Our first day of school, 2012

Yesterday was our first "official" day back in school for 2012.  It was a FULL day, to say the least...but felt really productive.  Maybe because I'm getting out of bed a little earlier?  Or actually have a plan this week?  Maybe that's it.

So we start our morning with Ny helping with breakfast.  Here she is scrambling eggs.

Right after breakfast we had "chapel".  We are learning one old hymnal per week, plus doing a bit of worship with "Shout Praises Kids".  Our hymnal for the week is "Just As I Am".  We do this right after breakfast- me on piano, the girls singing with me.  Ny likes to harmonize, which makes it all the better.

And for our modern worship session, here is the DVD we use:

Next we head upstairs for our remaining school time.  We start with reviewing our Classical Conversations work from our Monday meeting days.

I've learned that putting everything on the board for the entire week helps her memorize the material better.

Next: card memory... 

Z learns her numbers using Dollar Store cards.  Ny learns her CC material.

Geography is next.  We are working on states and capitals.

I do a bit of Abeka Health with Ny, and then send her off to do her Saxon math lesson.  Meanwhile, I work with Z.
Z is officially a "Preschooler", and now at 4 years old I am reminded of how much more she could do if I will just work with her on certain skills a bit.   So I decided this year to set up a preschool type area in our office/classroom with centers and lots of manipulatives, story nook, things of that nature.  We just needed the change and I felt she would embrace the hour(s) of learning with a more organized and attractive room, geared just for her interests.

Our block center

During centers (free) time, she chooses a rhyming game.

I made these little sorting cubes.  It teaches arrangement in color gradient order - high to low/low to high.

One to one number correspondence.  She finds the number  "2" card and adds two paperclips.

Labeling her "Centers" bins helps her with word recognition.  I just made these in MS Word and cut them out with cute scissors.

More labels.

I made this pattern game in Word.  Z enjoyed this one a lot so I'll probably be making more.

Z loves to cut.  We like to use Kumon workbooks for this.  Here is a cheeseburger.

Ny concentrates on math.

Then we got a surprise visit from a neighborhood friend- an awesome homeschooling family whom we've spending a lot of time with over the holidays.  They were heading over to a ranch and invited us to come with them.  

So we spent the afternoon on a farm!  

That was our surprise science and some P.E too...

Overall, I'd say we had a pretty good first day of school!  

I look forward to 2012...

Happy homeschooling!