The first week

August 13, 2015

The first week

School has officially started. I took the obligatory first day of school pictures. Somehow Will and Piper's pictures got deleted so they aren't included in our first day of school pictures. Will is in 5th grade, Isaac is in 4th, and Eli is in 2nd. Our first week is almost over and I think it's gone pretty well. I have been dreading doing Homeschool this year and tried to have a calm heart about it but it wasn't until the night before school started when Mike gave us all blessings that I felt things would be ok. The boys have been awesome this week. They have been on task and had a great attitude the entire week. They didn't even complain when I made them do Yoga with me. They wake up at 7:00, shower, and then clean their room and the bonus room. At 7:30 we eat breakfast and at 8:00 we check their rooms and bonus room to see if they are actually clean and then we check agendas and get started with the day. I say "we" but Mike is really getting back from running or showering but he comes in from time to time to see how things are going or to have family prayer with us before he leaves for work. This week we have talked about the tools for dealing with anxiety and stress by reading about music, yoga, and being in nature. Tomorrow we will talk about how service helps with anxiety/stress and we will make homeless kits for Mike to take with him to work. The school is downtown and there are a lot of homeless individuals asking for money each day. He mentioned he needed something in his car and since I was already planning on talking about service with the kids, this seemed like a good idea to do with them. After reading about these things we put them into practice so the first day we listened to music while we worked, the second day we did yoga and today we went for a hike.

The first day we had Cinnamon rolls to kick off our year. It was a yummy way to start our year.

We also make a "recipe for success" snack where we talked about effort and teamwork and all that good and cheesy stuff. They munched on that for the first couple of days.

We also went swimming for PE. I made the boys do some laps and other water exercises before they got to play. We had the pool to ourselves. The pool is only open until the end of the month so we will probably do this a lot. Next week a friend who is a swimmer is coming to the pool with us to teach the boys some strokes.

The boys are doing Spanish this year with the help of the Rosetta Stone.

Yesterday I was feeling bad for Piper that I had been giving so much more attention to the boys and thought maybe she would like going to the park. The boys packed some work to do while she played (well, and Eli. He chose to play and finish work when we got home). I forgot that the splash pad was still on so they got drenched in their clothes before we headed back home.

Eli read to Piper on the trampoline while the other two boys helped each other mow the lawn. Mostly Will mowed because it's still pretty hard for Isaac but they helped each other for part of it.

Today we did Egyptian faces for art. The boys loved using the gold paint and had so much fun!

After painting we went to Ijams Nature Center for our Science. We've been learning about plants this week and we were going to save Ijams for tomorrow but it's supposed to be cooler today than tomorrow so we will probably just do a review tomorrow. Will is becoming quite the little photographer and he has been trying all summer to snap a picture of a butterfly and finally got a couple today. He was very happy and proud of himself. He did get some good pictures too!