1st Grade Curriculum Picks: 2025-2026
With the baby of the family it’s hard for me not to feel like every year “this is the last time I’ll be teaching [this grade]” so I keep telling myself that ACTUALLY I’ll teach this grade again someday when I have grandkids, haha!
Morning Time + Devotional
This year our family morning time will be from 9:00-10:00. Here are the things we’ll be working on and looping through during this time:
The Red Headed Hostess Scripture Study: This is one of my longest running subscriptions and I’ve been using it as part of our morning time for years now. I usually pick one thing a day to bring into our morning time so that we’re always starting our day off on a spiritual note.
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization: We have not had much of a focus on poetry memorization and I decided I wanted to try it this year. We will just work on this a couple times a week.
Journaling: I got one of these Question A Day Journals for each of my younger boys and I think they’re going to love it!
Music Appreciation: I am so excited for this course. We will probably just do 1-2 lessons a week family style. We’ll be watching the videos and just discussing the question prompts out of the student guidebook.
Health & Safety & A Little Spot of Emotion Books: After we work through our Music Appreciation course we are going to spend the rest of the year touching on health & safety topics. I just want to keep this area really simple. I am going to be utilizing all of the health & safety courses from TGTB, but we will not be doing any of the science journals or extensive hands-on activities or science projects with them. I am simply just going to use them as a spine and do mini discussion lessons with the kids. I will likely combine multiple lessons and for my younger boys I grabbed these cute emotional resiliency books that I think will be so great to use as we re-visit emotional intelligence.
Language Arts
Handwriting: TGTB Handwriting 1: I have used TGTB handwriting for all my kids and love it. If you want to see more on this topic you might like this post: Learning to Write, Type, & Draw.
Reading: Savvy Learning: This resource offers live small group daily reading lessons. I started my 6 year old in these classes earlier this month and he’s doing great so we’re going to keep him going with these through our next school year. If you also decide to try Savvy classes, I do have a referral code: 1UA8WO. It’ll give you a $25 discount when you enroll.
Extra Phonics Practice: Explode the Code 2 & TGTB Level 1 Reading Booster Program: My kids usually do 1-2 pages out of the ETC workbooks a day independently just for a little extra phonics practice. I have a full review on the Explode the Code books which you can read here. And since we have a full reading program through Savvy I just decided to use TGTB’s reading booster program to simplify and yet continue to help support his reading and especially fluency. We’ll also read from books from TGTB bookshop everyday.
Spelling: Evan Moore 3: Beginning in 1st grade I use these Evan Moor books with my kids. They do one page a day independently and then we do a spelling test at the end of the week.
Writing: Bravewriter Jot It Down: Since most of the above things can be done independently and won’t take long this year I am going to be teaching writing family-style with my two younger boys using the Bravewriter resources kind of eclectically. Years ago we I did a few writing projects out of this guide with my older kids, but my younger son hasn’t done any of them yet. I am going to be using Partnership Writing with my older son so this year I’ll pull one idea a month out of either Partnership Writing or Jot It Down to work on with my boys —you should know both are very easy to adapt projects for younger/older kids.
Also, with my older son I am going to start off the year with the Wildelore literature study and see how he likes it. I am going to have my 1st grader listen in on the books we read and discuss with him some of the simple writing elements that are pointed out in the Dart guides, but he won’t be doing any of the additional work.
Math
Horizons Math 1: We are totally new to Horizons and I’m switching from all of my kids using TGTB. We’ve loved TGTB but this would’ve been my third time through Level 1 and I was just feeling like I needed something different. So, I’m excited to try Horizons!
History & Geography
TGTB History Year 1: I will be teaching this course family style and my son will be using the K-2 Activity Book. There are 4 units in this course with about 15-20 lessons. I will teach from this course 3x a week in a 4-6 week unit style study. After the first unit we will transition to a science unit study for 4-6 weeks and then transition back to the second unit in this history course and so on and so forth throughout the rest of the school year.
Little School of Smith’s Me On The Map: Since TGTB History is more world geography I thought my youngest son would benefit from this unit. I did it with my older son and it was so much fun. Him and I will just work on this 1-2 a month during our morning time together. (Discount code Homecenteredlearning10 will get you 10% off anything in her shop.)
Science
Harbor & Sprout Engineering: We will be doing this course family-style and I think my youngest is going to enjoy it as well. I will teach from the course 3x times a week in a 4-6 week unit style study. After this study we will transition back to history for another 4-6 weeks and so on and so forth throughout the rest of the school year.
In addition to the Health & Safety materials I mentioned above, this science plan should get us up through December of 2025 and then I will see where we’re at before I add anymore here.
Art & PE
Art: Sparklers Club Epic Curriculum: This year I am going to be teaching a more formal art class family-style 1x a week (on the day we are not doing history or science.) The Sparklers Club is a yearly subscription that only opens in August and January. Inside, are hundreds of art tutorials for K-7th graders that can be unlocked with monthly credits (it’s kind of like Audible-style). There are also five full-year curriculums to chose from. Epic is one that we have fully unlocked because of the year we joined and it is a study of art elements and principles. Each month we will study an element of art (line, color, value, shape, pattern, ect.) and then do 1-2 art projects associated with that element.
TGTB Drawing Level 1: My little guy loves Art Kids Hub, but I wanted to be more intentional and add in some simple drawing lessons for him this year too. I got him his very own art notebook and I’m just going to have him work on drawing 1-2 things out of this book a week.
PE: We have a family recreational center pass so the kids are regularly swimming. Our family also enjoys small hikes and biking. My son will also be enrolled in various city sports through out the year.
Phew! All done! ICYMI I also shared our 3rd Grade and 7th Grade curriculum picks earlier this week.
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