first grade homeschool while traveling | no. 22

This year, I tried my best to stick to a schedule for Kindergarten and come up with a rhythm and routine that worked for our traveling lifestyle. I can joyfully say that we have successfully completed Kindergarten and are prepping for 1st grade!

I spent a lot of time this year as we finished Kindergarten to research what we would do for first grade. I've been heavily immersing myself in homeschool methods, materials, and curricula. While I have some desires of how I'll homeschool when we are in one spot all year, I have found a setup that I believe will work for our traveling lifestyle and still give Elodie a rich learning environment! I definitely don't have it figured out, but I wanted to share with you what I'm planning on using for 1st grade and hopefully, this helps you on your own homeschooling journey!

The Rhythm

Materials and curricula aside, I find that my rhythm during the day is the most important thing for staying on track and having happy attitudes throughout the day. I hold this schedule loosely, but have found when I stick to it, I get the best results for my family.

5/6:00am I wake up and exercise for 20-30 minutes, meditate, pray, wash my face, and get ready for the morning. Even if I have exercise clothes still on but I wash my face, I feel like I'm ready for the morning!

7ish Morning Time We eat breakfast together and I go over the day of the week/date, weather predictions for the day, songs, and whatever Bible verse we're working on. After I finish eating, I'll read her a Bible story from her Bible while she finishes eating as well as 1 chapter of our read-aloud. Then, she narrates what we read and we discuss it.

8ish I have her read one of her readers from Learning Dynamics, a Bob book, or a reader from the library and set the limit to 20 minutes. If she doesn't finish the book, we save the leftovers for the afternoon or the next morning. After reading, we do something physical like jumping, stretching, or dancing.

8:20ish Here I'll jump back and forth between her 20-minute math lesson, 15 minutes of spelling, 15 minutes of handwriting practice/copy work and her main lesson work from Peaceful Press.

10am My husband wakes up and we spend time with him and get any errands or activities done that we want to do as a family (shopping/walking on the trail/outdoor exercise)

12:30pm I get lunch made. Some days it has worked out really well to pick meat I want to make and defrost it when I first wake up so that lunch prep is quick.

1:30pm I help Elodie practice her piano for 10-15 minutes

1:45ish This is part of the day when everything is pretty free. Until about 4:30/5, Elodie can have quiet time, we can read books, play, go outside, do a personal project she's working on, switch books out at the library, finish lesson work, etc.

5:30pm dinner

6:30 Get ready for bed

7:45 She's usually asleep by this time and I take the opportunity to catch up on any work I need to do, take a shower, read my books, make sourdough recipes for the following day, and make sure I know what the homeschool plan is for the following day.

9:30/10 I'm asleep. I go to bed at this time to get up at 5/6am.

Weekend Rhythm

Fridays are for catch-up work, field trips, or personal projects she is working on. On the weekends in order to stay on track for the following week, I try to use Saturday to get any cleaning done that has escaped me during the week, as well as a meal plan for the following week and plan a grocery list based on what I already have in the fridge and cabinets.

On Sunday, we are either home with family or on the job for work so we choose a church based on that. In some locations, we've pulled up services from YouTube. I also use Sunday to plan the homeschool week and make sure we have the proper books for 2 weeks in advance. I get many of our school books from the library and it can take a few days to get them from other libraries if my own library doesn't have them.

The First Grade Curriculum Plan

I researched long and hard to pick these and I'm praying they turn out to work well for us!

Playful Pioneers

This is our main curriculum for 1st grade. It's from the same company we've used for preschool and kindergarten so I'm happy to go with them again. It takes you through the Little House books and bases the lessons on those. I love this book series, so I'm excited to teach from it this year! It includes songs, the bible, read-alouds, language arts, science/history, and practical skills/art.

Simply Charlotte Mason First Grade Arithmetic

Since our main curriculum doesn't have math included, I chose this. It's a beautiful hardcover book that can be used again and again by many students. There is no workbook, simply a grid notebook used occasionally for written sums. Everything follows the Charlotte Mason classical education style and most of the work is verbal and visual with manipulatives. The lessons are kept to 20 minutes, so I'm excited to see how Elodie enjoys this.

Homeschool Lifestyle

There are some things that are not curriculum-based at all but rather a choice to live a certain lifestyle. In order to create the atmosphere for school that I desire for her, our home (wherever it is) has things that she can create and play with (play dough, legos, stuffed animals, games, Maileg mice, trucks, etc.). It is also important to me that she be involved in practical life skills (building things, cleaning, cooking/baking, riding her bike, laundry, etc.) so she is always invited and involved with what's going on in the home that day. I also make it a point to give her building projects to work on as it significantly helps her attitude throughout the week and challenges her mind to focus on one task.

That's it! I hope this is helpful for you and that you can see the atmosphere you want to create for your homeschool this year.

~ m