Off to School We Go

Day One of “Mommy School” is under our belts and I have a moment to catch my breath.  Here’s our school roundup for this year:

1 Abeka Phonics K – I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about it, so we are giving it a whirl with Monster Boy. Surprise discovery of today was that BunnyGirl was really into it and very put out that she did not have her own worksheets.  I’m debating Xeroxing them, but suspect it would be cheaper and faster to just buy an extra workbook.

2. Sonlight Language Arts – Love all the books in this curriculum.  I’m partial to real books and really want my children to develop a love for reading.  Sonlight’s phonics approach is very…um…flexible and student paced?  OK, the truth is I just don’t get it. So, I’m using Abeka, too.  Sonlight seems to have a more open philosophy that kids will simply absorb the phonics through read-alouds, but I’m not quite that trusting.  Give me some flashcards and rules for sounding it out anyday!  I learned to read with phonics, so that’s probably why that’s clearly my comfort zone.

3. Sonlight World Cultures – This is part of their Curriculum A.  It’s not totally necessary in Kindergarten, but I love the books (again) and love the discussions it promtps with the kiddos. Also, surprise from MonsterBoy was that the Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia is by far is favorite book! He’s obsessed with it and I’m thrilled with that.

4.    Saxon Math 1 – This one I’m still a tad undecided about.  I suspect that Math U See might be better for my super kinesthetic learner, but Saxon’s teaching approach is easier for me to grasp. So, do I work to adapt the kinesthetic approach to something my brain can handle or do I start with something my brain handles and adapt it to him?   I’m using Saxon, but am hoping to include as many manipluatives and visual elements as possible.  If it’s not working at the end of this 8 weeks, I’ll scrap it and jump to Math U See.  I don’t think it’s a huge crisis for us since he’s already got a pretty good basis for numbers, counting, patterns, shapes, ordinal numbers and simple addition and subtraction.  (Thus the reason we jumped to 1 vs the Kinder level)

5.       Handwriting without Tears – I purchased both the 1 and the K workbooks. MonsterBoy is a pretty proficient writer and BunnyGirl seems ready to jump in.  I started with one slate but they both really love it, so I purchased another since they were pretty cheap and a great hands-on activity.

We started off today with swim lessons.  (PE, anyone?!)  Big hit for MonsterBoy, surprise hissy fit from Bunny girl.  I was pretty surprised because she’s been enthusiastic about it before and has done all the skills previously.  Meh. Chalk it up to a mystery and we’ll try again on Wednesday!

When we got home, I was ready to jump into school mode.  Soldier and I decorated our basement and school area with streamers and filled with balloons.  Huge hit! The kiddos were super impressed and excited about it.  Maybe a tad too impressed and excited?? I had a full day of school planned and didn’t quite plan for balloon-madness and general chaos.  It was very hard to marshall their attention for any length of time. I was getting frustrated as the slogged through our first Bible lesson and “circle time” with the calendar, weather and counting.  We counted to thirty with balloons and I needed to regroup. Yup…I had yelled. A whopping 35 minutes into our school year. Awesome. Incidentally, I was able to take comfort in our verse of the day A- All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23 [MEMORIZED. BOOM] It was a good reminder that I will not be perfect in this and will fall short, many, many times this year but by the grace of God I can ask forgiveness and try again.  I left them downstairs smashing through the balloon piles and retreated to the kitchen where I consoled myself with Hershey Kisses and a pep-talk. (“It will get better once we have a routine….it will get better once we have a routine.”)   

I rejoined the fray and grabbed the math book to see what we were working on today. (So much for advance planning. Whoops.)  Can I tell you how thrilled I was to discover our math lesson was on identifying today’s date?  We already went over than during our circle time.  WHOOO-HOOO  (And THANK YOU, Lord for small mercies!!!) We moved on to phonics and everyone really seemed to enjoy that.  Even completing the worksheets was a big hit.  Then we went upstairs and they worked on some handwriting while I prepped lunch. The letter mat with shapes and the chalkboard Wet-Dry-Try was a HUGE hit with both kids.  MonsterBoy made a few letters out of the shapes, then moved on to constructing tractors and other vehicles with the shapes.  Pretty creative. 

After lunch, we took a break and played outside for about 45 minutes. MonsterBoy then asked, yes ASKED, to do more handwriting.  Gee golly, YES!  He reviewed his capital letters. (Glad I went with 1 for him…he’d be bored crazy with K!) Then we moved on to the World Cultures and Science, both of today’s readings were out of the Encyclopedia so he was thrilled. I also discovered they have a website with links to other educational sites related to the info on those pages.  AWESOME! We played around with the websites on the Earth’s layers, the atmosphere and a few others for about 30 minutes. Good stuff.  Then we finished with some snuggling and read-aloud from our Sonlight Readers.  

So, we survived. It wasn’t epic, but I had a few wins and chalk the day up to a success because the kids ASKED to do Mommy School again tomorrow. YAY!!!!

As a side note,  I've deleted my Facebook App from my phone and my iPad in honor of our Homeschool Kick Off.  It's not much but it's a small way of distancing myself from that distraction and freeing up my attention for the kiddos.  I typically only use my laptop every other day or so in the evenings, so that's a comfortable time frame for me to "catch-up" on Facebooking without it being too invasive. I realized how deeply entangled I was today when I saw how frequently I reached for my phone or iPad!  I confess to checking my e-mail obsessively today...partly in substitute and partly because I am anxiously awaiting a reply to a message I sent yesterday.

I also realized now was probably the perfect time to re-read Unglued by Lysa Terkeurst. (Deep thoughts from my much needed lunch break outdoor play time. It's amazing what you can think/accomplish when not sucked in to the FB vortex.)  Unglued is a bible study on our emotions and controlling them. You know, like that moment when I lose it because no one is paying attention to me except for DeeDee and that’s only because she wants me to unwrap yet another piece of chocolate from our “Welcome to School” Goody-bags.  Yeah. Exactly.  Time to get back to work on that messy, icky part of me.  I feel confident that this year will be a whole lot of stretching, growing and uncomfortable lessons. 

Forging onward tomorrow!