Arts

So for the arts I figure we will try to have a visual art project each week and some sort of preforming arts project that we will work on over a period of time say 1 performance a month or 6 weeks or something like that.

Social Studies Curriculum Choices

So as that SS concepts tend to be far above a 1st grader I am not terribly worried about this subject at this point. I am breaking it down like this, history, geography, civics, culture, and economics.
For history we will study seerah. I am thinking we will use a kids book published by Darusalam and a little workbook type booklet that I can't think of the name of at the moment. For geography, civics, and economics we will use Houghton Mifflin Social Studies Our Country. Very simple, and has audio with it. Culture will be incorporated in seerah and the text book.

If he has a hard time with any concept, I doubt it, it will be easy to supplement with the many resources i have found. 

So Where are We? Choice curriculum/Getting back into the routine.

Well it looks like we have the Arabic picked out, Math, Science, and English picked out. This leaves handwriting, Islamic Studies, Social Studies, Arts and Health.
I have all but decided that we will learn Spencerian Penmanship because it will be an art as well as a tool for communication. I think I really need to spice things up for penmanship otherwise we'll be miserable.
Also I figure for arts just making sure we have various art projects going on regularly. I will just let it be mostly child directed inshallah.  Say we love reading Three Little Bikers, maybe we can make a puppet show of it, or are leaning about the food groups, painting a poster about it, or we write and learn a little nasheed about what good writers do. Things like that.
Also I am thinking that SS and Health do not need to be done every day. Ideas i have for them are teaching one subject, a few times a week and then when we have mastered the concepts and skills do the other.
We could have one week with one subject and one week with the other or One day with one subject and the other a day or 2 later.
As far as IS goes I think we will do Quraan everyday, and other subjects on certain days. Maybe Aqeeda on mondays, that kind of thing.

This brings me to Mondays. Mondays are the hardest day of our week because he is often tired coming home from a fun weekend at Dad's. It seems also to very important that with in the first few mins that he walks in the door that he gets started on school work. If he does not he has a hard time with the transition back to Mom's house all day. I tend to want to chat with his step mom about what he did on the week end and what not. I guess I will just have to give her a call later in the day. 

Addition facts

By the way we are currently working on addition facts, and again thrift store finds save the day! I  picked up Addition (ISBN 0-7696-4451-1) It has a CD with useful, but obnoxious songs to help the student.  The cover, really covers all the contents.
I also have the subtraction one. I paid a dollar a piece for them. It seems to be paying off, I ask him before he begins if he want to listen to the CD. He has +0 down and just about has +1, has a hard time remembering the name of 12.  I think in another week he will probably be more than ready for +3.  He has just been giving the answers orally. 

Handwriting

So the options seem to be, first of all, do we want to continue manuscript or move to cursive?
I gave an impromptu lesson in cursive today. He though it was cool. I wonder if it would be easier because connecting letters is already familiar to him via Arabic.

 I think it would be cool to learn how to write in the older style, Spencerian.  It also seems to lend itself to learning calligraphy more readily. It might force both of use to slow down and really pay attention to letter formation. (My hand is aching just thinking about handwriting.)

This is Engrossers Script

Just for fun

Of course there are more moder scripts like D'Nealian

So if we learn cursive, what is the end goal? Simplicity or beauty? I think it just depends. If he is capable, beauty because this could be one more way to express himself, on the other hand if it is just not with in his abilities then simplicity would be the obvious choice.  Simplicity would allow him to read cursive and take notes faster.
I still think making beautiful handwriting the goal could be a wonderful choice because it could become an art form, as I mentioned before.
MMM I think I am going to poll people on facebook. 

English Curriculum

So until some other amazing thing comes along, which tends to happen but I dobt it will beat these choices, I decided we will use Scott Foresman Reading 2nd grade for the first 16 weeks, and then Harcourt Collects for the second 16 weeks. And since we homeschool year round to a greater or lesser extent I the remain 20 "official" days are easy to add in.

SF Reading includes, phonics, comprehension, writing, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, web quests and test taking skills (I am not to worried about the test taking skill parts because while we probably will do the state tests occasionally we may not as they are optional.)

H Collections includes comprehension, grammar, spelling, writing, web quests, and phonics.

 As far as penmanship goes, this is a septate issue.

New goodies from the thrift store!

I picked up Mathematic in Action grade 1!  It is the pupil edition. (Just recently realized edition and is spelled with an "e" >< boy I feel dumb, lol.) It is of course an older publication but it really doesn't take much to tweek it into more advanced standards.
I also got Addison-Wesley Mathematics grade 2, The American Nation student text book. So now I am set to go as far as American history. (We won't be covering that for a bit yet inshallah.)
I got a nice calculator for school work as well.
I have so much fun doing this kind of stuff!