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10 Best Books for First Grade Readers

3/25/2020

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I created an Amazon list with most of the books that my first grader loved to read during the 2018/2019 school year. You can access that list by clicking this link to Tamara Ruth Storefront: Books for First Grade Readers. That is an Amazon Associate link.

Below is the list of what my kid thought were the best books she read while a first grader. You're going to notice the same author(s) popping up a lot.... All links are Amazon Associate links.

Ranked by a First Grader

  1. Me Too! by Mercer Meyer
  2. Let's Go For A Drive by Mo Willems
  3. I Am A Frog by Mo Willems
  4. I Love Pink by Frances Gilbert
  5. Big Shark, Little Shark by Anna Membrino
  6. We Are In A Book by Mo Willems
  7. I Really Like Slop by Mo Willems
  8. The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog by Mo Willems
  9. I Was So Mad by Mercer Meyer
  10. A Green, Green Garden by Mercer Meyer
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#HomeSchoolNewbies

3/24/2020

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So, along with the entire state of Illinois (and pretty much everyone with school age kids the world over it seems), we are homeschooling!
Yay!!!!
Or not. This isn't the easiest choice. At the moment it is necessary, but...
and this is a big but...
We'd actually been thinking about doing it for awhile. Briefly every summer since kindergarten and a lot this academic year. I actually went to a homeschool open house and signed up for a bunch of homeschool blogs in mid-February. We even took the kids out of school for a Friday to attend a Classical Conversations group.
Why we'd been looking into homeschool before COVID-19
Our eldest, EG - age 8, is behind in reading. Sure, she's on an ISP with the district school despite attending a parochial school. Yes, she gets extra help and sees the reading resource teacher 4 days a week (also known as every day the teacher is on site). The school is doing pretty much about all they can. While we appreciate it, EG is still behind and, given how both she and her teacher describe her behavior in class, falling further behind.
So, with this sudden homeschool requirement (and please note that as of this writing we've been out of school for 1.5 weeks and had exactly 1 e-learning day), I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to find out what EG's true reading level is and help her advance.

​With that in mind, let me tell you about the online and offline things we are doing for homeschool.
Reading:
First, I assessed EG's reading level using ReadingEggs.com. They have a 30 day trial going on -- we actually started ours before schools closed in our state. The assessment came back with a reading level of 6 years old -- kindergarten.

EG is 8 and in second grade. She describes herself as not understanding the written directions and waiting for the kids around her to help her figure out what to do (because the teacher is often busy too).

Since I know EG also has a tendency to blow-off tests, her reading level might be higher. Either way, I decided to go with the lower level. My objective: get EG feeling confident in reading.
What EG's reading looks like now:
  • 1-2 ReadingEggs lessons or a series of worksheets taken from a Scholastic 1st grade workbook
  • Multiple read-along books via Skybrary.com, Khan Academy Kids, or what we borrowed from the library before it closed (see picture for that craziness -- and YES I wish I'd gotten more)
  • 1 book at grade level (per AR rating)
  • I also continue to read aloud to both kids and they listen to audiobooks (books on CDs, Playaways, and e-audiobooks)
  • We also have Epic and IXL but have yet to touch them during this time. There's only so much I can remember when planning...
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I think both her reading and her confidence in reading have already improved. It might not be by a grade level -- I'm sure she's still behind -- but she has improved.
Math:
EG is actually at grade level in math and a bit bored. The school is using Eureka Math for teaching. EG is one of those who has a certain amount of addition and subtraction memorized. She also has little interest in learning yet another way to do something she already knows how to do just because. Math is actually fairly easy for her to pick up on and I'm not pushing it too much.
What EG's math looks like now:
  • 1 Eureka Sprint sheet (I kept all of them -- she routinely only does like 8 problems out of the 44, so there's a good bit for her to complete)
  • OR
  • a page out of Saxon Math 2 workbook
  • I will also substitute a worksheet from Math Salamanders for fun

​Later this week she will start using Khan Academy for math (I'm figuring out where to start her so she doesn't get bored)
All those other subjects...
I'll be honest, my mental energy isn't high enough to do a whole lot more. I've never been a professional teacher. The reading and math take up the better part of 2 hours for us. So, for now, other subjects are getting shoved aside. That said...
We are watching Home Safari at the Cincinnati Zoo daily as our science lesson. We also watched the live births of a hippo and a giraffe.
For Physical Education and to get our wiggles out, we've been watching GoNoodles, Cosmic Kids Yoga -- which the kids ask for the most, and Coach Wood.
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Art is probably the easiest for me to accommodate. We keep it informal. We have watched Mo Willems' Lunch Doodle to learn how to draw the characters from his books -- which are among EG's favorites. We have several How To Draw books on fairies and princesses (and other topics but those 2 are EG's favorites). We try to sit as a family to do something drawing or art related daily. Each kid and Mom has a dedicated drawing book.

Most recently we strung up plastic eggs to decorate an Easter tree. Perler beads have been pulled out the last several days for special projects.
For the Pre-schooler:
My youngest is 4 and in pre-school. She enjoys doing lessons on ReadingEggs but often needs a little help to remember the directions. While she also has accounts for Skybrary and Khan Academy Kids, we have barely begun to use them.

We did make our own ABC game using 3x5 notecards. We sing the ABC song as we put the notecards in the correct order. I've been using custom tracing pages from Kidzone to create a page with her name and other words for her to trace. (NOTE; you can also create cursive tracing pages for an older kid -- EG is learning cursive.)
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​For math we practice counting to twenty in English and Spanish. I'd like to add shape and color identification into the mix in the coming days. It's all about getting things set out beforehand!
That's it for us -- for now!
Please drop me a comment or email and let me know about how you've structured your sudden homeschool days. Thanks. Enjoy this time as best you can. It's weird and great and hard and fun all at once.
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    Important Information:

    The majority of links on this blog are Amazon Associate links.
    ​As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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