First Day of School, 2008

We had a great first day of school! It started a bit differently than in years past, with a trip to the orthopedic surgeon where more xrays were taken of my pinkie finger. It was determined that the bone is healing properly, my splint was removed, and I was given the green light to do my own "therapy" at home with a check back in two weeks. Whoooo-Hoooo!

Then we went out for breakfast, a first day of school tradition we started several years ago.


After that, daddy went to work and the rest of us went home to finish decorating the cookie dough maps we had baked the night before. For the last two years we have made salt dough maps on the first day of school, but this year I decided we should make cookie dough maps and eat them later! What a big hit! Here we are the night before, shaping the dough into the shape of the United States. The purpose of these maps was to review the major landforms and regions of our country, so we focused on making mountains in the right places, a flat area for the great plains, space for the great lakes, and the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers. We shaped them on wax paper, which was laid on top of an 8.5" x 11" paper map of the U.S. We decided we could put the licorice strip rivers and green sprinkles (for wooded regions) and chocolate chips for mountains on before baking, but the icing would have to come later. Also before baking we carefully added a star shaped sprinkle for Washington, D.C.

After the children were in bed, hubby and I carefully baked these maps. We transferred the wax paper to cookie sheets, 2 to a sheet. We had to guess on the right amount of time to leave them in, so we started with 9 minutes and then kept checking them every couple minutes until they were done. I also set the oven to 300 rather than 350 so the thin parts wouldn't burn.

Here we are, happily frosting sections of our maps! A couple of the kids chose to frost the great plains with yellow frosting, and we had to go over the rivers again with blue frosting because the cookie had baked up around the licorice strips. We also added the great lakes at this time.

Even 3 year old Little Man made one!

6 year old C with his map:

Eating Lake Superior!

9 year old G with his map:

8 year old L with his map:

And 11 year old G with her map:

After these pictures were taken, everyone got to eat ONE THIRD of the United States!!!! Wow! That was a LOT of cookie. Then we had booktime for about an hour, where the older two read their TOG assigned reading and I read picture books to the younger 3. After Little Man was down for his nap, we read about Napoleon for a short time and then went outside to play. Today they will each write a few sentences in a small homemade flapbook about Napoleon ~ what they remember from our reading.

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This week will be half days for us, with just history and math for everyone, and a couple odds and ends of subjects for each of the children (latin for daugher G, cursive handwriting for son G, a special history on CD thing for son L to listen to, and learning to read with son C). Next week we start with "everything."

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It was a great first day!