Homeschool Recap, Sept 9th (Wk 1)

Well, our first week of First Grade Homeschool is already over! Ok, so we only had two days of school, but still! It felt like such a long time coming. This long, hot, obnoxious Summer finally brought forth some cooler weather and our first week of school!

On Wednesday, I went over our daily schedule, rules and expectations with Preston. I also showed him everything in our My Father's World First Grade curriculum, all the books we'd be using on a regular basis. He was pretty pumped after all that and wanted to start right then and there. But, we waited for Thursday.

Thursday...

- Started off with pictures, of course! FIRST THING, lol.

Wake up, Preston!

Yay!

- After breakfast and a walk around the block (as I said, yay cooler weather!), we got down to business! We said a prayer and attacked the Morning Board. Our "Number of the Day" was... 1 (duhhh!) so Preston wrote it on the chart, did some equations with it on the card, put one button into the "ones" cup. We decided, since we had just been outside, it was definitely "sunny" and put that card up on our weather chart.

- I had Preston fill out a little First Day questionnaire. He did the same one last year, and I hope to have him do it every year so we can see how his answers (and handwriting!) change over the years. I got it from Hannah Keeley here.

- We talked about the Bible and how we will be using it to learn about God, His creation and more. We talked about how people used to use scrolls to record information. He'll be making a scroll with the alphabet on it in about two weeks with the sheets we're starting to complete now.

- We went over letters A, B and C. Preston knows how to write, but he still needs lots of practice, so we're doing these lessons even though they're so simple (and he dislikes them, of course). He wrote the letters multiple times and we went over the short vowel 'a'.

Practicing letters!

- Next up was our Drawing with Children book. We didn't start anything today, just went over how it was going to work, letting him know that he was free to make mistakes and that we wouldn't be erasing them, we'd USE those mistakes to make our drawings even better. He thought that sounded like a neat idea!

- We then did a few sheets of his Spanish workbook, going over 1-5 in Spanish.

- Preston played with the pattern blocks for a while and finally we ended our school session with me reading to him and Callen from My First Hands-On Bible

Now, Preston did great the first day.  Little Brother, however... not so great.  He has had a fever for the past 4 days, but this morning he woke up (at 6AM!) without one.  Hooray!  But, by the time it was school time, he was ready a grumpy boy!  I had planned some "Tot School" stuff for Callen to help keep him occupied while I worked with Preston.  Things like building blocks, magnets, little toys he doesn't usually play with.  NONE of these things interested him today.  The only thing he wanted to do was climb up on the table and be in the middle of everything we were doing, of course.  I eventually gave up, and penned him.  He was content in the playpen playing with a VERY noisy toy for a while.  At one point, Preston even turned around and yelled "Distractor!" at him. Heehee.  But, he fell asleep in his playpen after a while and P and I were able to get through our work.  Whew.

Yay, a mess!

Grumpy boy!

Friday...

We had a rough nite, Callen was up multiple times... so I slept in a bit.  When I woke up, Preston was in bed beside me and told me he had already been up and was finished watching cartoons.  Um, ok.  Lol.

- Morning Board routine w/Number of the Day: #2 and then read from the Bible when the kids ate breakfast.

- Preston filled in his weather chart for our first few days (we'll be keeping track of how many sunny, cloudy, stormy, windy, etc. days we have each month).  Found that printable here.

- We talked about the book of Proverbs and what they can be used for (reciting Proverbs 1:2-4).  The rest of the year we will be memorizing some Proverbs and doing copywork with them. I am grateful the wonderful Mama Jenn, who has created some wonderful printables that I am using with my Morning Board (which was also heavily inspired by her) so that the scriptures are visible all day long, hopefully helping us to store them in our hearts!

- Workbook and scroll page for D, E, F.

- Spanish, working on recognizing numbers.  Preston also learned how to draw stars, yay!

Spanish numbers.

- We started our intro to our hymn study, talking about what the word "hymn" means and where it came from.  Preston drew a great picture of what "a song of praise" means to him:

Glory! God!

- Played with the pattern blocks again

- After I got Callen down for a nap, Preston and I created a clay jar out of Play-doh.  Confession: I used the recipe listed in the MFW Teacher Guide to make some 'clay' last nite.  We used food coloring to make it purple, 'cause that's what Preston wanted.  Well, this morning when I pulled it out to start doing our jar, it was... not useable.  It was way too goopy and sticky.  Not sure what happened.  Honestly, I've never made playdough that way before so I must have done something incorrectly, but it seemed fine last nite when I put it in the ziplock bag.  :::shrug:::  So, anyway, yep, we used Play-doh and made a jar with a lid.  Then, Preston wrote a little note and we turned it into a scroll and placed it inside the clay jar to show how they used to be kept in ancient days.

Callen was much more cooperative today.  He played with Color Wonder Markers in his chair for a while.  He had three and pulled all their lids off, and when I told him to put them back on... he did!  And, even better, he put them on the right marker - yay for color matching!

Overall, I'd say we had a great first two days of school.  The first day Callen was having melt-downs and the second day it was Preston's turn (I was trying to gently correct his letter D's and d's and he kept completely freaking out, sigh).  But, yes, overall, things went pretty smooth.  Next week will be the real challenge, I think.  Because it won't be as "new" and exciting, and there will be a lot more to cover each day.  So, praying things continue to work smoothly.

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