Okay, we've started early. I can tell you what NOT to do. Don't decide to enter bread into the county fair the same day you're starting your school year. Though my bread did well (one 1st place and one 2nd place), it added way too much stress to the day. The day went well, but it was a very long day. I decided to try going in the order things are listed in the TM. I had activities for each of the kids for the times I needed to do one-on-one work (English and Spelling). Still hopping around and helping the kids a lot. Especially the little guys getting started on Rosetta Stone. Plus, the dog had an accident in the house. So, we had a bit of an interruption. It took 5.5 hours to do all our school. But, for the most part the kids enjoyed it.
For day two, we did school in the morning, so I decided to do the core subjects (Bible, History, and Science) first, and then get as much done beyond that as we could. The judging for the bread was at 1:00 and I wanted to take the kids to that (field trip!). We did the boats as described in the TM, and the kids loved that. Here's a picture of each of them behind their boats.
And here they are all floating. Since we have water restrictions here, I didn't put them in the tub, but the did each try to blow their boat across the sink. Rabbit's boat spun in circles. Pooh and Tigger's boats did go across the sink, but they were hard to control. We talked about how the boats could only run on wind power.
And we got Handwriting and English done before running off to the judging.
So, for day three, I decided to do the core first, again, and then Language Arts and Math. That seemed to just work better for us. I think doing all the together stuff first (except Art/Music and the Read Aloud) just makes things go smoother. We can get English and Handwriting done before lunch, and then that leaves Math, Reading, Music/Art, and Piano for after lunch. The day just seems to run smoother for us.
For day four we did core first and then language arts again. That worked much better. I am having trouble getting the 2nd/3rd Grade Supplemental science in from the Complete Book of Animals. Sometimes it actually seems like there is more work for the 2nd/3rd Grade Supplement than there is for the regular part. The boys really enjoy the science, so it's not that much of a big deal to do the World of Animals books.
Day five was lighter, but we tried to catch up on some things we missed earlier in the week. That was good. I still need to figure out work for the kids to do for Reading and Math times, but we're making progress.
Next week Rabbit has dance camp for 3 hours every morning. I'm going to count that as school time (Fine Arts, you know), and then do Math, Spelling and piano for an hour with her after lunch. For the boys we're going to work on Reading, Math, Science (pages that we didn't do last week), Rosetta Stone, Math Drill, Spelling, Piano, Handwriting, AWANA verses, etc. I should have a good 4 hours worth of stuff for them to do, too. This should give me a week to come up with better ways to run our regular curriculum days.
The other thing we are thinking about is dance. Celebration Ministry Arts is a great program. Rabbit loves it and the dancing is wonderful. But, it is pretty expensive. There is a new dance studio that has opened up near-by. It is less expensive and closer. But, I need to see what days Ballet classes will be to see if it will work for us or not.
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