First Grade-Third Grade

It is September. New School year has begun. Here are our short term and long term plans.

Ballet Girl is in third grade. 
She is an independent reader and will be tasked with reading one required book per month (my choice) and anything else she chooses. My goal with this is to keep her engaged at least to some extent with well written and meaninful books. I will also ask for short book summaries, as well as short discussions about the interesting points in the books.
Writing will be primarily devoted to spelling and dictation in the first half, and to retelling of a familiar story in the second half of the school year. For spelling we will finish review the AAS3 she forgot, finish the remaining portions of AAS3 and move into AAS4.
Grammar will be addressed as nuances are encountered. I plan to incorporate grammar with the learning of bulgarian and portuguese. We will mainly be concerned with the tenses this year.

On the math front, Ballet girl is beginning with BeastAcademy, series 4. We finished the assessments for BeastAcademy series 3, and are reviewing some of the points she has forgotten. So far so good. My plan is to move through the BA4 series; to drill units conversions, especially squares; to drill the associative property of multiplication. We will definitely touch on some number theory, geometry and algebra. I will prepare her for the math challenge competition this year. We will start in earnest in October.

Portuguese is the emphasis this year. I am going to stick to individual and group instruction each day. We will finish Vamos falar portuguese and Salpicos 3. I also hope to go over most of tenses exercises in Brazilian Portuguese Grammar book 1. Listening will imporve through read alouds and youtube movies.

Bulgarian will be on a secondary stage for the first half of the year. I am putting portuguese and math ahead for the moment. However, we will refer to its grammar during portuguese lessons, and we speak it daily.

This year we will take it easy with piano.No rush to finish the book by the end of the year. I want it to be a fun and easy piano year. There will be no competitions unless she asks for it. Violin is a slightly different story. I suspect that by the end of the year the first book will be completes, and there will be a recital. I think that the teacher has a solid grasp of timing and expectations, and will help with the heavy lifting. I don't know why the piano book graduations turned out to be so stressful.

Sports will be represented by swimming lessons in the fall, gymnastics in the winter and nothing in the spring. For now, at least. We are planning a trip abroad.

Sunlight boy is in first grade. 

The emphasis for him this year is learning to read fluently in English. He can sound out words, and is already improving. We abandoned the Bob Books and went to AAR 1 which has worked great for us for the summer. We will stick with it and continue onto AAR 2, along with any other school related work.

Spelling is secondary, although he is picking up the basics fairly well. I have started with AAS1 but we will stop, go, review as needed, not as dictated by the school. I don't have expectations on that front.

Math will be interesting. We are still reviewing Grade 1(Challenging Word Problems-Singapore Math-Common Core Edition) material that he knows. He is getting better at some of the quick computations. At the moment we are focusing on time, recognizing time to the hour and half hour. We will start reviewing Grade 2 (Challenging Word Problems-Singapore Math-Common Core Edition) next month and hopefully start on Grade 3 (Sinfapore Math primary books) material in January. I do not plan on preparing him for the math challenge competition at his school. If he quaifies, he qualifies-if not, oh well!

Portuguese means daily 1-1 and group session. We are going over a book teaching reading, but we are mostly using it as a simple way to learn to listen and understand. We are also going to stick with read alouds and movies as primary sources of communication.

Bulgarian will be maintained once a week, through some short reading exercises. Once English is at a comfortable level, then I will upgrade bulgarian to reading twice a week.

Piano continues as before. He is most likely going to finish book 1 this year and have a recital. I think the review for the recital will be easier because we are constantly reviewing songs. I have lower expectations of him at this stage than I did of his sister, because he is not well coordinated yet, so I hope to not be as stressed as I was before.

Sports will be outdoor play, swimming in the fall and gymnastics in the winter, with the low possibility of soccer in the spring.

We are going to attend some classical concerts, but the venue has moved and is not as close as it was before. We are also going to see two kids' theatrical performances at the Beverly Arts Center. This year we will keep it simple. We over did it last year I think.

We have not read any particulary interesting read alouds recently. I highly recommend Mouse Called Wolf, and Leonardo DaVinci by Diane Stanley.