For our first week of Homeschooling my main goal was to stick to the schedule. I really felt like this was going to be the foundation for the whole 6 weeks. If we didn't get this first week right it would be all messed up. I don't put any pressure on myself at all do I!?!?!
Thankfully my children are just like their mother and they thrive on a schedule!
The first thing we do everyday is our Bible Reading...we had already finished the book of Acts and we had move onto the book of Genesis. It's so wonderful that my kids are now at the age where we can read God's Word rather than a Kids Bible. I still love those and we do use a Kids Devotional at night, but to actual dive in and read God's Word is so nice.
After Bible Reading we do the Pledge of Allegiance...we pledge to the wooden flag I made last year and hung on the deck. Didn't know that would be coming in handy like this when I built it last summer!
The schedule has changed so much over the weeks that it's hard to remember back to that first week. My main goal was to focus on reading, writing and math. Since we have 2 computers...Michael's desktop and my MacBook I knew that we'd have to schedule around that. I've pretty much split up the older two to work on the computer at the same time while the younger two do their workbooks and then switch.
For writing journal for the first week I had the kids working on creating their own super hero or villain. Each day they had to work on a different part. For instance the first day was just brainstorming different ideas. The second day was to take bits and pieces from their brainstorming session and get a more concrete idea of what their character was going to be like. The third day was to create a backstory/motivation for their character. The fourth day was to create a cover for their book and start writing their short story. The fifth day was to finish writing their short story and share it with everyone.
Ella is working on her vocab words!
Last summer I got the kids these awesome Brain Quest books that help you retain what you've learned during the summer going from one grade to the next. Zeke has loved his. He ended up finishing his one from summer that first week so I order him the one that is supposed to be used for 2nd grade.
My cute Jackson with his way too long hair. Thankfully I'm the one that cuts everyones hair so we haven't suffered in regards to hair cuts.
I make sure that the kids get outdoor play at least once a day. On this particular day the kids finished playing, but I still wanted them to be outside so they all got books and read out on the deck.
A couple days into home schooling I needed to reevaluate things. One of those was in regard to having the kids read to me. Ella and Zeke are very close to each other in reading level. Zeke is a little bit higher than Ella right now so I actually thought it would be helpful for her to have him read to her. It has been helpful, but at the same time there have been some frustrating times for Ella since Zeke will try to help her or will correct her and what older sister likes to be corrected by her younger sibling. In all though Ella's reading has improved greatly this year. Of course her sessions with Ms. April have been put on hold. It will be nice once she can start back up with those.
The middle school boys have had some form of electronic schooling this whole time. Their math is always online and their teachers have also made videos for them and sent them links to videos to watch on certain subjects.
The nice thing about their online math is it's graded right then so they know if they've done something wrong or not.
Of course reading is a HUGE thing for my kids...they all love books and I'm so grateful for that. In fact Ella's love of books has really picked up. She loves having me read Berenstain Bear Books to her. Every day during snack time I have been reading to the kids. The first book we read was Wonder and now we are reading Call of the Wild.
During the very first day of home schooling I ended up taking Zeke to see the Dermatologist. His poor face looked so scaly and dry. It's was all around his eyes so I was worried about putting any steroid cream on them. The Dr. said it was eczema that was brought on by it being so dry right now. His recommendation was to have Zeke lay down a few times a day with a warm wet washcloth over his eyes, put hydrocortisone ointment around his eyes and then put a humidifier in his room. Doing those things has helped a ton. Unfortunately once his eyes look better then I forget to have him do these things and then it comes back. Thankfully it's not harmful he just looks a little rough...hopefully once the weather warms up it will go away for good.
One thing we did during the first few weeks of home school was watch Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems. It was so much fun...even for me. There was one particular day that he touch on a subject that doesn't align with things we teach our kids, but it gave us an opportunity to talk about it.
Mo Willems is probably most known for Elephant and Piggy books or the Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus books. On the first day of Lunch Doodles we learned how to draw Gerald AKA Elephant.
Jack & Gerald
Zeke & Gerald
My Gerald
One of the fun things Mo would do everyday was write out the date in number form and then turn that into something else. Like this 17 got turned into a fire truck. It was quite clever!
I had never really let the kids use my MacBook before, but desperate times right!
At the beginning of the schools closing there was SO much information coming out about free apps or free memberships to this or that online program. It was quite overwhelming. I decided to let the kids use things they were already familiar with such as Cool Math Games, Prodigy & i-Ready. I did also give them access to Dreamscapes and ABC Mouse for the younger two.
The Friday that school finished up was also the last day the library was going to be open. We love books so I knew we needed to run down and get as many as we could. We ended up filling up two reusable grocery bags with books. I normally use the basket on top for all our library books, but that wasn't going to cut it. I had this crate that Michael brought home for me so I used that as another bookshelf. It's worked out pretty good!
3 days into homeschooling I decided we should get out of the house. We went on a field trip to the car wash!
We very rarely get our cars washed, but since the boys needed to sell car wash tickets in order to go to camp last year we have loads of those that need to be used.
We took Michael's red car to get washed, stopped at 7-11 for Slurpees, went to the Auto Zone to get a steering wheel cover and wheel covers for the red car and then....
we got MCD's for lunch. It was nice to get out for a bit!
On Friday Owen read his story about his villain Dr. Boom...which was a character that he wrote about last year at school. I was a little disappointed that he chose to write about a character that he had already developed, but I decided to pick my battles.
Jack read about his hero ChillFire.
Ella read about her villain, but neither of us can remember what it was about and we put it in the recycle bin because she didn't want to keep it.
The last day of our first homeschool week I made banana pancakes for lunch. They are so yummy to eat with Nutella, but SO filling!
My favorite thing to do during this whole homeschool period has been to get outside, get some sun and read!!! It's been my saving grace!
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