First Day Fun!
For our first day of school I opted to just do it, without a bunch of hullabaloo. I know many are thinking, 'Why start so early?!' It's simple really. The earlier you start the earlier you are done. I find it especially frustrating that kids are in school in May. It's so pretty and not humid then! But this week? Hot, humid and rainy. My kids don't even want to play outside. In May its hard to keep them in!
So Here's What I Did
The night before I made our morning board. I didn't receive it until then, or I would have been done EARLY.
First, I measured and drew out a chevron pattern onto a cork board, then I painted with craft acrylics. After it was mostly dry I erased leftover marks. I let it fully dry over night.
Here's a look at our homeschool space.
Viewing from left to right you see the wall next to our kitchen. The Batman is making a creation timeline, and you can also see the finished board. Their workspace is a litte 'HotWheels' table we've had for years. I'm painting it one day. The dinner table is for larger projects, manipulatives or whatever the kids feel like doing that doesn't involve paint, markers or scissors. The bottom row is my workspace. It's crowded but it works.
What You've All Been Waiting For:
Our First Day!
First we open in prayer, sing songs, review our ABC's, do the weather report (The Batman loves that part!), and talk about what letters and numbers we will focus on that day. Oh, and the calendar, can't forget that! We will add more as time goes on. This is just what I feel is a must, some of which My Fathers World (MFW) included and some I found or made on my own. The kids sit, stand or wiggle while participating. Obviously I have higher standards for the 5yr old than the 3yr old, but they are little and they are boys. Kids need to be kids and learning happens during wiggle sessions, I promise!
After this is Bible time. I read the story and ask questions. If they can't answer at least one question each I read the short passage again until I feel that either they've gotten it or I should try again later. Right now we are going through creation and will spend a total of ten days on it.
This is just sea green rice with fluffy cotton 'clouds'. I didn't put this out until today. See how I made it here.
Then they switch. We didn't purchase student sheets for SuperT simply because I'm not sure he's up to full blown kindergarten yet. So he gets to practice fine motor skills if he wants to. Yesterday he didn't but today I pulled out the scrapbook scissors and he practiced cutting.
Another project they are both doing is the creation book. They are illustrating through different media, the days of creation.
Here's The Batmans first page.
MFW provides cut outs of the words for the book, but in honoring their copyright, I'm just writing a prek version on SuperT's.
Throughout the day we will point out the letters and numbers for the day. That's pretty much where MFW leaves off. So we added reading time during lunch. We each pick any book we want to read, and I read it out loud, while they eat. Keeps them quiet and hands busy. Before lunch we do some kind of manipulative. Like these:
They are wood shape blocks (left) with free printables online. On the right are Cuisinare Rods with pages from the book I took out and put in page protectors. This week I'm not paying too much attention to how they are doing. I'm just refreshing them on their ABC's and 123's.
We were pretty much done in under 2 hours. It was nice for the first day, and actually the first ten days will be very similar. I'm assuming MFW chose to use this time to get kids in the routines and to make things easy on us newbie homeschool moms. It's great because I can still work hard on maintaining my household duties. After the 10 day creation unit things will pick up in intensity I'm sure. I'm thinking of adding some lessons from the 'teach your kid to read in 100 easy lessons’ book I borrowed from the library tomorrow, but we will see how it goes!
Overall it was a great day.
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