First grade art, music, movement and life skills

First grade adds naming to doing. The Texas fine arts standards move a child from making marks to describing what he made and what he hears, and PE starts combining locomotor skills into sequences rather than practicing them one at a time. Money grows from naming coins to counting them and sorting money into jobs. Honest gap: the site's money rooms are pitched at second grade and up, so a first grader will need you sitting beside him for those.

• K
• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th

What to aim for this year

By the end of first grade, a child working at grade level can usually do these.

• Asks a neighbor to buy something he made, with a grown-up beside him, says the price out loud, and says thank you to a yes or a no
• Combines two locomotor skills in sequence, like a skip into a leap, without stopping between them
• Throws overhand at a target and steps onto the opposite foot as he throws
• Separates the sound of strings, drums and horns by ear
• Claps back a written pattern of quarter notes and rests
• Says more than one thing about a piece of art: what it shows, what colors, what the artist may have been after
• Draws from something sitting in front of him rather than only from memory
• Cuts along a curved line and glues without flooding the page
• Counts a mixed handful of coins up to a dollar
• Treats spending, saving and giving as three separate jobs money can do
• Ties his own shoes and pours from a full pitcher without help
• Sits through a six-minute piece of music and afterward names one thing he noticed
• Sorts colors into warm and cool and says what feeling each group gives a picture
• Tells the beat of a song apart from its rhythm and can clap each one separately
• Uses loud and soft on purpose while singing or playing, and knows the words musicians use for them
• Names the five food groups and builds a plate that has more than one of them on it
• Knows when to call 911, what to say, and that it is only for real emergencies

Teach it here

These rooms teach it on this site. No sign-up, nothing to buy, and they work with the internet switched off. Start here. Everything below is a fallback for when you want more than the app gives you.

• bricks — Six things to build with the bricks already in the house, read out one step at a time so a child who cannot read an instruction sheet can still follow one. Every build ends with a change-one-thing challenge: make it go further, hold more, reach out further before it tips.
• know — Health, safety and civics with no reading required: sleep, germs, teeth, crossing a road, calling for help, the fire rules, the five food groups, what is happening inside you, what a government is, the three branches, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the national symbols, why we use money, and the globe.
• piano — A real keyboard with the room listening through the microphone: finding a note, matching one by ear, playing a pattern back, reading a note off the staff, and playing a whole song.
• music — Beat, pitch and simple listening work
• patterns — Repeating and growing patterns, which is written rhythm without the notation
• copycat — Echo-back sequences, the ear-training half of first grade music
• listen — Telling sounds apart, which is what instrument identification rests on
• art — Drawing and composition play
• mixing — Color mixing, with more control than kindergarten needed
• shapes — Shape vocabulary for drawing from observation
• tracing — Letter formation, still worth ten minutes a day this year
• clock — Reading a clock, the first real time-management life skill
• money — Coin work, though the room is pitched at second grade and up. A first grader will need you beside him.
• wallet — Spending money he earned on a good or on a service and telling the two apart, sorting uses of money into the spend, save and give jars, and choosing a real amount of his own to give.
• staff — Read the Music: forte and piano (the musicians' words for loud and soft, and the f and p marks), tapping the steady beat of a tune and then its rhythm on a drum, and clapping back a written measure of quarter notes and quarter rests.

What a week looks like

1. Monday: one Classics for Kids episode at breakfast, then its free K-2 lesson plan
2. Tuesday: print one Met open access painting, two minutes of talking about it, then draw something from life
3. Wednesday: one OPEN PhysEd module from the K-2 band, outside
4. Thursday: count a jar of coins, then sort into spend, save and give
5. Friday: library trip, plus one Cosmic Kids episode before quiet time

If you want more, free

A fallback, not the plan. Every one of these costs nothing, and the license tag says what you may actually DO with it, which is a different question from whether it is free to read.

• Classics for Kids Free See terms

  Six-minute composer radio shows from 90.9 WGUC, Cincinnati Public Radio, plus free lesson plans banded K-2 and 3-5, a composer explorer, games and an instrument guide. One episode over breakfast is a whole music lesson.

  License: Provided free to teachers, parents and caregivers, but the site is marked All Rights Reserved. Listen and print the lesson plans for your own family; do not republish or redistribute it.

• The Met Open Access collection Free Public domain

  Over 490,000 high-resolution images of public domain artworks. Print one a week, tape it to the refrigerator, talk about it for two minutes. Done consistently, that is a legitimate art history program.

