1 Month into School

Remember in my last post when I said that my creativity is very minimal...

Well I did add an anchor chart...and wanted to add a few others but I became sidetracked quickly.

Hy-Vee does a "back to school" walk which we really enjoy. We don't need the pencils and rulers but the boys get snacks making the first week of school more exciting. We also get these pictures

The first day of school was not at all like I hoped nor expected. I have this dream of how it would go perfectly the boys be thrilled and everyone pays attention. Then I have my expectation which is usually more in line with reality, kids groaning but cooperative, house slightly messy, and going slightly over our goal time to end the day (11am)

Reality for this day was far from my expectations...I may have threatened and really thought about sending them to public school. That is how our first day went. By the way there is nothing wrong with public school which is why I seriously thought about sending them but I also know they don't want to go which is why I threatened it as well.

I am just going to be very honest here. Homeschooling is NOT for everyone. In most cases it works for us but I do get frustrated at times. It probably was not the smartest idea to begin babysitting again the same day as we started school but we did. Aside from one child being extremely emotional because it had been a month since I watched her and she had to adjust back to our schedule, a 6 month old teething not just one but 4 teeth at once they were actually the behaved ones. My boys woke up on the wrong side of the bed. They forgot we had bought them donuts for their breakfast and threw a fit that they were hungry before realizing I had their food already on the table waiting for them.

After that it was on me because we decided not to adapt the 3rd grade curriculum for Kindergarten. It is easy to do but I already own the Kindergarten stuff and that is part of my OCD. But they (Sonlight) changed the format of the teaching manuals for 3rd grade making it very confusing for me. It is no longer laid out day by day of what we are doing but basically the whole week summary. Anyway I was not as prepared as I thought I was. Then came spelling and well I am still not sure I like it but can see the benefits of it. I figure we can stick it through at least a couple of months and then if I don't feel like he is progressing I'll switch it up. That is the Awesome thing about homeschooling I am in control and if something doesn't work then we'll adjust. Tears may have been shed by everyone that day but we learned from it.

Tuesday was so much better. Instead of 6 hours it took 4 hours. And 4 weeks later we have a pretty good routine down making school only about 3.5 hours. We do our read out-louds as bedtime stories. And my oldest does his Bible reading right before that. It has become one of my favorite routines.

Do we still have hard days? Oh yes, but not as hard as that first day. We have already taken a week off, that was last week while my husband was home.

My youngest loves school, he is eager to learn new letters and work on math. My oldest dreads math now but is very good at it. He didn't want to learn cursive (he hates change) but loves it and is starting to look ahead so he can learn more letters to spell his and his brother's name.

And if you are curious those 4 little teeth finally did come in and the little guy is back to napping and being content watching us. His sister also back into routine joining us in learning letters and colors and just taking it all in.

Here are a few more pictures we took for "First Day" even though it was a week in, after the dust had settled ;)