Easing into our Homeschool Year

This week, we celebrated our official First Day of School!

For the first time in my eight years of homeschooling, I actually remembered to do a First Day photo, complete with our homeschool mascot! (Who didn’t pose exactly where I wanted, but whatever. It’s still cute!)

Easing into the Homeschool year:

Even though this was our first week of the school year, we’ve spent recent weeks easing into our routine. Kathryn has been doing online Hebrew lessons, and started LEGO class and Choi Kwang Do a few weeks ago. We’ve been doing “morning time” with the kids already, too. Most of the time, Kathryn leads the kids in this; she enjoys playing teacher!

{Read more about our Morning Board and Calendar Time.}

It amazes me how much just one year in public school ingrained certain ideas in Scout’s mind. We’re working on overcoming that. It’s hard to get across the idea that so much of what we do is “school” even if we aren’t sitting at a table doing workbook pages! However, she has deemed first grade as fun. “Fantastic,” in fact!

As I expected, Jem wanted to sit at the table to do schoolwork like his big sisters. When I was done working with Scout, I let him do a couple of pages a day in his preschool workbooks. It only takes about 10 minutes but it makes him feel like BIG stuff! He grinned the whole time. 😉

Brain breaks are necessary!

We are making sure to take brain breaks and burn off some little kid energy periodically throughout the day. Crab walking, somersaults down the hallway, running around in the yard, or enthusiastic frog jumps all do the job; they get us laughing and get the wiggles out.

Read-alouds are fun!

Sometimes I’m the one to read to the littles; sometimes Kathryn does, especially when it’s a fun book like Sheep in a Jeep! Jem always wants to listen in on Scout’s readings, and she always wants to listen in on his. Which actually works out great because she can practice reading on easier books like the ones I choose for him, and he can practice listening without interrupting 100ish times!

As for Kathryn’s literature, she is currently immersed in The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, and loving it. I’ll be on the lookout all year for any historical fiction related to Georgia since that’s our history/geography focus. She enjoyed Remember My Name by Sara Banks, about the Trail of Tears; a good story even though it’s below her reading level. I have Only the Names Remain by Alex Bealer in her to-read stack, too. All three were available at our local library, which is always a good thing in regards to budget. Due to our book addiction, however, we often end up purchasing the books we really love so we have them at our fingertips anytime!

Overall, our first week went really well.

This is a whole new experience for all of us. I’ve never had more than one young child or such different levels. Kathryn is really enjoying helping in teaching her little siblings but they can be challenging. Scout is learning that homeschooling isn’t just like school at home. We’re all still getting used to each other in general; the kids have been with us six months now, and…

…our adoption finalization is on the calendar for THIS month!

In the coming weeks, we’ll gradually add in “extras” like poetry, art, and more nature study. I’m working on planning a few fun field trips, too!

I’ll be joining these link-ups:
– Collage Friday at Home Grown Learners
– Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
– Homeschool Journal at So You Call Yourself a Homeschooler?