1st day of school 2011

Today, August 1st, 2011 marks our first official day of homeschooling.  Our day started unusually early with the kids all waking up by 6am.  We went along with our normal morning routines... chocolate milk in bed while watching Little Einsteins for 30 minutes, then get dressed, brush hairs, pick up bedrooms/make beds, and finally eat breakfast.  All that was done by 7am and the kids had been anticipating starting school so we went for it!  I am hoping that with the excitement of the first day behind us now they will sleep in tomorrow (a mom can dream, right?)

First order of business was to take their first day of school pictures.  We started this last year and I wanted the picture taken in the same exact spot in our classroom in front of the bookcases. They had fun posing and being silly and hard to believe as it is, I got one where all 3 of them were looking at the camera.  Score!

I had laid out our main school books on their desk the night before.

Lucy's eagerness to jump right in with the reading curriculum gave me an "in" to explain that even though all those subjects were really fun, we would always start with our Bible and our devotional.  We talked about putting God first and how when we do that everything else falls into place.

I promise I don't ask her to make these faces!

We read Day 1 of her Day by Day Bible and it was the story of creation (great lead to the creation lesson we would do later as part of My Father's World).  Our devotion came from Psalm 8 where King David marvels at the moon and the stars and then wonders how God, the maker of all those wonders can care about us.  I made it a point to keep the devotion time simple and short.  I want them to come to enjoy that time and I figure we'll grow in our discussions with time.

We moved on to our bulletin board for calendar time.

We sang the memory songs for the days of the week and the months of the year, updated our calendar, noted the weather, started our "days of school"count and did the day of the month in coins exercise, all things we were continuing from last year.

 

New this year, we started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  I found a couple of youtube videos of kids saying it from memory and Lucy got all jazzed about saying it.  Last on our bulletin board was the God's Standards poster.  I took this idea from another hs mom and decided to incorporated into our homeschool as the ground rules for our day.  The kids are used to hearing us talk about putting others first and doing things with a happy heart (without complaining) but the one about doing things "as unto the Lord" needed a little explaining.

By now, it was about 8am and we took our first break.  I put Michael down for his nap and the girls played while I put on some laundry and did things around the house.  My plan was to follow their lead and not do any more than an hour or so this first week.  I knew Lucy would not go for that though...  After about 30 minutes they were back in the school room calling for me to come back.

We started our lesson on creation from the MFW curriculum.  I read the account of day 1 straight from my Bible with all the grown up words in it.  We talked about it for a little while and then got started on our creation notebook.  Lucy went to town decorating the cover of her notebook with hearts and her name.  I wrote the word "creation" on a piece of paper and she used stickers to spell it out on her cover.  Next she made a picture of what she understood from the passage.

Creation Day 1 - Darkness & Light

We didn't spend too much time on this 'cause we did it last year so it was just review.  I wanted to put a close to the paper and pencil part of our lessons and do something more active so I took them to the room to recreate the 1st day of creation.  We closed all the windows and made it all dark and gave them flashlights that they took turns lighting while saying "Let there be light!".  They loved this and kept playing the game for about a half hour after I had already moved on to doing dishes.  They came and got me when the batteries died  ;)

After a quick snack, they wanted to keep going so we went back to the classroom.  We pulled out the Handwriting without tears music cd and danced to the song about posture and grip (ha!).  It's a simon says type song that has them stomp their feet, sit down on a seat, make all kinds of grip type movements with their fingers.  It was fun!  Then Lucy put what she learned into practice by sitting down, feet on the ground, arms on the table, paper in a diagonal position, 3 finger grip on the pencil and just did warm - up doodles on the workbook.  They have them draw curlies on a sheep, teeth on an alligator and other little things like that.  That was the end of lesson 1 for HWT.

Sounds like a full day, right?  Well, by this time it was only about 9am!

Michael woke up and I got them all ready to run some errands followed by a quick trip to the library.  At the library, Jenna and I colored while Michael dug through my purse and Lucy played computer games.  We got home around 11am in time to start getting lunch ready.  I put Michael down for his 2nd nap (off schedule since he got up so early) while the girls played and then watched a little TV.

Jenna went down for her nap around 1pm and Lucy reminded me I had told her we could do Math while the kids slept if she wanted.  SO, back to the school room.  We cracked opened our Math U See stuff.  I let her play with the blocks for a while and she quickly figured out all their color schemes (1s are in green, 10s in blue, 100s in red, etc).  We watched the first video lesson together and then she did the worksheets that go with it.  She was in math heaven.  What can I say?  I have a "worksheet" lover in my hands!  Good thing is this curriculum keeps them away from too much "paper" work by incorporating manipulatives into everything.  I checked her work and then left her to play on her own.  I came back to check on her after a while and she had taken all the blocks out of the box and rearranged them by color and size.  Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

That's it for school on the first day... we spent the remainder of the day making dinner, playing and trying to keep Jenna from changing her outfit yet one more time.

Jim came home from work and asked Lucy what her favorite part of school was and she said "Handwriting and Math and the Bible Story and Oh, dancing and my creation notebook AND AND the flashlights DAD!"

I think we'll do it again tomorrow ;)