Today is our first day of school for 2008-2009. I've changed things up just a little from last year.
We started our day putting our U.S.A. flag up on the front of the house and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I took a few picture of the kids, too. (Thanks to the ladies over at the MFW message boards for that idea! I didn't take any last year.) Then we went inside and worked on reciting John 3:16. The boys got a little bored with it, but I wanted them to start getting the idea for when they start Cubbies this fall.
Next we did "bulletin board" time. We counted up to 18 (today's date), said the days of the week and the months of the year. I briefly talked with Rabbit about different ways to write the date - you know mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy in the rest of the world.
Then we sang the A,B,C song and said the alphabet a couple of times through. Part of alphabet time is spelling Pooh and Tigger's real names. Finally, we sang a couple of songs from the Wee Sing Bible Songs CD. All of that took 15 to 20 minutes of our time. It was good and engaged the little ones.
Next we started our Exploring Countries and Cultures time. We read the suggested reading from Bible time and went on to Geography. I gave the boys a page to color while Rabbit and I filled out our maps to see how much (or how little) we knew about countries and such. She did pretty good for an 8 year old. She was a little disappointed with her "score," but I told her that we will do it again at the end of the year and see how much we have learned. I told her I was proud of her because she knew at least one country on each continent - some kids don't even know that. My score wasn't that great either, but the world has changed a bunch since 6th grade geography. When she filled out her "Passport Application" she used what I taught her during bulletin board time about dates to use a mm/dd/yyyy format. I was surprised she remembered. I liked reading from the Maps & Globes book, as it gave us a bit of history. Pooh sat next to me and listened, while Tigger drove his cars around on the floor. By then it was 10:00am - time for snack and recess. Actually, that was late. We usually do recess about 9:30.
After recess we did Science. We read the book, and then talked about her making a science notebook page. I didn't know plants took in oxygen at night and expelled carbon dioxide, while doing the opposite during the day! Even I learned something. She decided to draw some flowers and write about photosynthesis. She only wrote one sentence today, but I was fine with that. This was the first day, and I wanted to be sure she enjoyed it.
About 11:00 I was going to have "preschool time" with Tigger and Pooh. I gave Rabbit her handwriting page, and told her to do that and finish her science page. Well, Tigger had an incident in the bathroom which required washing walls and floor. That took about 15 minutes. After that, I read Miss Rumphius to the boys. They enjoyed it, but by the time we were done, it was time for me to go make lunch. I set the timer for 15 minutes, and told Rabbit to enjoy the book basket.
I didn't pick up again until 2:00 (I really need to work on that, I really should start back up by 1:00), when the boys were having their "quiet time." We worked on a math page. She seems to really struggle with focusing on her math if I'm not right there next to her encouraging her to do the next column or problem. I folded laundry while she worked on math. Finally, about 2:45 she worked on finishing up her science page and handwriting page. I had forgotten to give her the new colored pencils I bought for the science notebook pages and nature walk notebook pages, so I gave those to her, and that motivated her to finish up. I bought a bunch of page protectors at Sam's Club last week, and she asked for her science page to be put in it.
At about 3:45 we headed for the grocery store and listened to the Wee Sing Around the World song recommended for the week. I love it when I can get two things done at once. We didn't do English (Primary Language Lessons) or Math Drill today. It took a long time to fill out the pre-test maps and passport application during geography time. But, tomorrow looks better.
I think it was a great day because no one cried or yelled about school. Thanks My Father's World for a wonderful first day of school!
My main thing I took away from the day is that I need to work on sticking to my schedule and use the timer!
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