First Day of School!

When you're homeschooling, you can start the school year on Labor Day!  Today marks the first day of kindergarten for Isaiah and the first day of preschool for Noelle.  (It marks the first day of eating pureed peas for Lucy.)  

Our school room had been set up, but lacking wall decor.  Last night, I put up a few decorations and put a new shirt out for each kiddo to wear on their first day of school.  Before school started, Isaiah and Noelle were each tasked with painting a picture using their favorite colors to use as a first day of school sign.  

Noelle looking smart and cute in her new "smart and cute" shirt -

Isaiah was pretty excited about his Angry Birds Space shirt -

I'm amazed by this room.  I feel like it is such a gift.  Who knew our little manufactured home would have space for a school room!?  This room is in the center of the house and it is perfect for school and play.  

Ahhh... Our big stack of school books for the year ahead.  We're working through the second 2/3's of the kindergarten curriculum (we did the first 1/3 last year as Pre-K), and we're revisiting the preschool curriculum we did in Barbados.  One thing I love about Sonlight is that there is so much reading involved.  We read, read, read about everything, and have an awesome library growing.  I think this is a great way to learn and remember what you've learned because the books are always available for skimming through and re-reading.  There are a lot of  "Oh yeah!  Remember this?" moments that really help to solidify knowledge and tie the loose ends together.  Today we read some folktales from around the world together and then this afternoon Isaiah and I started a little book called Mary on Horseback about a traveling nurse in the 1920's who brought medical care to the people of Appalachia.  Good times :)

Isaiah is really looking forward to improving his reading and doing science and Noelle wants to learn her letters.  Both kids could sit and listen to stories all day long.

Today was a good start, though not perfectly smooth.  It will take some time to get things rolling on my part and theirs.  And having an adorable baby who was particularly fussy today made things a little trickier.  Mondays and Tuesday are just school work days - no play group, no sports/dance, no library story time, not many field trips planned for those days, etc.  I like having those days to catch up as much as we need to, but they make for long days and we all will get a little stir crazy.  I'm going to have to brainstorm some out of the house activities.  Our trip to Costco was thwarted today - I was surprised to see it closed for the holiday, but yay for Costco employees!  We do have some good outdoor space, and I'm sure we'll be spending more time outside when the high temp is lower than 90 degrees.

School year 2012-2013... here we come!