First grade weekly lesson plans and homeschool curriculum for free.

First Grade Homeschool Curriculum & Lesson Plans

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After trying virtual school for several weeks with my first grader during the COVID pandemic, I made the decision to pull her and do homeschool.  Like many parents, I was concerned about not picking the right curriculum.  I decided to stick with the reading and math books we were utilizing already in her school, while supplementing with other resources online.

Below the list of weekly lesson plans you’ll find links to all of the books and other curriculum referenced in the lesson plans.

First Grade Homeschool Weekly Lesson Plans

Below are the links to our weekly homeschool lesson plans for first grade.

  • Week 9 (October 19 – October 23, 2020)
  • Week 10 (October 26 – October 30, 2020)
  • Week 11 (November 2 – November 6, 2020)
  • Week 12 (November 9 – November 13, 2020)
  • Week 13 (November 16 – November 20, 2020)
  • Week 14 (November 23 – November 25, 2020)
  • Week 15 (November 30 – December 4, 2020)
  • Week 16 (December 7 – December 11, 2020)
  • Week 17 (December 14 – December 18, 2020)
  • Week 18 (December 21 – December 23, 2020)
  • Week 19 (January 4 – January 8, 2021)
  • Week 20 (January 11 – January 15, 2021)

First Grade Homeschool Curriculum & Resources

Below are the resources I use that are referenced in the lesson plans.

Reading Street
I really like using this as the base for our ELA first grade studies because there are so many free resources on Teachers Pay Teachers and other sites around each unit.  We often don’t use the supplemental workbook pages because I find the free resources or activities to be more engaging.  But we do use the fluency passage out of the workbook weekly and from time-to-time, I find some of the workbook pages valuable.  The workbook also includes handwriting practice (which we skip because we utilize a different program).

GoMath
This is also a common core program,  so it is easy to find supplemental resources for each lesson.

Learning Without Tears (Handwriting)

Science Curriculum
We started our science curriculum doing a lot of hands on experiments.  Then I discovered the Better Lesson website.  I like it because it has complete lesson plans developed.  While they’re developed for a classroom, I’m able to adjust them to fit our homeschool environment.  I tend to add additional YouTube videos to some of the lessons.

Morning Work
When I pulled my child from virtual, one of the things I had planned NOT to continue doing was Morning Work.  What I quickly found was that starting our school day with Morning Work not only refreshes my child’s skills on things we have already learned, but it also helps me identify gaps in things she hasn’t mastered.  I found a teacher on Teachers Pay Teachers who has put together morning work packets that are worth purchasing.  I originally tried to piece together Morning Work using free things, but I found the consistency in her packets is valuable to us.

Bible Study
I love this book because it not only teaches lessons in the Bible, but it also incorporates some art lessons, copy work, reading, and sentence practice.  We start each day with this book right after breakfast.

Song School Spanish
We had every intention of doing this daily for 10-15 minutes, but we seldom get to this. If you have a child who just loves to learn and is interested in a foreign language, I would recommend the Song School Spanish program.  We also purchased the supplemental online class.  But we just never found time to dedicate to either.

Kindness Curriculum 
We did this daily (most days) for several weeks for our “health” lesson.  All  of  the  books  and songs referenced in the curriculum can be found for free on YouTube.  They’re also linked in the lesson plans above.

Social Studies
I just look at the state standards and pick a topic/theme to focus on each month.  Some of the social studies in our state standards are also included in the lessons in Reading Street.

Online Supplemental Resources

Below is a list of online websites that we have used at different times throughout our first grade year.

  • Boom Learning
    You can setup a free account and search for supplemental teaching resources or games on their site.  I always sort my searches by price “lowest to highest” and primarily only use the free resources.  You can also search Teachers Pay Teachers for free Boom Cards.  I wish I would have discovered this resource when I first started.
  • Teach Your Monster to Read
    My child loved playing this for about 3 weeks.  I even purchase the $5 app version for my phone.  Unfortunately, it just continues to repeat the exact same game over and over again with different phonetic sounds.  She got bored of it quickly.  Every now and then she’ll play it in the car.
  • Splash Learn
    After trying their free version and discovering my child liked the math games, I purchased access to it for 3 months.  Unfortunately, my child quickly completed all of the skills she already knew and then was stuck with the skills we were still learning.  Because it doesn’t TEACH skills, only allows you to practice what you already know, she grew very frustrated with the product after about three weeks. 
  • Typetastic
    She used this a lot when we were in virtual school.  I try to give her assignments a few times a month on the product to help her learn keyboarding.  We only use the free version.
  • ABCYa
    We use the free version of this for supplemental games or learning.

First Grade Homeschool Curriculum