Our First Day of School

I called it our first day of school because I wanted to go ahead and kick it off but we haven't quite had a "full on" "get every subject in" yet...I've had to start slow with reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar and hold off on the science/history/geography because we haven't purchased the books yet....its coming but I figured I can do a lot of the science, history, and geography on my own anyways...

Our first day looked like this:

Mommy and Emily did our Quiet time and prayer journal
We all ate breakfast and got dressed
Everyone loaded up in the van
We drove to Dorothy B.Oven park and had some special time outdoors. I love that park because it is free and beautiful!
I spread a blanket out and we prayed and thanked God for the freedom to choose homeschooling for our family. We thanked him for our freedom and special moments that we will have as a family. Then I gave the kids a treasure hunt. There were 10 things they had to find. They also got a special book that I am calling their nature journal that we will take whenever we go outdoors! They had to find the 10 things and either draw them or write about them. They each got a set of colored pencils. They loved this. It was fun exploring and Molly walked all over as the big kids found their special places to draw or write. After they finished, we got out what I am calling their Heroes of Mission book. It is a book of true stories from the lives of Christian Heroes such as Martin Luther, Dwight Moody, Harriet Tubman, John Wesley and so on...We read about Gladys Aylward, a missionary to the Chinese. She took over 100 children over the mountains near Yangcheng China by herself in 1940 to safety into the next province after she was told that she was not "qualified" to be a missionary!

We said goodbye to our park and came home. Molly slept while the big kids and I did our "peacemakers" study. After that John Daniel colored while Emily and I did language arts and math which only took us about 15 minutes. I learned 2 things...I need to gather all materials and have them out and organized for our time together and that in the beginning, we can do more than one lesson...except Math work sheets. Emily gets tired easily doing Math worksheets..I think I need to get some hands on stuff for her in math but she flew through the language arts in like 5 minutes. We probably could have done 3 lessons. I feel privileged that I am getting to know her strong points and her weaknesses...and mine for that fact. I have learned over the past month, for example, that I am a very visual learner...need to do something hands on before it clicks! So we had a successful first day...second day of school ended up being home EC with sewing classes and then today was Math and then Swim party with John Daniel's class...tomorrow will be a long school day...oh the flexibility!