Five...Four...Three...Two...One...BLASTOFF!

I had every good intention of blogging each day of our first week of school, but you know what they say the road to heck is paved with, right? Yeah....so...there you go. It seemed that we were so busy or something that I just couldn't find the time to sit down and compose the post. Plus there were all the pictures to upload from the camera and blah blah blah...I'm just making excuses, really.




BUT, start we did and it was a good week overall!

First off, we had to start the day with some pancakes and bacon. I think that one of the tough things about homeschooling is making things like the first day of school special. I mean, they don't get to go into a classroom and meet their teacher and see who is going to be in their class and things like that, so I have to work a little harder to make the first day stand out.

Then we had to do the calendar and our regular morning school routine. I had gotten them each a little box of new pencils - Tinkerbell for Reilly, "Cars" for Deco! - and I made them a little badges saying "I'm in ______ grade!" . Corny, I know, but...hey, what can I say?

Now, so far each year I've tried to have a special activity to do on the first day of school. On the first day of kindergarten, we went to the library and got Reilly her own library card. Last year we made chewing gum. This year I had purchased two "grow a crystal" kits to do.

And if you know this blog at all, you know just how well science experiments go around our house. The crystal kits were a complete bust! NOTHING GREW! We just ended up with little plastic tubs filled with green and blue liquid and a rock, covered in saran wrap! Boo! Hiss! Down with science experiments!!

After our failed science experiment (OK, it didn't fail instantly...we had to wait a day or two to really realize that we had failed!) we headed in to do some handwriting practice and math and things like that. Deco's handwriting curriculum is mostly learning how to have control over his crayon and things and Reilly is learning how to shape the letters in a way that will more easily lead to cursive later on in the year. As for math, we took this week to review addition math facts and I think we'll move on to subtraction this coming week. Deco did some mazes in his most recent new mazes book (Thanks, Gram!) and played with Lego's a lot...I'm taking it easy with him. I kind of let him lead when he wants to do school.

Our language arts program is looking like it's really going to be enjoyable. There's lots of cutting things out and illustrating things. Reilly requested to do her "red book" first thing almost every day. In the picture above, she had cut out some short vowel words and was organizing them according to their vowel sound. (We're in a review period right now.) And then, what would a school post be without a token picture of Supey? It cracked Declan up that Supey sat right in the middle of his book!

On the second day of school (or was it the third...drat, that's what I get for not blogging every day!), we did Show & Tell per The Kids request. Reilly brought her guitar from Nani and Deco brought his rifle from Silver Dollar City. We also did our first history lesson from History for Little Pilgrims. They made family trees and they loved it! I think that they were just excited to have something really new to do!

So, there were a few arguments and some frustration on my part, lest you think it was all sunshine and roses for our first week back, but overall it was a fun week! I'm glad to be back in our routine!