Grade One.

We are finally actually doing school! We started a week early, on a whim, because both the kids and I could not wait any longer. I wanted to wait to map out my planning on a more in depth scale until I got a taste of what a week of school routine will look like in our house, and two days in I am glad that we are doing this. We seem to be right on track with english, and math was a breeze. I found that the Apologia book Who is my Neighbor? And why does he need me? was at too high of a level for Aiden so that will have to change. This was a book that I was hoping would be teaching about character and faith. I will save it for another year as it is still good but just a little old. Aiden has been doing his english everyday and then we have added a few other things so that I can know where to place them in the day and week. I will try out socials and science with him next to make sure we know what they look like as well. It is only Tuesday but things are going great.
The little kids are doing some art and Gemma seems to be budding at that. Keiran is going to need some toys to keep him busy. We started Gemma's number book this week too and she loves it, counting and tracing the numbers with her finger. I will start the reading book with my preschool girl once we have found a groove.

Here are some first day of homeschool ever pics :)

Working hard.

Grade One!

A fun pic of our puppy mascot Iris who sits at the window while we do school.

Making chores fun.

I made a chore chart wall hanging so that I didn't have to have a big paper chart on my wall. I wanted to keep our chart in sight so that the kids remember what they have to do, and then they can take initiative on their own. I will make up a months worth of weekly chores on recipe cards, and they will get to put a sticker beside each chore that they complete. At the end of the week they get a monetary reward and by the end of the month they will have enough allowance saved to buy a bigger reward. We are starting small regarding chores but the kids are loving it.

Numbers for Miss Gem.

I found another great book on my wrap-up resource shop. This one is for my pre-K girl. She loves it.

Drawing.

 

I finally found one of the types of drawing books that I wanted to use. Chapters has brought in a whole line of them :) Hooray for guided art. I like these Usborne books because they give the kids some freedom but also some ideas. For example, this book has a page with pictures of empty heads and your child gets to draw in the faces. There are also some pages with instructions to draw patterns or shapes. It is tons of fun.

 

Little finds.

I went to town a week or two ago to round out my school supplies so that I could begin to tackle my weekly planning. I found a great thick paged art book to create our backyard science book with, and it has a plain cover so we can make our own design. I also found a plant book at Chapters, on a great sale, that we can use to look up what types of plants we have and facts about each one. I rounded out my shopping with some notebooks, a journal, and some fun pencils and erasers.

wind chimes

We had to find things to do indoors today. We had too much sun yesterday. Mom found this craft in a box at the local "junk" store. The two oldest kids loved it and were thankful for some quiet artistic fun. (Maybe mom was the one thankful for the quiet. Haha.)

Let the fun begin.

Concentrating.

Sparkly gold.

Aiden imagines up some polka dots. (The other side has a door.)

:)

Pretty pretty princess mixes up some red and white to make pink.

All done and all smiles.

Decorating the porch.

Gemma's with a butterfly.

Beautiful. Kids live here! Aiden's has a bird.

Here is the pack. It uses acrylic paints and actually says it is for 8+ but with mom sitting right there and some napkins, it was just fine.