We have completed our first week of school for the 2015-2016 school year and here is a recap! Our first day of school was on July 13, 2015. We are starting Year Round Schooling this year mainly to allow time for life to happen!

I found Mr. Sketch scented markers on Amazon so I bought a pack for Little Bug and Sweet Pea. I put the markers with some other new school supplies on the breakfast table so they would see it first thing. They were thrilled with their markers. Knowing they would want to use them right away, I made sure to incorporate the markers in the first activity of the school day. This year, our family is going to have a monthly Bible Memory verse. I wrote the verse on a piece of paper and then the girls decorated their page to hang in their rooms. Our July Memory verse is I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against God. Psalm 119:11. This was a great way to begin our school year!

We ease into things the first week of school. I had Little Bug review the first 13 lessons we did in All About Reading Level 1. She went over all the Word and Letter Sound Cards and then each day she read at least two stories from the AAR reader. There are two stories in there that have become her favorites and because she has read them so often now, she is reading them with fluidity. That built some confidence in her and I hope it stays as we start back where we left off next week at lesson 14. She seems excited to start this next week and I hope her reading will take off from here.

Towards the end of the week, we picked back up with Horizons Math K, but at the beginning of the week I introduced a couple math games and fun math activities that she will get to do this year. I really want to push her memorizing her basic addition and subtraction math facts. Most of the games I have prepared for her will help with this. Having her basic math facts memorized is foundational to being prepared for math down the road. She played Find the Sums and did a Mystery Letter 100 Chart page.

Little Bug continued where she left off in her Go for the Code C book and then we started A Reason for Handwriting K. Little Bug seems to really like this new handwriting book! She does a lesson a day and then gets to color the picture on the back. One day she asked to do another lesson after she had finished the first.

Sweet Pea did another week of Ready-Made Preschool and then next week we will start All About Reading Pre-Level. When I do handwriting with Little Bug, I give Sweet Pea a handwriting page or dry-erase book for her to practice her letters. She has pretty good fine motor skills and we will keep working on them this year. Sweet Pea’s math is activities and games from The Measured Mom. She did one of her Number Worksheets.

In between the 3 R’s there is plenty of time for play, reading Sonlight books, watching an educational DVD during lunch and bike rides/walks through our neighborhood! We are reading through 101 Favorite Stories from the Bible.

The first week my main goal is to test different ways of doing things to see what school routine will work best. Sweet Pea goes down for her nap at 2pm now instead of 1pm, so this gives us about an hour of afternoon school time. I had thought we would start our school morning with Sonlight, but I decided that reading Sonlight books after lunch and before nap/rest time was a great way to transition everyone to rest time. Plus it gives me an extra 30 minutes of instructional time in the morning. I hope to do the 3 R’s with Little Bug in the morning so the afternoon block of time can be for Sonlight and math games.

After another week or two we will fall into a rhythm but I feel very good about how things went this week. It is fast-paced with three little ones but the key is having everything prepared and ready for the day before we step foot in the homeschool room! Our workbox system allows me to have a good system in place for having everyone’s work prepared, organized and ready to go. Each girl has a Monday-Friday box. I fill their boxes once a week so all of their lessons and activities are ready for the week. I have used this system since we started homeschooling and it works well for us in this stage.

We don’t start Classical Conversations until August. I need to write about how my educational philosophies are changing from my background (elementary education teacher) to the Classical Model of Education. It’s honestly something I never saw coming, but it is the direction God is leading our homeschool.

- Elaine