Our first day of first grade!

We had a great first day! Both boys were super excited to be getting back into our school routine. I wanted to make the day special, so after our morning prayers I gave each of the boys their own prayer books, which I had made for them, all wrapped in golden wrapping paper (remember I posted about making them a while back? Well, I decided to keep them for a special occasion…which turned out to be back to school day!). They loved them and Rylan wanted to read the entire prayer book, after two, though, Damian told him it was time to move on! ;)

Here is a look at the corner of our school area, which is devoted to circle time:

Our circle time usually goes something like this – we each say a prayer and then all sing the one we are currently learning together, then we sing our calendar song (I modified this one a little, it no longer involves ice-cream, but is rather about loving each other all the days of the week/months of the year, we also sped it up a bit), at the beginning of the week we add the dates and activities onto the calendar for that week.

After the calendar song we sing the “every week” song and Rylan and Damian stick the days of the week onto the laminated charts at the bottom of the picture (they come on and off with the use of velcro dots). The charts and song can be found at 1+1+1=1. Then we move onto skip counting. Those charts can be found at Homeschool Creations. To finish off circle time we have the daily installment of our virtue lessons (you can see the current Virtue Project card up in the top right corner). This week we are studying “caring”. As the year goes on we will add different things to calendar time as needed (the rest of our 2010-2011 curriculum can be found in this post).

Here is the other side of our school space. Map (animals of the world) from Costco, animal evolution time line beneath it from Zoobooks (the dino chart over the map is also from Zoobooks), the two little charts next to the timeline are a Handwriting Without Tears guide to writing capital and lowercase letters and numbers and a copy from Drawing With Children on the elements of drawing. There are our workboxes which I bought at Walmart, with an abacus (cannot remember the brand) and our Oregon Scientific Smart Globe. The bookshelf next to the workboxes contains all our supplies, books, additional materials, schedules, etc. Oh! And the table and chairs are from IKEA.

Although we have this space, we still do our learning in other areas of the house as well. All depends on what we are doing and where we feel like working.

We ended our first day back to school (after swimming lessons, and dinner) with a yummy spice cake which we made using another of my Grandma’s recipes. The boys went to sleep with happy hearts and happy bellies, and I have to say, despite my total enjoyment of our unplanned summer break, I am loving being back into our routine again!

Weekending and what we’ve been up to…

Yesterday we spent a fabulous day on this lovely beach.

We snorkeled, swam, splashed, built, had water fights, and fish nibbling our toes while we sat in the shallow water at the shore. A perfect family day and the last of our summer vacation!

I have been posting a lot about our summer travels and not so much about what we have been doing the last couple of weeks. That’s because I had nothing completed to write about. We were waiting for curriculum to arrive, and it did, all on the same day. My hubby came home from the post office with five boxes piled in his arms and Rylan and I squealing with excitement.

Since that day I have spent hours and hours familiarizing myself with the material, planning our new daily schedule, and planning in detail the next two months of school. I now have planned lessons, materials ready (or notes to remind me what to prepare for a particular lesson the night before), even craft projects planned for the next two months (I am planning to have one afternoon for a planned craft project every week). I am sure I will make adjustments to the schedule as the year goes on, but for now we have what we need to make a good start. And I have lots to share here!

We are all very excited about beginning the new year together, Rylan has been counting down the days all of the past week! Gotta love an enthusiastic learner!

More to come on our first day of first grade and what our school area looks like (I have been working on that too, since it became a bit of a storage area over the summer!)…hopefully a little later today. Stop in and take a peek!

What our days look like: our schedule/routine

I have received several emails asking me about various aspect of our schedule – how and when we do learning, what I do with Damian while trying to teach Rylan, how I fit in housework and cooking, etc. All of these questions have come from non-homeschooling families who are currently investigating the idea of homeschooling, so my reply is with that in mind. I thought I would try to incorporate all of these answers into one post (thank you to those of you who have been patient with me in replying, I have had a rough couple of weeks). Now to answer the question:

Let me start by saying that our schedule is constantly being revised as the kid’s activities change throughout the year. I like to keep to a basic routine, but I also love the flexibility that homeschooling allows. If one of the boys are really interested in a particular activity or subject, then we shift our schedule to fit it in. We are also planning to school all year round this year, so no stopping for the summer. The reason for this is that Rylan LOVES school, to stop in his mind would not be fun, but almost a punishment, which defeats the purpose of a holiday! We do stop school work when family visits, which is a couple of months over the course of a year, and when we travel ourselves (but that is learning in itself, right?). So, given this year round learning and the fact that the nature of homeschooling allows you to do away with homework altogether, and one-on-one learning with your child means they can cover more work faster; you can definitely work in time for a lot of extracurricular activities and also plain ol’ downtime for playing, imagining, being outdoors, and doing art work.

