Wednesday, September 15, 2010

First Week

Ben and I decorated the windows for our first day of homeschool!


We spent the first week of homeschool talking about apples. It was not a bad week, in my opinion!

Our curriculum is pretty loose. We are doing a lot of reading, mostly from a book recommended to me from a friend called Five in a Row. I am LOVING this book. It recommends wonderful, full of life stories for us to read, as well as some great activities (I use this word loosely) to take learning further.

So, our first book was How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. About a gal who decides to make an apple pie but finds the market closed. She then travels to different countries finding the finest ingredients for her pie. We read this story once each day and then took a part of the book a little further in a lesson (geography, art, science, etc.).

Reading makes up the largest part of our curriculum. Hmmmm, maybe that isn't quite the truth. Training Fish to play on his own without destroying things may actually be taking precedence right now. Oh, the joys of an active, to say the least, three year old.

Next comes math. We are working through Right Start Math which is awesome for Treefrog at this point. I have planned through Lesson 10 and there is only one worksheet in those first ten lessons. It is, obviously, very manipulative based and that has been great so far.

Handwriting is a combination of copywork from books that we are reading or that he chooses (thanks for that great idea, J!!) and pages from a book we started working on this summer.

There was a lot of time for Treefrog, Fish, and Pillbug to interact (which I love) throughout the day. We had breaks to change diapers, get snacks or drinks, clean up messes, go for a walks, help a friend in crisis, etc. Though the week was tough, it is what I thought it would be - a LOT of family life with a bit of school. The tide will turn one day and family life will focus more on school, but for now, I'm going with the flow.

The obligatory "First Day of School" picture:


No comments: