A gentle first year built around beautiful books and steady habits
A warm introduction to narration, poetry, and living literature for the earliest school years.
Grade 1 — English Language Arts
A complete first-grade English curriculum. Shakespeare retellings, classic poetry, and living literature woven into a gentle, beautiful first school year — all scripted for the parent.
A note about reading instruction
Grade 1 English Language Arts is not a phonics program or a learn-to-read curriculum. It is designed for narration, copywork, gentle grammar noticing, poetry, Shakespeare retellings, and living literature. If your child is still learning to read, please pair this course with your preferred phonics program or use our Fostering Wonder Pre-Reader curriculum. For extra reading practice after Bob Books-style readers, see our suggested early independent reader books in the Resources book list.
These lessons are temporarily removed while we make adjustments to better fit the Charlotte Mason method. Thank you for your patience — updated lessons will be available in July.
What's inside each lesson
Every lesson follows Charlotte Mason's method — living books, oral narration, and gentle grammar.
Read Aloud
Exact passage marked — just open and read. Parent reads aloud while child listens.
Narration
Child tells back what they heard in their own words. Prompt provided for each lesson.
Grammar Noticing
2–3 minute observation — notice capital letters and ending punctuation. Never drilled.
Copywork
One beautiful sentence per lesson — copied slowly and carefully.
Lesson 1 — Parables of Nature
Term 1 · Week 1
Open to
"A Lesson of Faith" (pages 1–3)
Read Aloud
Pages 1–3, stopping on page 3 after: “but the worst of it is, you won't believe me,” said the Lark.
Narration Prompt
"Tell me what happened when the Butterfly spoke to the Caterpillar. What did the Caterpillar worry about, and what did the Lark try to explain?"
Grammar Noticing — Capital Letters
"Find two words in today's reading that begin with capital letters. One may be a name, and one may be the first word of a sentence."
Copywork
"Still you will be kind, will you not, to the poor little ones?"
107 more lessons in the full download...
Required books
This curriculum is a teacher's guide. You'll need these books to read from, purchased separately.
A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson · Available on Amazon
Parables of Nature
Margaret Gatty · Available on Amazon
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
Edith Nesbit · Available from Living Book Press