the first days

So our first two days of school went by pretty good. Public school definitely sounded like heaven at times, but it is just something everyone has to get used to, especially since we really haven't done any skills like writing, cutting or pasting all summer. So I kind of chickened out on the first day from Charlotte Mason's method, and fell back to a more structured routine. Joaquin cried everytime he had to do something, whether it was sit and listen to a story, or write the letter K. You should have heard him! It was almost comical.

Isabela just kept telling me how her teacher did it last year, and making suggestions as to how to improve....come on guys, it's just the first day. So I made a mental note that the second day we'd be more relaxed and it wouldn't even look like school. We'd read on the couch, play a board game for math, cook, etc. and that's what we did. So after the two days, I asked them which one they liked better, and they both said the first day! Well, I liked the second, so we'll see how it goes.

Here's what we've been doing:
Letter K...reading The Three Little Kittens...and doing ideas from homeschool share
Played kick ball at the park
Made homemade ketchup (we'll stick to the bottle)


Ate kiwis
Played our kazoo...name that tune
copywork from The Three Little Kittens

Math...counting objects
Gathered all our pairs of shoes, dumped them in a big pile and sorted them
played a board game

Nature walk
we found a centipede, a black widow, a huge cucumber in our garden, and about a hundred tiny acorns that we're using for counting

We read about Ben Franklin
Started our history timeline with our own birthdays

But their favorite thing has been reading Paddle to the Sea. This is a great book full of geography and nature, and they will hardly let me put it down. It takes place around the Great Lakes and Isabela is even pulling out the map to follow along with the story all on her own.

We have our guests from Bolivia again...so we just did a little school this afternoon....they came and asked for it! I wasn't going to do anything.

Oh, and I learned one more laundry tidbit you may have already known...if you have a food stain on your clothes, just wet it when you get home, rub a bar of soap on it and scrub it a little using your hands and it's gone! We practiced today from the chocolate dessert we inhaled at dinner. Works great!