Day One of Homeschooling

Today was our first day of Homeschooling.  It went really well, and went much quicker than I originally expected.  Except for a few minor melt downs we had absolutely no issues either.  We started with independent journaling.  Writing and journaling are skills we are really trying to instill in Anthony, and so far he really seems to enjoy it.  For Anastasia we got her a sketch pad and she draws pictures during journaling time.  After breakfast (a nice primal breakfast of eggs and steak!) we moved onto Language Arts.  Anastasia seemed really disinterested in sitting still today so I concentrated on Anthony most of the time.  We began reading, "Stuart Little" today, and Anthony read aloud the first chapter.  He did amazingly well and only needed help on 2 or 3 words.  Afterwards I quizzed him a bit on comprehension and surprisingly he retained all he had read.  He then composed a short paragraph about the first chapter in his book log notebook.

He only misspelled a few words, which we then added to his spelling list notebook as a start for this weeks spelling list.

After Language Arts we had health.  The first unit study is about our bodies so we decided we wanted to measure everyones height, weight, hands and feet.  The kids weights really surprised me!  Anthony is now 38.5 lbs! Anastasia is 28.5 lbs (which is amazing, she's been 23 lbs forever).  David is now 19.5 lbs, so still not quite big enough to turn his car seat around but growing.  Our chunky baby, the only child of ours who has ever had baby fat and rolls, is now 10 lbs!  We figure he'll get super heavy and then stop growing like Anthony did.  I must be making cream this time instead of skim milk!

After Health we had music.  I originally wanted to start with the recorder but I haven't purchased them yet, so we are learning about composers instead.  Today we learned about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and will continue to study him for the rest of the week.  This is where our major melt down happened.  After reading a short biography on him I gave Anastasia a coloring page of his face, and Anthony received a word search to complete.  Anthony didn't want the wordsearch, he wanted to color.  Out of 9 words he only found one without help, and 2 with help, before he gave up. Will keep in mind he does not like word searches, but I will still give them to him because I do think they teach valuable skills.

After Health it was time for Spanish, which is computer based.  Anthony wasn't feeling it today and didn't really try, resulting in only getting half correct.  So we will be repeating lesson one for a while.

Next was Science, one of the subjects I'm the most excited about this year.  Today was a really easy day for Science, basically an intro into this years subject and some journaling in his Science Journal followed by adding Vocabulary into his Vocabulary Journal.  Tomorrow we start our first lab using thermometers to show how certain objects conduct heat!

Then we had Social Studies where we just introduced our current unit - Geography.  We learned basic definitions for Latitude and Longitude, identified the on a world map, learned how to read coordinates, and discussed the equator.  I guess he learned a lot of this already by reading one of his encyclopedias, so we flew through this quicker than I thought.

Finally we had Math.  I showed him how to do the word problems, and gave him two sheets to complete.  He flew through them very quickly and got every question correct! I was so proud.

So far things are going smoothly, but today was pretty easy.  On days where Anastasia is more interested we'll be doing a lot of things with her as well which will make things a bit more complicated.  But so far, so good.

Here's Anthony working on his Language Arts journal.

Here's my homeschool shelf, and our dining room with the alphabet posters, and the "Mizzell Money" reward chart (more on that in another post)

And of course, pictures of the kids!  David playing with Charlie's playmat, he can't keep himself off! And David getting into the homeschooling supplies.

Anastasia dancing to her "Get Ready For School" CD

And some of Chunky Charlie Bear.  So cute, so sweet, looks like me, but has little baby rolls!