This is how we did Year 1 with Kid Uno. I’ve noted where we have dropped, added, or substituted books. I’ve also noted changes planned for Kid Dos.

Reading

• (Daily) Kid Uno read aloud from the First McGuffey Reader. We defined vocabulary and talked about punctuation.
• (Daily) Then we worked through The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. We flew through several lessons a day but it was awfully dull. Looking for an alternative for Kid Dos.
• (Daily) After finishing that, she moved on to reading aloud from the Second McGuffey Reader. She’ll continue it in Year 2.

Writing

• (Daily) She worked through the Grade Two and Grade Three penmanship workbooks from Rod & Staff, spending about 5-10 minutes a day completing a lesson or half a lesson.

Math

• (Daily) We worked through the addition and subtraction sections of Ray’s Primary Arithmetic. Twice! The first time through sequentially with beans and marbles; the second time through alternating addition with subtraction, mostly working out the problems in her head. Then we worked through the addition and subtraction exercises in the Eclectic Manual.
• (Weekly) I read her one or two lessons from the Life of Fred series. She wrote answers on paper or a whiteboard.
• (Weekly) She did several pages from the Miquon Orange and Red books. I assigned the pages, sometimes explained how to do things, and corrected them.
• (Weekly) She picked a book from the I Love Math series and read whatever she wanted (for about 20-30 minutes)

Bible

• (Weekly) Kid Uno read aloud the passages scheduled by AO, and then narrated. Sometimes we discussed the reading.
• (Daily) We usually read to all the kids from Egermeier’s or The Jesus Storybook Bible.
• (2-3x Weekly) At the beginning of the year, I had printed the free verse packs from Simply Charlotte Mason. Kid Uno picked one each week to memorize. They were short, but totally out of context, and she didn’t really remember them. So for the 3rd term, I picked Psalm 136, and we memorized it together. That was much more satisfying!

Poetry

• (Daily) We took turns reading the scheduled AO poets.
• She memorized one poem (the shortest poem in each book) per term

History

• We read the three scheduled American History bios and also added Pocahontas by the d’Aulaires.
• Our Island Story: We read this as scheduled the first two terms, and then I dropped it. I am thinking of using it in Year 4, but it’s too much British history for us, and a slightly over the head of a 7 year old.
• Fifty Famous Stories Retold and Viking Tales: Read as scheduled but not all the chapters were scheduled. I assigned the remainder to Kid Uno to read herself, and narrate. For Kid Dos, I plan to schedule all the chapters in these two books in lieu of Our Island Story.
• Trial and Triumph: Read as scheduled.
• I printed a free timeline from SCM and put it in a 3 ring binder. Every couple weeks, Kid Uno added some names and dates from our readings.

Geography

• Paddle to the Sea: We read as scheduled.
• We used a little globe and a big US map to find places we read about.

Natural History/Science

• Handbook of Nature Study: We didn’t touch it, and I don’t plan to. It’s for the teacher, not the student. It’s not open-and-go, and I think there are better modern options. I’m considering using The Amateur Naturalist and/or The Nature Handbook: A Guide to Observing the Great Outdoors for the other kids and future years.
• (Weekly) Instead, we used Nature Connection. We started with the weather section, since Kid Uno is into weather, and then finished with the naturalist section. We’ll do the monthly section in Year 2.
• (Weekly) She also kept a nature journal through the year. I usually assigned her something specific outside to draw or paint.
• (Weekly) We also read three of the One Small Square series. There are twelve books, and I plan to read them all in Years 1-3. They cover various habitats, with the various animals and plants that live there.
• (Daily) All our kids spend at least an hour outside daily, regardless of the weather. They get lots of nature time!
• James Herriot’s Treasury and The Burgess Bird Book for Children: We read these as scheduled. James Herriot was great; Burgess Bird not so much. Kid Uno picked up a little info about birds, but I can’t stand reading it aloud, so it will go in the Free Read pile for the next kids. For Kid Dos, I will probably keep the AO theme of birds, but use The First Book of Birds. And maybe something by Jim Arnosky or John James Audubon. 

Literature

• We read all the AO selections except
• Parables from Nature. I pre-read a couple of the stories, and couldn’t stand the moralizing. Also, most of the forum comments I read said that the Year 1 children couldn’t understand much of it at all, and it took one or two years to grow into. So I decided not to bother, and instead we read from
• Among the….People. They are much more palatable. If we read 33 chapters per year, we will read all the books by Year 3.
• For Shakespeare, we read Lamb’s. Then listened to it on Librivox. Then watched most of the plays on YouTube.

Art

• (Weekly) I picked one artist per term (Caravaggio, Van Gogh, and John Singer Sargent), and bought a coffee table art book by each artist. I picked one painting each week for Picture Study.
• (Daily) Kid Uno did one lesson daily from Drawing Textbook (unless she had another art project scheduled).
• At the beginning of the year, I bought all the art supplies for the Usborne Art Treasury, and set them aside for school. Kid Uno picked one project every other week, and did it herself.
• On alternate weeks, she did free YouTube drawing lessons by Shoo Rayner, Mark Kistler, and Jan Brett.
• Kid Uno and Kid Dos took four lessons at a little art studio.

Music

• (Weekly) We bought the Classical Kids set of CDs, and I split them up fairly evenly (and in chronological order) to be listened to through the year. I’m not sure they were worth the cost; we’ll see how Kid Dos likes them.
• Both girls love watching ballet on YouTube, so they also listened to a lot of classical music.
• Hymns: I asked DH to pick some favorites, and then printed and filed them. We sang them together a couple times a week (and went over the vocabulary). We sang four Christmas hymns during Advent, and about one per month the rest of the year. They aren’t memorized, but they are more familiar now.
• Folksong: Does watching WeeSing DVDs count?

Foreign Language

• Ummm….Spanish very informally? Sometimes the kids watch Kids Love Spanish DVDs (not recommended–It was a gift–the one star reviews are pretty accurate).
• And sometimes they learn a Spanish word because DH and I speak Spanish to each other when we don’t want them to understand.

Handicrafts

• Weaving potholders on a little loom
• Helping build and paint a treehouse
• Baking and chopping vegetables
• Planting, weeding, and harvesting a garden
• Sewing
• Caring for bunnies
• Chores: washing dishes, putting away laundry, emptying wastebaskets
• Helping care for a new baby brother
• Organizing toys and books
• and so on

Free Reads

• Kid Uno is a reader. She flew through the AO suggested free reads in the first couple weeks. So I pulled heavily from other booklists the rest of the year.

Sports

• Swim lessons at the rec center
• Soccer at the rec center
• Playing tennis with grandparents
• Hiking and bike riding

Extras

There’s so much we can count as “school”! Pretty much just life in general. But I tried to keep track of the extras we did like

• Keeping a bird feeder and hummingbird feeder
• Taking a trip to Washington, DC
• Having a zoo membership
• Camping and hiking
• Writing letters
• Selling lemonade
• Visiting family and hosting friends

Exams

• At the end of each term, DH spent about two days doing exams with Kid Uno. I used the AO exams for Year 1, tweaking to fit the books we used. He took notes for me to read later, and I listened in when I could.

And that was our first version of Ambleside’s Year 1!