8/20/12: Our first “official” day homeschooling. We turned in our paperwork to the state last week and now we are underway! We picked today as our first day because most of our friends were starting school at the Big School today.
Pete and I tried to make the day special for the girls and decorated our school room/play room with streamers and gave them a bouquet of flowers on the table to try to start things off happy. After a leisurely breakfast I took the girls outside for 1st Day of School pictures. I found these cute printables on “I Can Teach My Child” and then they each got to make a “rock star” pose to finish things off.
Then after pics, we did what all kids do, we walked to school! Ha! I saw this suggestion on a blog and though it was fun! Elizabeth decided to ride her bike, but we all went around the block together. What a fun way to start the day, and what a beautiful morning. I’m kinda hoping they’ll want to do it again tomorrow!
After all this we got down to school! We started out setting up our calendar and singing a months of the year song which was a fun way to get some wiggles out. After that, Katie wasn’t very interested in joining in so I let her do her own thing while Elizabeth and I worked on reading. She has really blossomed in reading this last month and I couldn’t be more excited! I pulled out the first book in the BOB Book series “Mat.” If you haven’t seen these books, they are very simple and short (maybe 10 pages) consisting of content like “Mat sat. Cat sat. Cat sat on Mat.” I was glad that she was able to read this with only a little help. My plan was to start small and successful and only read one book today, but she asked to read the second book too. YIPPEE!
Similarly, we did a drawing lesson using Draw, Write, Now book 1 and again, I only planned on doing lesson one (drawing a Hen) but then in her free time she also drew the cow and the horse. I’m really looking forward to seeing how well she improves in art this year. She is so passionate about it right now.
We’re starting a penmanship curriculum as well and Elizabeth completed lesson one on our new lap desk while I did our current science read-aloud called Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling. I bought a set of books by Holling, this being one of them, based on a recommendation. Wow! This is a great story with such beautiful illustrations! Again, I only intended to do one chapter, but Elizabeth was still working on her worksheet and so we read another. When I asked her at dinner if she remembered any of the story she summarized it pretty well for daddy.
About this time Katie decided to join us and she spent some time playing teacher by “reading” a beginners Bible to us and then she “wrote” letters on the white board most of which looked like “O.” We had a quick snack and then Katie led us in a made up song (we hear a lot of those at our house) and practiced sitting criss-cross-applesauce before calling school-time done.
Quite a nice kick-off, I can only hope the remaining 147 days go as well as today 🙂
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