First Day of School - 2016!

Our first day of school included all our "first day" traditions, which my long time readers know means that we went out for breakfast and then we came home and made edible cookie dough maps!

This year we have, from left to right, a senior, a junior, a freshman, and a sixth grader.  Cannot BELIEVE how quickly they have all grown!  It was son G's very last "first day" of school.  I may or may not have gotten a bit teary eyed during the taking of this picture.

We were supposed to get to the year 1800 at the end of our history studies last spring, but I got bogged down during the Reformation (wanting to do it "right" and just not having the time or energy to do so) so we just started this fall where we left off last spring.  I wasn't willing to skip ahead since this will be son G's last time through this time period and it is SO important to understand how the Reformation still impacts our lives today!

So we made maps of Europe that showed areas where the Reformation had led to large Protestant populations, and areas that were still primarily Catholic.  For detailed instructions on how we make and bake our cookie dough maps, go here.

Most of the boys used different colored sprinkles to show the Protestant and Catholic areas.  Here is son C's before baking and after:

Son G's before and after.  He used icing to show the different areas!

Son L's before and after:

And last but not least, Little Man's before and after:

The cookie maps are always a huge hit, and the boys devoured them!

We did do a bit of book work on the first day, down in our basement school room.  We are trying something new this year, and that is the "phone lot" on the corner of my desk.  The boys who have phones must put their devices on little phone parking lot squares during the morning.  We are doing 3 sets of 45 minute work times, separated with 7 minute breaks in between.  During the 45 minute sets the phones must be here on their parking lot squares.  This is working really well for us so far.

 I played "preposition bingo" with Little Man (he covers the prepositions that I call out with chocolate chips, and gets to eat them later!) while son G worked on math.

This is our long and narrow schoolroom, but what a wonderful thing it is to have a dedicated schoolroom!  I love our impressive library of books, and the space we have to keep all our school related materials in a special spot.  My desk is the one with the lamp on it.

 

Sons G and L are taking an economics class this fall, and they must send their assignments via email to their teacher each week.  They are both taking this class very seriously and seem to be learning a lot already!

It was a good first day!