Each year in the past, the day before school starts, we do a treasure hunt. At the end of the treasure hunt is a treasure chest full of school supplies. What is the link? Well learning is a treasure.... I know cheesy, but its true to me. Usually I make a map and we do the whole hunt outside and the girls have been known to dress up a bit. This year, we had to change that just a bit. Being on modified (thank heaven!) bedrest I could put together that huge event. But we do have tons of fun new supplies so we did a modified treasure hunt of hot and cold inside our home....
The loot!
Ok! So bed time!...
Here is our homeschool command center. It looks a bit cluttered but i needed everything to be in sight at reachable by the girls so that I don't have to get up 1000 times. Just to the left of that small open bookshelf is the armrest of our couch. Where I am supposed to be sitting :)
We went to the front yard to take some pictures ~ it was so delightful to hear the school bus and not have my kids on it! It was also AMAZING how much smoother our morning was when our commute to school was just from the kitchen to our bonus room! Love it!
I am biased, but dang! I like these girls!
Totally posing at their desks... they were so excited, which of course was thrilling!
We started off with our opening routine... primary song, prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, Calendar, and then we read a daily email from Brave Girls Club. They have a darling truth email sent every weekday little girls and one sent for older girls. The girls loved it and Emma wants to print it out and hang it up every day.
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Then we did a first day of school book, we spend 45 minutes decorating the cover so we have to finish it today. While we worked on that we listened to a book on cd from Story of the World about Charlemahne. Emma was so fascinated that Charlemagne didn't know how to read or write. And because of that, he started school and made sure his children learned how to read.
We worked on our Classical Conversations memory work. Learning the continents, the Oceans, A history sentence about Charlemagne being crowned Holy Roman Emperor. We also worked on skip counting and introduced the 7 biomes.
Next was time for Halie to practice writing and work on her reading skills. The pencil in her mouth was killing me. It started behind her ear but kept falling out, so she stashed it in her teeth.
Here is Emma doing her Math U See and enjoying a little smoothie. (left over from breakfast)
Halie had to get her writing just right. We are using the Bob Books, a little writing that goes along with each book that I found at teachers pay teachers, and Happy Phonics.
Next Emma worked on her cursive and then read to me from No Flying in the House by Betty Brock. In the meantime Halie was supposed to be doing her math, but I lost the supplies! So she just played with blocks. Emma found Halie's math stuff while they were cleaning up at the end of the school day so today we are all set!
We breaked for lunch at this time and then....
We worked on a paper mache globe. Yesterday we did the paper mache part and today we are going to paint it in the morning and finish it in the afternoon with the continents. Tomorrow Emma is going to label!
We finished off our day by me reading a shortened Original version of Repunzel. We read that because Charlemagne was from Germany and the story of Repunzel is a German Folk Story. We are going to read a German Folk Story each day this week!
Hard parts of the day? Halie wanted to listen to the Classical Conversations music CD while Emma wanted to listen to Story of the World, so we alternated. Halie didn't enjoy the memory work but mainly because she didnt get to have her way.. go figure! And Emma didn't want to do math. We broke things up by interjecting fun Brain Breaks throughout our morning. After lunch is pure fun stuff so no brain breaks needed!
All in all? An outstanding success! I LOVED being unplugged all day. I turned my phone to silent, and have all of my other "stuff" put on the side during our school time. Once we were done, the girls wanted to watch one of Halie's phonics movies (mainly because I always say yes to those). While they were doing that I wrote our schedule for today. When their 1/2 hour show was done they went outside to play. (for some reason they didn't want to, but I forced them... so mean) While they were outside I returned phone calls and read my novel. Then it was time for dinner. As First Day of School tradition dictates... we went out for ice-cream after dinner. Yum!
Well, in 15 minutes they are going to be awake... so I gotta go!
