First Day Back to School!!

Well here we are! The first "official" day of First Grade.

We started the day by getting up ( around 9.. a little later than anticipated), and having a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, English muffins with jelly, and water melon for the kids, a grapefruit for me. Then Emily put away the clean silverware while Ian and I put away the other dishes together. Then Emily went up to make her and Ian's beds, while I taught Ian how to reload the dishwasher with dirty dishes. Then they fed and let the Dogs outside, while I got dressed and made my bed. The kids claimed they wanted to have school in their pajamas ( because they can!), except Emily changed her clothes anyways. We brushed our teeth and hair and jumped right into our "School Goals of the Day".



First we had a prayer, ( where Emily, the sweetest girl ever, said "Thank you that we can have school at home and for a sweet mommy who can teach us!") then I showed the kids the American flag and explained the pledge of allegiance to them. We decided to have a goal of saying it almost everyday (which is very school-at-home of us, but I think its a good thing to keep). We then read a Scripture and talked about it for just a second, then sang a song that they have been learning at church. Then we looked at our calendar and talked about the date today, and did our little activity on days of the week. I had them go onto the front porch so they could look at the weather, then come back in and pick off the weather board, what they thought the forecast should be for the day. (Today it was sunny and windy according to them, but they thought it might be cloudy later).

We then pulled out the folders from their cubbies and worked together on their word problem of the day. They figured out the problem and each thought up a different word sentence to go with it, which they wrote on the paper, and then colored the picture.
We then started their handwriting exercises for the day which was pretty short, but for Ian especially was plenty, since he gets tired of writing pretty quickly. I explained to them that every week we would work to be able to write a certain passage, then on Friday, they would write it all on a nice sheet that they could color and give to someone special.. they liked this idea and already have several people they want to make pages for.


We then moved out to the love seat in the living room, and cuddled up together to do a lesson from their language arts book. In this lesson they looked at a painting, and then I asked them a series of questions that got them thinking about the context of the painting. They seemed to take to this very well, and wanted to talk about it for a long time. Tomorrow will be another activity with that painting, but with a little bit different activity.

We then moved back in the classroom to work on our math curriculum. I had wanted them to stay somewhat together on a lot of the math stuff, so that we could talk about it at one time, instead of always having to work separately. However, we couldn't keep Emily from doing the first 7 lessons in the book, before school even started, so we already were a little off. So I copied some extra review pages from those first 7 lessons for her to work on, plus a little drawing lesson, while Ian and I worked on lessons 2 and 3 in his book (he had already done 1). She will probably do the same tomorrow, or maybe play with wrap-ups or logic games tomorrow and Wednesday, while we get Ian caught up to where she is, then we will all pick back up working through the lessons together. Anyways, they both did great, and just needed a little encouragement to push through some of the repetitive number writing.
Especially since Ian was a little burnt out from writing numbers, I gave him a few minutes of free time to play with his legos, while Emily and I did her phonics/ reading lesson. I asked her where she wanted to do it (the couch, the classroom, etc.) and she was cool with sitting in the classroom, but wanted to grab a blanket, and asked if she could have a snack. I offered her some fruit snacks, but she spotted the twizzlers on the counter, so with a couple twizzlers in hand, we got comfy in the classroom; Em in her chair with a blanket, me sitting on a little bean bag, and did a quick 15 minute reading lesson. She did so well, I'm really amazed at some of the words she can read with no apparent problem!
Ian on the other hand was very clear, he wanted his reading lesson on my bed, while Emily bounced a ball around the kitchen and living room. So no problem, sounded comfy to me too! He is a few lessons behind Em on this book, that we have been working through for a while, but I think its just that he can easily find things he'd rather do, than not being as good at it, because he flew through his lesson in about 10 minutes. Once he got started today, he was a reading machine!

Now I could see that all of what we had planned was turning out to be quite manageable. We moved back to the love seat and cuddled up to read our History book (while playing with silly putty, so they would feel a little less squirmy) followed by a discussion of what we had read, which, surprisingly enough, really showed that they had listened and actually absorbed a lot of the reading. We then did our reading for Science, which they found very interesting; so much so that we ended up reading today's section, as well as Tuesday's and Wednesday's.. so I'll have to see about either doing a couple of extra of the activities to go along with the reading or move our plans up, so we might actually progress faster than anticipated... I'm leaning towards more fun projects.. but that's just me.
Finally our last real planned subject of the day was our daily geography lesson. This is simple enough, but the kids actually really liked it. Today they looked at a map of a room, then we talked about what a map is, and how we look at it. They then answered the questions of the day that go with the lesson.

Viola! It was then about 1 pm, and we headed for a special lunch of Chik-fil-a ( mostly because the kids wanted cheesecake!). We brought our food back home and ate together, (and played with the pretty darn educational toys that came with lunch!).

At about 2:00 we had a rousing game of junior Monopoly on the living room floor, after about an hour and 15 minutes we put it up, because it seemed that no one was ever going to win or lose!

The kids played outside with the sprinkler, while I wrote this, and now they claim they are going to go clean their room up, while I take an hour or so to work on my courses (Yay! only 10 weeks left till I'm done with my degree!) I think a little later, we will figure out what we want to make for dinner, see if the kids will practice/ learn their dance routine for a few minutes, and maybe see if there is anything short and fun for us to watch on tv or netflix before we get ready for bed.

All in all I'd say its been a pretty darn good first day! Looking forward to many more!!