First Day of School, 2011-2012

Our school year has officially begun! YAY! One day down...only 179 more to go!

Truthfully, though, we were all ready for school to start back. Noah told me this morning that he had actually wanted to "start school on June 4th." Too cute.

I was sooo ready for summer break in May...and now I was so ready to start back. Good feeling.

Here are the mandatory "First Day of School" pics that we always take in front of that same bookshelf.

This year, in our 4th year of official homeschooling, our homeschool has a kindergartener...

(LK wrote this all by herself!)

...a 1st grader...
(In case you were wondering...those are motorcycles on D's paper)

....and not one...
(That is a camper pulling a car heading to the Keys...but that should really be another post)

...but TWO 3rd graders!
"I love school!!" Isn't she so sweet? I don't care if she is trying to butter up the teacher!

Our schedule:

I eat breakfast while I get their breakfasts ready...so that once we sit down at the table (at about 7:3o or 7:45 a.m.), I jump right in!

We always start with Bible. I'm just finishing up reading the book of Romans to them. (WOW! Talk about some interesting discussions we've had during this book.)

Then we clean up breakfast dishes, brush teeth, do morning chores (rotates depending on the day: cleaning potties, dusting, etc...), then...

CIRCLE TIME! This is something new for our homeschool this year. It lasted about an hour this morning...and I think that will be about right. I don't have any pictures of it...because I am right smack-dab in the middle of the circle for CIRCLE TIME! I want to write a whole post about this, but briefly, it consists of LOTS of stuff, serious and fun, that I've been wanting to accomplish and work on with the children, but didn't know how I was going to fit it in...until I discovered CIRCLE TIME! (Most of my fact-gathering on Circle Time consisted of reading every "Circle Time" post on THIS super-cool blog!)

After Circle Time...the children split up and work on their individual "Desk" work. (Should we still call it "desk" work if it is actually done at our 10-person dining room table?)

Here are my big Kindergartener and 1st grader working on their copywork.

This individual work time takes about two hours. I spend the first half hour of that slot working individually with LK...the second 30 minutes with Daniel...the third 30 minutes with Noah...and the last 30 minutes with Elisabeth. So, the older the children are and the more individual work they have to accomplish on their own, the longer they get to work on that before I have one-on-one time with them. Make sense?

LK and Daniel don't do math on their own, they wait until I am sitting with them and we do it together...and they read to me during their time slot (well, LK will be reading to me during her time slot). Noah and Elisabeth can do almost all their stuff on their own...we just look it over during my time, and go over any math problems they had trouble with. And my little bookworms no longer read aloud to me.

As LK and Daniel finish their individual time with me, they peel off from the table one by one, and go "play". Which means they go pick out an activity from our shelves to keep them productively occupied while the rest of us finish school.

Here Daniel is with the Lacing Shapes...


....while LK picked the Numbers Matching cards.

They were actually sitting right next to each other...at the end of the dining room table where the rest of us are sitting.

How do we have room for them to spread out like that on the dining room floor? We sold their desks! I like us all working together up at the table...and besides, it was a royal battle to keep their desks clean...and I was constantly losing. (and losing it!) So...I sold them! LOVE IT!

Lily Kay has been beside-herself-excited to start school. But then, who wouldn't love doing little things and getting praise from not one or two, but FOUR adoring fans! It was so sweet this morning how the older children oooh-ed and aaah-ed over LK's work, "That is a GREAT F, Lily Kay!"

AND she gets her own BINDER this year! (This is big stuff!) She chose an orange one...and she has been itching to get into it and use it:

LK: "Can i wite in the orange sing?" ("Can I write in the orange thing?")

When I told her "yes", she answered, "Yay, thank you, mama!"

I pray that we all maintain that kind of enthusiasm throughout this school year! We're off to a good start!