First Day of School Party

This morning we kicked off our homeschool year with a first day of school party. 

We showed the girls all of the things we are going to learn about this year and we had crêpes for breakfast. 

Last week we let the girls pick out backpacks for the school year. They love them and wore them around most of the morning.

Before the day started, we had the girls walk down the driveway and knock on the door to begin the first day. The day started with a meeting in Principal Dadda's office. The girls requested that he wear "a very handsome outfit" for the meeting. Spencer prayed with the girls and then they talked about the importance of listening to their teachers, having fun, and learning.

Ella and Juju at the end of the driveway. Ella is also wearing her new school shoes. They were so excited about today. Ella is in Kindergarten and Juliette is in Preschool.

They knocked on our door and were ready to begin!

I wrote them each a note telling them how blessed I feel to be their teacher this year.

Karis loved the crêpe breakfast and helped me set the table while the big girls were having their meeting with the principal.

Ella loves to read and one of the things we are working on is our "I Read 100 Books" chart. She has been working on this throughout the summer and has read about 70 books. At the end of the chart we will celebrate by going for dessert.

Juliette is also doing reading lessons and is doing really well. We are almost halfway through our 100 lessons. She is very proud of her progress, and so am I.

Things go really well teaching Juliette, as long as we keep things light and laugh a lot. That's just how Juju is, it always needs to involve laughter - otherwise what is the point?

And of course Ella likes to take breaks to make some faces as well.

Karis is very into building lego castles and plays nicely while we do reading lessons.

We also do gummy bear math. We use gummy bears as our counters, get out our hundred chart, and do all kinds of math problems. The girls love math, which makes me happy because it is my favorite subject. 

Today we put gummy bears on all of the dates of September as we talked about our upcoming month and all of the exciting things that are going to take place.

So here is our plan for this year:

Devotionals - We will always start our morning in the Word. I have a great little devotional for the girls called "Morning Bells". We do this every morning around the breakfast table. We then do a family devotional in the evening. Spencer leads this one and is working by theme and using the books pictured above. We started studying creation today. This also involves a verse and a worship song that changes every week.

Read Aloud - We have a very literature based approach to education and most of our learning takes place from choosing great books. After our morning devotional, we read from our current read aloud. Right now we are reading "The Littles" by John Peterson. I have a list of great books that we will work through. So much of our learning springs from the books - geography, social studies, history, etc.

Dictation - After our read aloud I spend 1 on 1 time with Juliette working on dictation. We get out her exercise book (a lined notebook) and practice writing. We snuggle beside one another and keep it light and fun. Right now her favorite thing to write is "Juliette loves (insert a family member's name)" I talk about leaving spaces between words and she is gently learning how writing and reading work. I then do the same thing with Ella, except for I read something aloud for Ella to copy down - usually a verse, part of a poem, her favorite part of a story. We then talk about things like sentences starting with a capital letter, how certain words have different spelling and what word family they fit into, etc. Both girls love to draw a picture on the top part of their dictation page after they finish their writing.

Math - We then do 1-1 time for math. Juliette starts with the number chart and counts to 100. She then counts by 10s, 5s, etc. We get out the gummy bears and make up fun addition problems, arrange them in patterns, and then eat one. Ella does the same thing, just at a little more complex level.

The devotional, reading, dictation and math are what we strive to get through every school day. Then depending on what day of the week it is, we add in some Science, Art, and Geography.

Science - I'm really excited about our Science this year. We have a book called "106 Days of Creation Studies." We will use this as a guide to our nature walks. It gives great ideas of things to look out for and separates it into the 7 days of creation. We will be starting with the theme of light.

Geography - We have a huge world map on our wall. We talk about where different family members live, where our sponsor kids live, where our missionary friends are, etc. Our map is also used during our read aloud - we locate the setting and compare the culture to our own.

Art - We are going to use a book called "Anholt's Artists Activity Book". Laurence Anholt writes a series of books on the great artists (which the girls love!) and the activity book walks us through how to create art in the style of the featured artists. Ella is so excited about this part of her learning!

This is our plan for learning. The biggest prayer is that our girls will love God and love others. We cling to the truth that it is not how much they know, but how much they care.

Other exciting things about our year: 

-Ella will go to community class on Wednesday mornings. She will be in a k/1 split and her teacher's name is Ms. Monica. It is a class for homeschooled kids. There they will work on things that are harder to do at home (PE games, skits, presentation skills).  She is excited to start community class at the end of the month.

-Ella is also starting at Langley Music School next week. She will go on Monday afternoons to take the Orff class

-Our home support teacher is Roz, a friend of ours from church. She will keep in contact with us, check in on Ella's learning, and help us with any problems we are having. 

-Juliette was given the option to take a class of her choice on Wednesday mornings (ballet, music, swimming, etc) or to have a turn being the big sister. She chose being the big sister. So on Wednesday mornings, Juliette will be the oldest sister around these parts!

-Oh yah, and we are having a baby and moving ;)