Today was also our first school day here at home. Well, sort of. Technically, I school all through the summer, because we do reading, writing, and math year round. But today was our first official starting day of the school year.
I spent all last night cleaning the school room and getting everything ready. I bought the boys these cool magnetic white boards (I think they're the kind that are supposed to go in lockers, but they are going to work great for what I want them for) so that every day I can write all the things they need to do on them, and then we can check them off as we go. My boys are really into that kind of thing. On their boards, I wrote them each a little start of the school year love note. :) Then I organized the school room closet shelves, and set put all the materials we were going to be using today.
Today was also not a typical school day, because Oliver had a doctor's appointment at 8:30am. Aaron took Ollie, so that I could be here to get Ivan to preschool if the appointment went too long. They left around 8:00. I did a reading lesson with Ivan. I REALLY love our All About Reading curriculum. I feel like it's building a really good phonics foundation for Ivan. After reading, Ivan also had time to do his Explode the Code pages before we needed to leave.
While we were doing those things, Lincoln read his scriptures for 10 minutes, and worked on his Explode the Code. Then it was time to take Ivan to preschool. It was at a neighbor's house who lives just a block up from us, and since Aaron wasn't back yet, we decided to walk. We got about half way when Aaron pulled up. He was back from the Dr. appointment. So we all piled into the car, and dropped Ivan off at preschool, then took Aaron to work.
When we got back home, Lincoln and I did his first lesson in All About Spelling. I had considered not doing a spelling curriculum this year, but then I looked at this one closely and couldn't pass it up. It's by the same company that does All About Reading, and I just love the hands on, non-work book approach to spelling. I also think it's going to be really helpful to fill in some of the phonics gaps that Lincoln has. He learned to read so quickly, that the phonics program I was using for him got too easy and was a waste of our time. So, I stopped using it and instead just had Lincoln read out loud to me for 20 minutes every day. That worked wonders for his reading, but there were a few phonemes and things that we never covered, and even though it doesn't hinder his reading at all, I notice it in his writing. Anyways, long story short, I love All About Spelling and I'm excited to use it this year.
After spelling I had Lincoln read aloud to me for 20 minutes. We read a book about a Swedish family emigrating to the United States. We pulled out the globe and I showed him where Sweden was, and where Liverpool was (the family stopped in Liverpool to switch boats), and where Boston was. It was a nice little geography lesson that I hadn't been planning on. :) Then it was time to go pick up Ivan.
It was a nice day, and we needed to stretch our legs, so we walked to pick up Ivan, and then we walked back. Then we needed a snack. After that we hit the math books. Ivan's math still hasn't reached a level that's challenging him yet, so I'm basically letting him cruise through the pages as fast as he wants. (It's working on counting and shapes and patterns at the moment, and he's had that down for awhile.) So I think Ivan did two or three chapters in his Math book today. But it will get harder soon, and then we'll slow down and go from there. Linc just has a couple more chapters to go in his Math U See Alpha book before we start him on the Singapore 1b. I like Math U See, but it's missing a couple things like money, fractions, and graphing, that I'd like Linc to know, and I think Singapore will fill in those gaps nicely. And Lincoln is excited for a change of pace too, and Singapore will be a different approach.
After math, Ivan did the letter F for handwriting, and then his school work was done for the day. Lincoln and I did his first grammar lesson, which was to memorize the definition of a noun. Then we finished up his school work by doing an assignment out of Writing With Ease. We read the poem The Sandpiper by Celia Thaxter and then he answered questions. I was really surprised how well he did with the questions. I thought the poem was a little bit of a hard one language wise for a six year old. And he didn't get the questions 100% correct, but he did a lot better than I'd expected him to.
So that was our school day. Lincoln did his silent reading during quiet time. And that was that. We had the whole afternoon to play and do whatever we wanted. (We chose to go for a bike ride, and then get ready for Ivan's soccer game.) My kids did well. There wasn't any whining. I had expected lots of whining. But maybe they are as happy as I am to be back to having a game plan for the day. Who knows? Tomorrow is going to be the tricky day though, we have all the same amount of work to do, but we need to have it finished and lunch eaten so we can be to our Science Club by 1:00pm. But we won't have a Dr. appointment or preschool, so maybe we'll make it. :)
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