Day #2/175 days

We tried a bit more today & accomplished some good things...I think. We have done (this is not really in order of how we did it, but it's makes it easier to type it this way since we did jump around a bit):

PE - the boys rode their bikes or walked laps outside (either from our house to grandparents garage & back for one or leaving here & going up around the grandparents house & back for one) Happy & Conductor chose to ride their bikes & Lego-Man walked. While they did that, I was inside doing an exercise video myself.

Math - Lego-Man & Conductor spent 15 minutes on Aleks.com. All the boys did two pages in their Math-U-See (MUS) workbooks. We had left off in the middle of a lesson (oops!) so Conductor ended up needing to rewatch his lesson to remind himself what he was doing. The nice thing was that the problems he was working on in Aleks earlier reinforced what he was doing in MUS.

Circle Time - We tried out Circle Time for the first time this year. It went okay. There is definitely room for improvement but for a first try, it went well I think. Daddy was still here (he went to work late today due to a migraine) so we tried out "popcorn" prayer for the first time. We started with the youngest & went to the oldest. Each person prayed one thing about God in "adoration" & then one thing in "thanksgiving." We'll continue to work on this. We said the Pledge of Allegiance and then sang the Star Spangled Banner. After that I did some calendar work with Happy. I found some freebies over at CurrClick that we are using. I'm using these free calendars and these free weather pictures and words to help him with this skill. We moved on to our poem study at this point. We are going to work on "Time to Rise" by Robert Louis Stevenson this week. I have this in a Dover Coloring Book so I printed one out for each boy. We read it aloud & each boy colored the picture. We'll continue reading it aloud the rest of the week. While the boys finished their pictures, I read a chapter aloud from Farmer Boy which is our current book. I then played two videos from YouTube of the hymn "Amazing Grace." The first was Il Divo singing it (::sigh::) & the second was the Chris Tomlin version. I have the lyrics printed out & we'll continue to work on this over the course of the week as well. We ended Circle Time with a Bible reading. We read aloud Psalm 11 & Proverbs 11. I discussed some of the verses as we went. I think this will really help the boys with their reading skills as well. I'm still amazed at the words Conductor knows!

I had planned 30 minutes for Circle Time but with the interruption of having Daddy home and other minor things (sit down, pay attention, let's be quiet...things like that), it was closer to 60 minutes. We'll see if this continues to be the case and adjust accordingly.

Bible - We are trying private devotions this year. I'm starting small - just 15 minutes - but hope to work up to 30-45 minutes. Today I simply had the boys go to their rooms (Lego-Man & Conductor) & read Psalm 1 over & over - as many times as they could - in that 15 minutes. While they did that I had Happy come to the table with me & we used his Rod & Staff Bible coloring book to have a little devotion of our own.

When this was done, I gave Conductor & Lego-Man their choice of what to do next. We are using The Narrow Way for Bible this year & currently are using a study by Grapevine (a TOS Crew product I am in the process of reviewing). They chose the Grapevine study which didn't surprise me. They really enjoy this one. From there we completed Lesson 1 in The Narrow Way. We are studying "faith."

Kindergarten - While the boys were finishing up math, I pulled out Happy's K books & spent about 20 minutes with hi working on some of the skills in the first book. We are doing a very gentle start with Happy this year. I expect him to sit & listen while the older boys & I are reading & we do table-work at his level but he is not getting a ton of table time at this point.

Lunch break

History - I am trying to finish up Story of the World Vol. 2 this month so we can start the year fresh with Vol. 3. In an effort to speed through the rest of the book, I am simply reading the chapters to the boys without much else. Today we read Chapter 29 about the African nations. I did let them do the map as well but I had to call my sister for help. She is going to be using my Volume 2 this year with her son & I had already given her my Activity Guide. Oops! I may have to rethink the rest of the chapters & map work.

Science - I think our first attempt at using the Simply Charlotte Mason Guide "106 Days of Creation" went well. We finished Lesson 1. I read the account of creation in Genesis 1 while the boys had a notebook page. The page came from Considering God's Creation. They drew a picture of what God created on each day. I enjoyed Lego-Man's version as he drew a photo of God in each one (He has a head & a corkscrew body - in case anyone wondered.)

Literature - We ended our day with 30 minutes of quiet reading. Lego-Man has started on his Daddy's favorite series of books - The Wheel of Time series. The first book is called The Eye of the World. They are adult books but we think he can handle them. I had given Conductor a small chapter book called Cooper-Toed Boots by Marguerite de Angeli which I have also been reading at night so I can discuss it with him later. While the two older boys read to themselves, I read out loud to Happy. We read two Beatrix Potter stories (The Tale of Peter Rabbit & The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin), some poems from When We Were Very Young & Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne & finally Socks for Supper by Jack Kent.

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Weekly Planning Sheet

I am attempting to do my planning weekly rather than for the year as I have done in the past. This is mainly due to the fact that I will be needing to add in various different things this year to manage my TOS Crew responsibilities. If you want to see what this week *should* look like, click on the link above.

Overall I'm quite happy with our first real attempt at starting school. I'm thrilled we were able to accomplish a few more things after lunch. We have never tried it in the past & when we have, I haven't had great results. However, the boys were great today. I'm not planning to get back in to the full swing of things here until next month, but this is certainly going to help us once fall arrives. I'll be babysitting Miss & Mr H throughout the school year so I'll be adding in a toddler and an older infant (about 7 months by then). Needless to say, it should be interesting.

Please note...links to most of the curriculum I mention & am using has links in my sidebar. Thanks!----->