First Day of School

Well, no pictures since the camera still has no batteries. But I don't think I would've posted pictures anyway...

The most memorable part of the morning...wearing underwear to Kindergarten in the living room! Where else can you do that? Certainly not at traditional school. Mary Clare was testing lots of limits and started off by refusing to get dressed. Oh well!

She did ask to see her new math book and spent about 10 minutes playing with the blocks after breakfast. Hopefully she will like it when we begin Math U See in the next week or two. I decided to start with saying the pledge and singing a couple patriotic songs, which MC also refused to participate in, but Ellie gladly obliged!

I am planning to start Monday mornings (after prayer and pledge) with journal writing about the weekend. Again, MC didn't want to dictate anything for me to write, so Ellie helped me write a story about their time with their cousins last night. Mary Clare wanted to illustrate and finally got engaged in our activities!

We wrote our story, worked on a page of math, a page of handwriting, did a lesson of 100 Easy Lessons (after I started one lesson with Ellie, again getting MC interested), and read about Sodom and Gomorrah in the children's bible (which she illustrated for her bible dictation, but wouldn't dictate). Ellie also worked on some pages in her preschool activity book.

I think this will be a few weeks of transition, testing limits and staying committed to daily school time. Up until now, Mary Clare has chosen all that she wanted to do when she wanted to do it. So having a set time to work for about an hour is making her feel a bit stifled. I have to chose my battles wisely (hence Kindergarten in her underwear), and stay committed to our schedule.

Right now she is complaining on the phone to her grandma about her hands being tired from working for so long...one hour! I'm not sure how she'd survive a 7-hour day at school! So, a successful first day of "Kindergarten"...I put it in quotes because really she has already completed most of her Kindergarten materials and is primarily working in first grade texts. Her aunt called it "kindergarten and a half" last night...fairly accurate! That's another advantage of homeschooling since we aren't tied to the school year or her classmates' progress. We can go through books at her own pace and base our activities around the family.

I'm so thankful to be able to school on our own terms, at our own times, and in our own choice of attire ;)