First Day of School

Yesterday was the girls' first day of school for the 2011-2012 school year. We got up, had breakfast, got dressed, did the chores, and then it was time for the obligatory first day of school pictures.

Right after those, the girls went back to their school table and got to work on the old, half worn out laptops we've stripped down to only run the girls' school curriculum. Sneak is in preschool, so her morning consisted mostly of working on letter sounds on starfall.com, a free website that's just wonderful for teaching basic reading skills. Boo Bear is starting kindergarten, so we've moved her up to the Time 4 Learning kindergarten curriculum. She spent the first half of the morning working on language arts and math. 

After a short break for some physical activity, we moved onto science and social studies. We visited the Wild Kratt's Habitat Explorer, Oceans while talking about ocean ecosystems. Then we talked about neighborhoods and the girls built their own suburb using the Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood Builder. Finally we covered the day's Bible lesson and then moved to the kitchen table for our table time.

Table time rotates between art, experiments, writing assignments, and projects. Yesterday's assignment was an art project. I asked the girls to make three of the sea creatures they saw when we were "exploring" the ocean. Today we're practicing writing first and last names, and tomorrow we'll create a habitat. (You get the idea.)

We had a bit of trouble with Sneak getting frustrated with her sister's lessons taking so long. She's used to Boo Bear playing with her most of the time, and didn't want to play on her own. But she'll adjust to the new schedule soon enough.

After lunch and a nap, we finished up with reading time and a discussion of what we'd discovered.

And no tears about doing it all again today, so I'm counting yesterday as a win.