First grade has been off to a great start here at Jenna Academy.

First let me say I know how lucky I am to be able to homeschool Jenna. I do not take any of this time with her academically or in every day life for granted.

So we did a little hit and miss school in August, more miss than hit lol. But that is okay, I just wanted to do some review and make it easier for her to get back into the routine of school. With that said , here is what we have been doing in first grade.

Math - We are using Horizon math 2 book 1. She does this 4 times a week. Right now we are doing two lessons a day (because it is mostly review, soon we will do one lesson a day) and on fridays she does drill sheets. This week we finally got to something new, the thousands place value was introduced.

Reading - We finished Pippi Longstockings, which we started in mid August and we are now on the last chapter of Ribsy. We read these books aloud, taking turns reading. Jenna's been busy reading on her own. Her independant reading for school consits of some Judy Moody books and diary of a whimpy kid. books so far. She needs to read 10 chapter books to get a free kids meal at Apple Bee's. Oh and mom has to get a meal as well so, yay me! She has two more chapter books to read. I don't let her count our read aloud books. We will also be doing book it from pizza hut, when it comes in the mail. Mmmmm pizza!

Writing - We are in the middle part of Writing with Ease 2 (started this last year after Christmas). I am having her do this every other week, 3 times a week. I like this program because it incorporates copy work, narration and dictation. On the week we don't use the program we still do copy work, narration and dicatation but we take it from our reading, science and/or history. She also pen pal writes once a week and friday I let her free write. This past week she wrote about her wanting to be a vet when she grows up.

Spelling - Spelling Workout C seems to be such a good fit for her. I don't feel it is busy work at all, she seems to be learning from the short activities.

Grammar - We are using First Language lessons 2 I only have her do this 2 days a week. Even though we did this after Christmas I have started at the beginning of the book reviewing and having her do the memorization of poems. We will be done with the review before you know it and back to where we left off.

Science - We are using Real Science Odyssey Life. Jenna enjoyed learning about living and non living things. And about plant cells and animal cells. I loved her exciement about science. We examined an inside of a chicken egg and she filled in her lab sheet. We also learned that plant and animal cells differ with some jello, grapes, orange slice and 2 different shape pans(rectangle and round). She filled in a lab sheet for that as well. We also learned about the skeletal and muscular systems. Learned some names of some important bones.

History - Story of the world 1 - We finally got to this at the end of last week. We did the intorductory of what history is all about. She is looking forward to learning about the Ancients.

Art- she got some new liquid watercolors which she is enjoying. A more formal art will start next month. But Jenna is creative, so art is done on a daily basis in this house.

So this is what we have been up to. Jenna told me her favorite subjects are Science, Spelling and Art. She isn't a big math fan, but as I told her math is a very importamt part of every day life. And she does well in math. I have a feeling that once we get into history more, that will be a favorite as well.

Jenna is very strong in the launguage arts, which I am very happy about. On her own time she likes to read, write reports on what we are learning in science and animals as well, and narrates about the books she is reading without me asking her too.

She also is a typical kid who loves playing her ds and wii. And now on my fb playing Angry Birds lol. And as I said she is very creative in her daily life.

So hopefully this is a good sign that we are going to have a great first grade.