  License: Images marked Open Access are released under CC0: print, crop, collage, remix and post them with no permission needed, commercially or not. Not every object in the collection is Open Access, so check the individual object page for the CC0 mark.

• Smithsonian Open Access Free Public domain

  Roughly 2.8 million digital assets and counting from the Smithsonian's museums, archives and zoo, including 3D scans. Strong on Americana, aircraft, natural history and portraits.

  License: Items carrying the Open Access mark are CC0: free for any use, commercial included, with no attribution or permission required. Items outside that set are not. You are still responsible for third-party rights such as trademark or publicity in what an image depicts.

• OPEN Physical Education Curriculum Free See terms

  A full K-12 PE curriculum, free, created and funded by US Games and BSN SPORTS, the sporting goods divisions of Varsity Brands. Grade-banded modules with skill cues, assessment sheets and station cards. This is the closest thing to a real PE program that costs nothing.

  License: Free after making a free account. OPEN states that downloaded resources can be edited, modified and tailored to your own students. It remains their copyrighted work, so adapt it for your family rather than selling or republishing it. Note that openphysed.org now redirects to the site's home under Varsity University.

• Your public library Free See terms

  Underrated in this subject specifically. Craft and maker kits, art technique books, music on CD, instrument lending in some systems, free summer programs, and Libby or Hoopla for audio and video.

  License: Free with a card. Borrowed material stays borrowed material, and library streaming terms are for personal use.

And the paid programs, honestly

Nothing here is required. These are the programs families most often ask about, with the real drawback of each one named rather than skipped.

• Handwriting Without Tears, Grade 1 Paid Student workbooks commonly about $13 to $18 each. Verify current pricing.

  Good at: Keeps the developmental sequence going, and the letter order plus the double-line paper keeps reversals from hardening into habit during the year they most tend to.

  Drawback: Consumable every year, and three or four levels in you have spent real money on something that ten minutes of daily copywork also teaches. The vertical letterforms transition awkwardly into some cursive programs.

  Suits: A child whose handwriting is still fighting him at the end of kindergarten.

• Deep Space Sparkle (Sparklers Club) Paid Around $34 a month or roughly $336 a year at last check. Verify current pricing before signing up.

  Good at: Written by an elementary art teacher, and it shows. Real projects with real technique, a media plan across a year, and video demonstrations for a parent who has never taught art.

  Drawback: Priced for a classroom, not one first grader. Public enrollment opens in January and August, so you cannot start when you feel like it, and the supply lists assume a cupboard you may not have.

  Suits: A parent who wants art planned for the whole year and is willing to pay classroom rates for it.

• SQUILT (Super Quiet Uninterrupted Listening Time) Paid Individual volumes commonly under $10, with the three-volume set around $27. The separate SQUILT Live subscription runs about $22 a month. Verify current pricing.

  Good at: A listening lesson runs ten to fifteen minutes and needs a speaker and a printed page. That is exactly the size of the gap most homeschools have in music, and the volumes are arranged by era so they slot into a chronological history study.

  Drawback: It is listening only. Your child will recognize Vivaldi and still not read a rhythm or play anything. Treat it as half of music, never the whole subject.

  Suits: A family with no musician in it that wants music appreciation to actually happen weekly.

• Cosmic Kids app subscription Paid Reported around $10 a month or $65 a year, with a free trial. Regional pricing varies and is confirmed in the app before purchase.

  Good at: Ad-free and downloadable, which matters on a road trip or when the free version keeps serving commercials to a six-year-old mid-pose.

  Drawback: The same adventures are free on YouTube. You are paying for the absence of ads and for offline access, not for extra teaching.

  Suits: Long drives and waiting rooms, not the living room.

• A city rec league (soccer, t-ball, tumbling) Paid City leagues often run $50 to $100 a season, with club and select programs several times that. Verify with your city's parks department.

  Good at: Rules, teammates, and a coach who is not you. Taking instruction from another adult is its own skill, and homeschoolers get fewer repetitions at it than anyone.

  Drawback: Seasonal, one or two sessions a week, and at this age the standing-around time often beats the moving time. It is social practice as much as physical practice.

  Suits: A first grader who needs practice being coached, not a first grader who needs exercise.

Prices are approximate and change often. Check with the publisher before you buy. We describe and link to these programs; none of their material is hosted here.

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