Week One: Shallow Waters

We officially started our homeschool year this week, and what a start it was.  We all got up at 5 a.m. on Monday because we are eager beavers and super excited about the year.  Nah, we got up because we had to take dh to the airport lol.  He is in California for a training school for 2 weeks.  When we got home everyone was still pretty much awake so we ate breakfast and started lessons around 7 a.m.  We were done by 9.  The public schools should learn from our example.  ;)

We spent the rest of Monday adding a new student to our rosters.  That’s right, ds2 is back on board with Just 4 Boys Homeschool.  We now have a homeschooling highschooler in our ranks!  I went from feeling prepared for our school year to back to square one lol, but I know we all can handle the transition.

I am trying a new kind of schedule with the younger boys this year, making plans for only 4 days of the week and leaving Friday open for nature and art study as well as a catch-up day.  One thing I always hated was having lessons uncompleted from the week, effectively throwing all my planning out of whack.  I am hoping by leaving one day a week open we can alleviate that problem.  I was pleasantly surprised to find, when I was doing my lesson planning with this new method, that we will still stay on track and finish our year on time.  We shall see.  :)

We picked up with Stone Fox again and one of ds’s assignments this week was to make up a poster about a dog race like in the story.  He did really well with this after I prompted him to add in more details.  He enjoyed it so much he gathered his Webkinz and held his own race as described in his poster.  It made me so glad that we homeschool and he had the opportunity to act on his imagination.

Here his poster is taped to the wall and the Webkinz are all reading it.

For SOTW this week we learned about early writing and made our own cuneiform tablets and hieroglyph scrolls.  Then we tested to see which would survive over time by putting them in the oven to mimic extreme heat and submerging them in water to simulate a flood.  Loads of fun.  I am very pleased with SOTW so far. 

Ds4 working on his alphabet.  Gotta love magnetic doors lol.  I am not as prepared for ds4 this year as I had hoped.  Last year he got up so much earlier than his siblings that we could do his lessons together first.  Now he is thrown in the general mix and I’m finding he is lost when left on his own.  I think I may set up some “workbox” or “center” type work that he can grab and complete on his own (although it’s going to take some getting used to for him to share my attention on the homeschool front.)

Nature study this week was all about cattails!  Separate post about that coming up.

As usual week one is all about getting back into the groove.  We’ve waded back into the homeschooling waters but still have our floaties on.  Next week maybe we’ll even get our heads wet.  :)