So, with this in mind, here is a more detailed look at our week. Right now Rylan is taking swimming lessons twice a week, gymnastics once a week, and piano lessons once a week. Both he and Damian attend a Music Together class once a week as well. We have a weekly play group we attend and go on a lot of planned field trips with a great mom/kids group that we are members of. All of these activities are a minimum of a 25 minute drive from our home, some as much as an hour and a half away, so that means we have a lot of time in the car. The kids also have weekly play dates with their friends in each other’s homes or at the park or beach and we go to the library once a week, plus we have to do the grocery shopping and errand running which all homes require to keep functioning. So right now maybe you are thinking when do you do the school work? :) Normally we have three mornings a week at home, on these mornings, after breakfast and washing up, we go to our school area and start our day with our circle time, which involves prayers together, studying our virtue of the week and doing the related activity, and then calendar time. After all this is finished, we move onto workboxes, which you can read more about here. We usually finish the workboxes (that is all of Damian’s and the first half of Rylan’s) around 10 to 10:30 a.m., at that point the kids go off and play together and I try to get some housework done. Sometimes they help me, like with laundry and vacuuming which they love! Depending on the day I may also put something in the crockpot for dinner during this time. We usually read a few books before we eat lunch around 11:30 a.m. At 12 p.m. I put Damian down for a nap and Rylan has about 30 minutes of quiet time (usually quiet play or reading in his room). I use this time to do work on my computer. Just a note here - with the exception of one morning a week, even when we are out for the morning, I generally make sure we are home by 11:30 for lunch, so Damian gets his nap and Rylan gets focused school time while he naps.
Right now I have it easy because Damian is napping two and half to three hours every day (long may it last, pretty pleeeease!!); so after quiet time, Rylan and I go back to our school area where we work through his remaining boxes together. If we finish his workboxes before Damian wakes up, then we do more work together (I usually let Rylan decide what he wants to do).

When Damian wakes up, its out the door to afternoon activities. We spend almost every afternoon out of the house doing activities, having play dates, going to the beach, the park, the library, grocery shopping, and running errands. If we are home (including when friends are over) we often incorporate some kind of art or craft into that time.

When we return home it is time to make dinner, while making dinner I direct a general tidy up the house which the kids carry out (since this involves putting away their toys and books that are scattered throughout our home!). Sometimes I just call out “clean up time” and they do it, other times they need a little more motivation, then we sing a clean-up song together (there are a few of them out there), I give them challenges to see how fast they can put a certain set of toys away, we put things away by color, by type, by counting, and so on. A note here - the reason this works for me is that my kitchen/living room/dining room is all open plan and the boy’s room is the first room off of this area; so I can easily keep an eye on the whole process while preparing dinner. Usually by the time dinner is done the house is pretty much straightened up and if there are still a few minutes before my hubby gets home, we go and read together until dinner (or if Ramtin gets home before I finish dinner he reads and plays with the boys). The rest of the evening follows like this: eat together as a family, bath time for the boys, family prayer time, and reading books before bed time for the boys.

And that is a basic look at our days!

Getting back into things

For a long while now we have been preoccupied with various family members visiting, it has been wonderful for us, but I apologize for the irregular posting. Next week we should be getting back into our routine…well, sort of. After such a long period of being busy touring the island with family, enjoying their company, trying to relax and catch up with each other, a lot else in life has been skipped. I have a TON to do around the house to recover, to organize, to spring clean.

I am truly sad to see my sis-in-laws leave, it has been so wonderful having them here, and it is hard to know that they will be so far away and it will be a long time before we see them again. This is the most difficult part of being world travelers, as we are, we never have family nearby and I wish my boys could be with family more, but I digress…

Although I am sad to say goodbye I am looking forward to getting back into a routine, getting back to work with the boys, and getting our home back into shape! I am thinking a lot about what needs to be done and how to go about it because there is so much to do, and as always there are never enough hours in the day! I want to get Rylan’s room more organized, so that I can easily rotate toys every week or so (like I used to before our last move!). It keeps them more interesting and the space less cluttered and more organized.

I want to give our craft and school supply cupboard a serious overhaul. I need to go through everyone’s clothes and separate what can be re-purposed and what needs to go to Good Will. I have already started to sell baby toys and items that are no longer in use, but I need to do more of that.

Let’s see what else? I need to figure out a new schedule for our week, since our activities have changed with the new year – although I like to be flexible, I do need to have some basic ideas of how each day should proceed and be able to make sure things are getting checked off my to do list.

I have some new materials to choose and order, since Rylan has finished his kindergarten reading curriculum and I don’t think we will continue with Hooked on Phonics. And there is more, but you are probably dozing off by now! As I finish these projects I will share them with you…but now enough thinking and writing about it, time to get to work!! :)