Our First Week Back to School

I am so happy about our first week back to school. After the longest break we've ever taken, I definitely expected the worst. Sometimes the kids seem to have a hard time getting back into things and act like they've forgotten all their math skills after just a long weekend. They've done great though. No whining or complaining and they seem to be ready to pick right back up where we left off. I think maybe they were ready for a little more structure to our days.

Monday was the first day for public schools in our area so we had a "Not Back to School" celebration with our homeschool friends. We've been doing this for the last several years. We usually go to lunch and then bowling, but this year we went to Chuck E. Cheeses after lunch. The kids seemed to like that better and it worked well with all ages. It was great hanging out with everyone and seeing some friends we haven't seen in a while.

 

On Tuesday, we officially started our school year. The kids did an all about me page and a first day of school interview to start.

 

For the last four years, I've made the kids a special back to school cake. We've had a box of crayons, a sheet of notebook paper, and the earth (you can see them under the cake tab at the top of this page). Pregnancy sickness has made it hard for me to be in the kitchen so this year I was looking for something easy. This cupcakes were really easy. I bought chocolate covered cookies for chalkboards and the little white candies (chalk) are from the candies you buy by the pound at the grocery store.

 

Molly is at the beginning of a math book so she has started that. Colin and Caleigh have been doing review work. Caleigh is doing 2 review pages each day from the part of her RightStart math book that she had already finished. Colin did the tests in Basic College Math for review before jumping back into his Geometry and starting Pre-Algebra next week.

Molly is doing grammar, reviewing writing capital and lowercase letters, and learning the phonograms before starting Spell to Write and Read.
Caleigh did grammar, Writing with Ease, and reviewed her cursive letters. I had planned to let her review the phonograms, but she only had trouble with a couple of them so I need to get ready and move on to the reference pages and spelling lists with her.
Colin did Daily Grams, logic, some writing, and started reading his science.

In history, we read about James Cook and his explorations. We learned more about Australia and convicts being sent there. We also read about the beginning of political parties, the White House, and the first census in A History of US.


Our read aloud for the week was Pippi Longstocking. I'm hoping to do a better job reading chapter books aloud this year. We read tons of books for history, science, unit studies, etc., but I have a hard time sticking with reading a book that takes us more than a few days. Last year we listened to books in the car, but we won't have as much driving to do now since we've moved.
Here are the kids playing with pattern blocks and tangrams while I read.