

I haven't decided what to do with Paddy yet, as far as reading goes. I call him a kindergartener though he wouldn't quite have met the cut-off date in our state's public school (his birthday was in December). He can already read several words out of the Tintin books. I am hoping that the passive exposure to phonics via Aidan's work will pay off and the process of actually teaching him will be simple.