FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!

Today was our first day of school! The kids were so excited! They laid out their clothes last night, they went to bed without arguing, and two of the three kids woke up early ready to start the day!
I worked hard to get the room all ready for school. We are moving soon, so I didn't want to do anything too elaborate! We cleaned out this room, and put just a few things up. The kids still love it. They love having a room just for school! The sign above was a surprise for them this morning. It's hanging on the door. They felt there had to be a sign there, dedicating it just to school!

 I have been working really hard at getting things super organized this year. Part of my problem in the past is lack of organization. Before, it wasn't a big deal. The kids learned everyday. They didn't need formal lessons. They did great, and when they went into public school last year they were ahead of the rest of the class!
This year is different! I have more kids, and they are on very different levels, and now they all learn very differently! Alyssa fell pretty far behind in math last year. She really struggles in that subject, and she was forced to move ahead before she was ready, which resulted in her being overwhelmed and upset. She just wasn't getting it, and it made her anxiety go through the roof!
This year, I have a detailed planner. Planned in detail a month in advance. Each child has a crate that has a hanging folder for each month. In each month's folder, there is a folder for each week, with all of the work we will be doing and a list of supplies we will need to finish everything. It worked out wonderfully today! At the end of the week we will put all of the work we finished in the folder, so we can review what we did easily throughout the year! Here is a picture of Maizie's crate!

 This morning, everything was ready, the classroom was set up, and the kids were excited! We were READY for our homeschool year to start!

 We started off with our journals. I wrote a question on the board, What would you like to learn about this year? They weren't very creative. I think they were to excited to think about it! Alyssa's answer was , I would like to learn about Snow Ice Cream. Casten's answer, after being the last one to finish breakfast, I would like to learn how scissors are made. Miss Maizie would like to learn about monkeys!

After that we went on to our work. Maizie worked on a cut and paste work sheet and worked with the color red!

I absolutely love how well she colors. She does such a great job, and it's just so juvenile, it makes it all that more precious!
While Maizie worked on those we went on to math. Figured we should get Aly's least favorite subject out of the way first! We played a game with cards. We each flipped over two cards, whoever had the highest total would win all the cards! It was a lot of fun. It was great getting her to use her math skills. It was a bit of a challenge at first, but it got faster after a bit!

When Aly was done with that, she went to work on worksheets and I played the same game with Casten. He did great until he started struggling to focus! He then got frustrated with himself trying to become focused again!

Next we had a snack, and worked on handwriting. That went well! Aly worked very hard all day to work slowly and neatly! That was something we struggled with last year with her school work! When the kids were done handwriting, we moved on to spelling and grammar. Both went really well, and fairly quickly! Right now a lot of it is review for them! We ended our morning reading Charlotte's Web. The kids loved it and were disappointed we were only reading one chapter today! If they continue to want to read more the rest of the week, I might rearrange our plans and add a second chapter a day!
All morning, our dog, Klesko, was very confused about what was going on, and why we were all in this one room! He insisted on being in there with us! It wasn't a big deal until he decided he needed to move, and would shake the whole table!!!

The afternoon was a bit more of a struggle. Casten and Maizie were fighting to pay attention and feeding off of each other. I think I will start putting Maizie down for a nap after lunch. She needs it, and it will give me time to work with the older kids. We did our Bible time, and introduced our geography program. I gave in to their antsy pants and let them go outside and play, instead of doing science. I really just had a brief intro planned. I can easily just extend our science on Wednesday!
That is how our first day of school went! I can't wait to see what Wednesday will bring! Tomorrow Casten and Alyssa will take work with them to Aunt Beverly's house, because I have to work. We also have a doctor's appointment for the girls after that! Hope our day goes smoothly (and that I find the missing van keys so we CAN do what we need tomorrow!)