These formal 1st grade homeschool lessons begin gently for your six-year-old as you cultivate the habits of attention and best effort through short lessons and wide variety. The curriculum is designed as a wonderful combination of Individual student lessons, done one-on-one with the teacher, and Family lessons, done with all of your students together.

Sample Schedule

With the Family lessons and the Individual student lessons, each day’s work should take about two hours to complete.

Day One	Day Two	Day Three	Day Four	Day Five
Family Lessons (90 min)	Family Lessons (90 min)	Family Lessons (90 min)	Family Lessons (90 min)	Family Lessons (90 min)
Math (15 min)	Math (15 min)	Math (15 min)	Math (15 min)	Math (15 min)
Reading (10 min)	Handwriting (5–10 min)	Reading (10 min)	Handwriting (5–10 min)	Reading (10 min)
	Science (20 min)		Science (20 min)

Individual Student Lessons

Individual student lessons in first grade are focused on the subjects of language arts, math, and science. These are the subjects that should be taught one-on-one at your child’s pace.

It is normal for a child to be at one “grade level” in one subject and another “grade level” in another subject. When looking at these suggestions, remember that you have the freedom to customize for your unique child! If your student is not yet ready for the recommended level, take a look at the recommendations for Kindergarten. If your child is past the suggested level, move up to the recommendations for Grade 2. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can easily customize skill-progressive subjects (especially language arts and math) to fit each unique child.

Language Arts

Language Arts for your first grader include reading, handwriting, and narration. Your young student is encouraged to progress in reading and handwriting at his own pace. No reading is required except in the daily reading lesson. All school books are read aloud for the student so he can benefit from a more advanced level of writing. Young students can comprehend more than they can read for themselves. By having the teacher read aloud the school books, more advanced ideas can be shared and learned even as the student is allowed to progress at his own pace in reading for himself.

Reading

Reading lessons are a delight with a multi-sensory mix of phonics, sight words, beautiful reading selections, hands-on activities, and creative fun with words. Your student gradually moves from reading individual words to reading sentences and paragraphs with confidence using Delightful Reading, Level 3: From Words to Books as well as wholesome readers designed for a first-grade level: First Steps, Days Go By, and More Days Go By.

Handwriting

Handwriting is practiced through short copywork exercises, always requiring best effort. Beautiful ideas are communicated through A Child’s Copybook Reader series even as your student gains fluency in printing.

Narration

Narration is oral, allowing your child to practice collecting and expressing his thoughts without the additional burden of handwriting. This approach allows your student to gain confidence as he grows in his ability to order his thoughts while his fine-motor skills are still developing.

Math

First-grade math contains very little handwriting as your student explores numbers through short hands-on lessons and gains a solid understanding of addition and subtraction through 100 using The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series, Book 1.

Science

In science a delightful collection of nature stories is read aloud for your young student from Outdoor Secrets. The Outdoor Secrets Companion adds corresponding learning ideas for narrations, nature study, library books, beautiful poetry, and the nature notebook. (This science study can be used with all students in grades 1–2 if desired.)

Family Lessons

Family lessons offer all of your students more living ideas through enjoyable lessons in art, music, nature, poetry, foreign language, handicrafts, singing, history, geography, Bible, literature, Scripture memory. Simply select your choice of History, Geography, and Bible guide and Enrichment Studies. If you are teaching only one student, the Family lessons can easily be done one-on-one.

Grade 1 Shopping List

For a complete Charlotte Mason curriculum, add the history time period and Enrichment Studies of your choice. You can combine all your students for these Family lessons.