One Month Done

I can't believe the first month of school has already gone by! We have had alot of fun, and met some new friends, too! In looking over some of the photos I've taken between then and now, I realized there are so many I did not share.

Here's one from the first day of school:


This one is of the school table, and cabinet; you can also see the workboxes in the corner. I did the same thing as last year, stacking new school supplies with a special welcome note on top...the kids really like this! The workboxes are set up, but we haven't implemented them yet...oops! You can also see our schedule on the door. I tried to plan an hour of work, then a 20 minute break...the kids get to run and enjoy the weather, I get a few minutes to clean or check email. This schedule has worked really well for us so far. Behind the door are three shelves, one for each kiddo...each shelf has a labeled "cubbie" where they can keep their books neatly. The two open shelves and drawers below are for my teacher supplies. The tackle box is where we keep our Math-U-See blocks...I learned this trick on another website! Fantastic idea!

One week we were studying the Revolution, and we learned about Betsy Ross...the girls thoroughly enjoyed "stitching" their own stars:









And while ballet continues to be a struggle, bowling is going quite well. Our little guy is enjoying this activity, and the kids all get to spend time with other homeschoolers. Here's a few shots of ds:





Later I will upload some pictures of the fun activites we did this week...it was great!

*Ü* Blessings,

Nature Study

It's a brand new week! Yesterday our day was filled with activities outside the house. First dd6 had her American Girl doll class. They are studying Addy this session, and therefore the Civil War era. Though she didn't join in on any of the activities, she did seem to enjoy the class. I know she is looking forward to making some new friends.
After the class, we had one hour before ds5's bowling league started. We ate lunch at McDonald's, a treat for us to eat in! They love that.
We ended up being early for the bowling league, but that is okay, we got to watch as everyone arrived. We filled all the lanes, three to a lane, for just over 50 kids! Wow! There were 6 bumper lanes, and ds was paired with 2 other little boys his age. It was a fun time, and ds is looking forward to doing it again! Unfortunately, my camera batteries died right after this photo:



We are looking forward to doing both of those things again soon! Today, dgd7 joined us again. In history we read about the Boston Tea Party, reenacted it a bit. Then with crayon drew three ships in full sail, and painted over it with blue water paint and lastly sprinkled bits of tea (which for some odd reason I did have on hand) in the wet paint. When it dries we'll hang them up to help us remember that event.

We also did our Nature Study again this week. Last week the girls found pine cones that had been eaten and slightly eaten. We kept these in our science box, and watched all week as the slightly eaten one began to open. What was really cool, was that when we put this weeks things into the box, there were winged seeds on the bottom of the box! They were hiding in the pine cones. Now I always new a pine cone was a seed, but I didn't realize it was actually many, many seeds!

My dgd found something else quite interesting this week. Some mica rock. Pretty, delicate, silvery mica. It is smooth and shiny. We are really enjoying this study.

I'll close for now, as I have to get lunch on the table...we have our first ballet class this afternoon, and the girls are so very excited! Both are in a huge hurry for 3:30 to get here! My dd even thought she'd take a nap to make it come faster! lol Note to self: get batteries on the way!

*Ü* Blessings,

Our First Week is Over

Well, we've done it. We've finished our first full week of school...okay, well, not really full, since we had a holiday last Monday...but still. Four full days.

I had created an excel schedule for us to be able to see what we would be doing each day and for how long. Because dgd only comes three days a week, I had to tweak the schedule to include her on those days and not on the other two, and then tweak our Monday's to include short-term activities we will be doing during the school day. It took some time, but I did eventually get what looked like a doable schedule. After working through it for the (almost) full week, I am happy to say, it works! Yay! We didn't get to everything, but we did the important things. We didn't do any poetry or Spanish, but we did do daily devotionals, calendar time, dictation, copywork, phonics, math, history, science and storytime! We also added in on three different days a nature study, artist study and composer study! The kids seem to really enjoy those parts of our day, and I am glad I scheduled them last so that we have something to look forward to.

I know some who read this will think I'm a little ocd when I say I even scheduled in breaks with notes to self about housework. I think it's good for me...I have a goal of what I am tackling each day (thank you FLYLady!) and I can say that at the end of the week, I still have a clean house and laundry is not out of control! lol (Is there a way to maintain this over the weekend, without cleaning??) We even pulled out The Harris Family 21 Rules of this House, and have begun work on those again. It is great to see the little ones piecing the rules together (if you obey #17, you'll automatically be obeying #18 kind of thing.)

Today, the youngest grandchild has her first birthday. I cannot believe she is one already, where did the year go? She is a sweet, happy baby, and I am looking forward to the next year! Here's a scrapbook page I did of us recently:



*Ü* Blessings,

We Started School Today!

Today was our first day of school...well, really our second as we did do one day last week...but really tomorrow is officially our first day...today and last week I'm calling "dry-runs" can I do that?
Somewhere online I found a wonderful mom who had made these cute "welcome to 1st grade"/"welcome to preschool" cards to sit on her children's table to welcome them to school that very first day...I thought it was so sweet, and wanted to do the same, but then deciding to sell the house, decluttering and not setting up a school room threw me off track! (It's NOT fair - stomping foot!)
This is why I want tomorrow to be the "official" first day...cuz I want to have those cute little signs done for my kiddos!

You know I've been struggling with not being able to set up my room after having spent so much time deciding on what I wanted it to look like...but I decided upon a "temporary" circle time wall! Yipee! It's actually in two parts...

Part 1 is the calendar, place value straw thingy, odd/even days, weather station:

As you can see...it is a VERY temporary/portable wall. I can quickly hide everything away...well, except for the calendar which unhooks from the wall (cup hooks are screwed into the bottom of the chair rail, so I can unscrew them as needed and the holes won't show! lol)

Part 2 is my old white board which I would have hung above the chair rail...it now sits on the easel, which makes it very portable. On this we have the days of the week, yesterday/today/tomorrow, tally marks & how to write the date (the blue board) and a cute little piggy bank - we put coins on it to correspond to the day...today is Sept. 2, so we put 2 cents on it...great for coin counting reinforcement as well as coin exchanging.

Here is a picture my hubby took of us doing school today...the girls are finding the right page in their calendar notebook,

while ds4 waits patiently for his turn to do something on the wall...

he was so happy to get to do school with us!

We had a pretty productive day considering that we followed absolutely NO schedule at all today...and for those that even know me slightly, you know how hard that was for me! lol

Blessings to you my friends,
I hope your days are just as grand!
merchi