Well, after a ridiculously busy and therefore short summer the first full day of school was upon us.
The last few weeks I have been frantically planning and organizing to make sure it is a good year, although I could use about another month to plan and organize! I have also been trying to anoint all the plans and preparations in prayer because I finally understand that there is NO way I can do what I've been called to do, but I can do ALL things through HIM who gives me strength.
So far, my best idea has been assigning daily meal helpers. I have 4 kids and we are home 4 days a week (Thursdays we go to our tutorial) so I assigned a helper for 4 meals: breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner. They have to either prepare or help me prepare their meal and clean up after. It has been such a great help in the two days we've done it so far!
Sweet Sissy was my breakfast helper on the first day and was excited because pancakes are her favorite things to cook. Plus, her pretty smile makes cooking more fun :)
I usually do cinnamon rolls in the shape of their grade, but we also do that for birthdays so I thought I'd try something new this year- pancake numbers:
Thanks to our new morning schedule before these shining faces sat down they had their quiet time, wrote in their thankful journals (part of their quiet time), made their beds, brushed their teeth and hair (although I think Sissy skipped that step), got dressed and practiced piano or guitar. That's a successful day already in my book!
After breakfast and Bible study we come upstairs to the carpet. Today was a giant, important day- the first official day of kindergarten for my two babies! To me, when I think kindergarten I think calendar time. I got some great calendar printables in their notebooks, and we were ready to rock.
My other sweet kindergarten face. I had to document this moment because somehow in the middle of calendar time his arm got stuck in the chair! That sounds about right around here.
Since it is kindergarten after all there must be dance breaks. This one was to a Seeds of Worship song so it was doubly good.
I have workboxes set up full of learning games for the boys to pull out during the day. Will was all about the pattern blocks on this day and did them several different times.
Wesley loved the bears and figuring out they had to be equal to balance. I love his sweet smile!
Although Wesley pretty much knows all his upper and lowercase letters, I still have learning activities for him to practice them.
One thing I'm infamous for is saying we are going to do art and music at the end of the day and never get to them. I was determined not to let that happen this day at least. I've decided to spend a month, maybe even a semester per composer. So today we kept it simple and just listened to some compositions by Vivaldi. I had them draw what the picture made them think of as they listened. However, they thought it was more fun to use two pencils like a violin and bow and play along!
Not counting the fact that during recess they rearranged my entire living room to make it into a "jail" for their Nerf gun war which made the biggest mess ever, this was really and truly a picture perfect day. Even Principal Daddy couldn't get over how stress free the teacher was when he came home. Of course, it was four o'clock and she was just finishing reading aloud a book about Patrick Henry, but he learned some new things as he listened so it's all good!
Never underestimate the power of prayer and the Holy Spirit.
The Maker of the Universe cares about me having a successful math lesson-
how amazing is that???
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