First Three Days

I thought I would do a little report on how our first few days of "school" went.  Or maybe I should say "first days of formal work for the school year."

Getting to this first day required a lot of flexibility.

First of all, our first day was actually supposed to be July 5 of last week.  However, the first week of July was messed up because we found out that a dear friend (age 35, father of 2) died suddenly and tragically.   So we decided drive many miles up the east coast to attend his memorial.  And then we visited friends in Virginia on the way back.

This week I was actually supposed to visit family in Texas.  However, Dot got sick with a fever, and we had to cancel our reservations.  

So, we decided to go ahead with school this week, which involved a bit of frantic planning last night.  The shock of our friend's death, the travel, as well as a bad cold going through our family, had messed up all of my preparations.  But I do well at the last minute.

I don't think I've ever been as happy to start school as I was on Monday.  I needed a distraction from the grief and sadness.  Taking care of a 1-year-old is very demanding, but it is not mentally distracting.

So, Monday was interesting.  And I think the fact that I was so grateful to have something different to do helped to keep me calm. There was a lot of complaining and grumpiness from the boys.  Bee was mad about the grammar book.  Bug was mad about Spanish.

Bug also hated his dry erase handwriting book and insisted that he do handwriting with a paper and pencil.  I thought that was strange and very amusing.  Apparently, the Leap Frog K-1 print handwriting dry erase activity was so abhorrent to him that he will now do handwriting with paper and pencil.  I could care less--I'll save the dry erase activity for Dot.  I will just print him handwriting pages from this website:  http://www.activityvillage.co.uk.  Bee doesn't mind his cursive dry erase, even though he is in 7th grade, and his Leap Frog board is marked for grades 2-3. 

 We started our TOPS Radishes project on Monday.  I wasn't sure how it would go.  I haven't done a ton of hands-on science with Bee because the two of us typically can't work up enough enthusiasm to get motivated.  He has a very good general knowledge of science, though.  Bug LOVES science activities, however, so his enthusiasm carried us through.  This is good because Bee needs to do more science labs.  

Then on Tuesday we had to be out of the house for our monthly house cleaners to come (something that is extremely important to our family's well being!), so I took them to a water playground as a PE field trip.  I had originally hoped to do some schoolwork at a park before the water place opened, but Dot was napping, so it was just a field trip day.

Today (Wednesday) went pretty well.  We got off to a very late start.  Dot usually gets up at 7, but she slept until 9.  My husband got up at 7 and then collapsed asleep on the couch for 2 hours until Dot and I woke him up.  And Bee and Bug slept even longer.  It took my husband and I a while before we had enough energy to drag them out of bed.

We got through all that I had planned.  We did science, handwriting, grammar, Spanish, and they each practiced a little piano.  Then, they have PE (climbing) this evening.

Next week, they both have art camp for 3 hours a day, so that will be most of their school.  But we will also do Spanish and science in the afternoons, as well as PE (swimming or climbing).

We are working right now to prioritize those subjects which I feel I tend to neglect.  We will gradually add in the others (like math, which I have always been consistent about), taking care not to try to do too much on any one day.