First Day of School

Today was our first day of school. The boys were rather mixed as to whether or not they really wanted to start. Well, actually, Ben wasn't sure, Matthew knew for a fact he didn't want to do school stuff! We had still been loosely working on our MOTH schedule I had set up back in May, just minus the school stuff. I tweaked it over the past few weeks to eliminate a few things and add a few others in an effort to curtail much of the TV/Wii time that had crept into our day. Last night, I went over their studies for the week and felt pretty ready to go.

According to the newly revised schedule, I was to get up at 5:30 am for my time with the Lord. At one point in time, I used to be a morning person--that ended after I had kids. Rob was good about making sure I got up and had a cup of coffee waiting for me. Then I had my own chore time before it was time to make breakfast. Kind of odd for me, but my personal chore time only fit in early in the morning. I had made cards for the kids while at my mom's, so they had a nice little surprise waiting for them when they awoke. We had a yummy breakfast then it was time for Ben's preschool hour.

Ben and I had a wonderful time together going through his preschool work. He is doing Core 4/5 from Sonlight with kindergarten-level language arts, the Primer book from Math-U-See, and working through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. He really enjoyed doing his work and did a great job. He has been working on writing letters on his own, but it was neat to see how well he can write his name for his age. I was impressed with how carefully he printed and how close he came to the proper size for his letters. He also finally breeched the wall we had hit in his reading lesson book. The picture of Ben above is after his school time. The green thing on the wall behind him is this year's skill list, which is supposed to be jail bars. They have to "free" their trip to Toys R Us. Ben just completed his first one this evening--vacuuming!

We took a short break, then it was time for first grade with Matthew. It felt a little like same-old same-old as we started, but there are a few changes this year in Core 1. For one thing, we have a scripture reading each day. We took turns reading the verses and it was a nice start to our time. Our first read-aloud is Charlotte's Web, which is one of Matthew's favorite movies (the Julia Roberts version) so he was hooked from the beginning. I've decided to continue with the Explode the Code series for phonics instead of the suggested books b/c it's hard to switch Matthew mid-stream. We're doing language arts 2-intermediate and it seems to be just right for him. He enjoyed his first reader, which he polished off in no time last night. I'm making him write properly this year, so for copywork we worked on the lowercase letters. Turns out he CAN write them properly, just chooses not to :) Then we finished with the Alpha book from Math-U-See and he did well.

So what was Anna doing at that time? Here's the list: lurking around during Ben's school with Matthew, pulling things out of the boys school boxes, pulling pages from Ben's school binder, helping herself to three packages of fruit snacks (leaving Ben with none), climbing up in the shelves in the pantry, climbing up onto the kitchen counter and breaking my ice cream dish (and cutting herself), jumping on my bed, and for a fraction of time, playing nicely in the living room. Supposedly, the boys are taking turns playing with her, but Matthew kept saying he was bored and wanted to watch TV. We have established a "no TV when someone has schooltime" rule but I broke it at about 10:15 in a desparate attempt to keep Anna occupied. We'll have to have a different strategy tomorrow.

After lunch, we had playtime with Mommy. Today we explored an art wheel that Grandma Litwiller found on clearance somewhere. The paints were dried up (you were right, Grandma!) but the rest of it was pretty neat. The kids and I had a great time making pictures. I had fun coloring with chalks, something I don't think I've done on paper before. Then Anna dumped Matthew's paint water all over Ben's creation and the crayons and I decided we were done.

Anna went down for a nap and the boys and I had science. They are both doing Science K from Sonlight, which we had originally bought for Matthew but never finished....or got past week 4. Planning science into the day should work much better than trying to randomly fit it in :)

We did not finish the schedule for the rest of the day, as it was too hot to send the boys outside to play. They are now having fun with some friends of theirs we're babysitting tonight. All in all, not a bad day, but there is loads of room for improvement :)