First Day of School

We had a wonderful, fun first day of school today!! I decided a couple weeks ago to start with just history and science (why?? cuz they're FUN!) and add language arts and math next week. That turned out to be a great decision. We started our day with a new book that I'd purchased especially for our 5 year old son C. Curious George's first day of school. Everyone loved it.
Two year old A loved his new room time toy! A Fisher Price Little People garage.

While A was in room time, the rest of us made "Favorite Things" scrapbook pages with handprints on them. I wish I'd started this tradition sooner, but better late than never! We plan to do a new page each year from now on, and see how their favorite things, as well as their hand size, changes through the years.

Then I read the first few pages of our science text, "Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day". We are learning about classification of animals. The 3 older ones can all tell you what "Kings Play Chess On Fine Glass Sets" means! (hint: it's a mnemonic device). They are all looking forward to moving on to a study of insects, but we have to learn the classification system first. Here we are coloring the title page of our new science notebooks.

After this we had lunch and recess. During recess we rode our bikes/walked down the street to watch a cement mixer loading up a small site dumper over and over again. Our neighbors are getting a new patio in their backyard. We watched for nearly half an hour and it was very fun.

After A went down for his nap we moved on to history. I read them a book about the Jamestown Colony and then we made mud-daub houses out of shoeboxes and popsicle sticks. Tomorrow we will finish them with either brown paint or mud smeared over the "wood" to fill in the cracks, just as the colonists would have done. Weeds and grass will get glued on the top for the roofs. Our daughter G is already planning the furniture she will make for the inside! (not something I expect from everyone, just something she wants to do). Notice the smoke hole in the roof of the house.

After a couple hours of free time we ended our school day with dinner out at Denny's. A few years ago we started the tradition of going out for breakfast on the first day of school, but we switched it to dinner this year because kids can eat free there on Tuesday evenings. :-) Free is good!

It was a great first day!! This was one of those days where I absolutely LOVE homeschooling. There will be hard days, and days where I don't love it, but I'm so thankful that this was not one of them.

Now to get up and do it again tomorrow......