1 Week Down

Yes, we have completed 1 week of school!  It was completely exhausting!!  At least for me it was.  I got together with a couple other homeschool Moms, 1 of which had started on Monday like me, and she felt the same way.  We were totally worn out!!  So I guess that shows we enjoyed our lazy summer days, too!

We had a rough start to the new school year but things improved over time.  I had a small gift for the kids each day to celebrate the start of school and that ensured their enthusiasm!  :)

Samuel is working hard on his All About Reading letter activity.  Nathan is working on his Dora lapbook I made him (from 1+1+1=1 blog).  Notice Ziggy the zebra is out--he is the biggest hit of the school year thus far.  They all just love that puppet!  Samuel even asked to do reading one day after we had already done all his schoolwork.  I would've said yes but we were leaving!

Expedition Earth (found here) has been a lot of fun.  The kids made maps of their room so here they are explaining it to me.

Oh Nathan.  This week, he took lids off at least half the markers and dumped them all together in a bowl, dumped the counting bears, took all the cups out of the kitchen, mixed 3 puzzles and stuffed the toilet full of toilet paper--all in 1 afternoon.  Yes, he keeps me hopping.  The biggest problem I seem to have is that he screams during read aloud time--every day!  I'm not sure why he hates it.  I was letting them play with Thinking Putty and the kids miss that but Nathan wasn't behaving with it (it will ruin clothes and carpet--found that out last year!) so I put it all up.  

A blurry picture but this shows our pajama day--Wednesday because it's the only day of the week we have zero therapy appointments  We were playing the Continent Hop game (found here).

Samuel and I made newspaper hats for math because we've been learning about shapes this week. 

I thought this was funny.  Every morning, Samuel and I take the pointer and sing the ABC song and then Samuel points to the letter we're learning that day.  Nathan always joins us and gets excited about it all so I wasn't totally surprised to find him in the hallway, learning letters by himself.  :)

Paper mache earth.  I can barely say more.  I just don't know that we will do this ever again as long as I live.  I had picked out an alternate craft and the kids didn't know paper mache was an option but they saw it on some cartoon and specifically asked to do it.  Sigh.  We did it.  

In art this week, we learned about Picasso.  We looked at some of his paintings and they picked one to recreate in their own way.  

Lily chose Le Moulin de la Galette because of all the fancy ladies in the picture.  :)

Hunter chose The Altar Boy.  It was funny because the boy in the picture is holding a candle lighter/snuffer thing (no idea of formal name) but the kids have no clue what an altar boy is or what he would be holding.  Hunter was sure it was a paintbrush and Lily was convinced it was a large toothpick.  Ha!

I got into my groove by the end and I'm feeling better about things now.  I do think it's going to take some time to figure out how to get energy back and how to school and clean and keep Nathan contained.  :)  Still, not bad for our 1st week!