We enjoyed survived our first day of school today. Overall, I gave it a 7 out of 10. It went off painlessly, but not perfectly.
We did a lot of prep last week. I spent hours and hours (and hours) on the computer generating chore charts and schedules. Then I sat on them a day or two and prayed about it and tweaked them. They more-or-less worked. I looked up lots and lots of books on Amazon where I could see the inside pages, then checked to make certain our library carried them. We have reading plans for the year for each child individually and for read-alouds for two age groups. I even remember to order the books we needed. Most of them, anyway.
I visited WalMart and stocked up on supplies without stopping at the cardboard kiosk to pick up supply lists. This has pros and con. The most obvious pro is that I can buy my kids whatever color folders they want. They can even have the same color for all of their subjects if they want. The con is that without a cheat-sheet I can end up not buying enough of something. Not that that could happen to me.
I dug books out of the basement and found everyone’s books for this year. They got to exchange the book covers if they wanted to. Tabitha carried her history books around proudly for almost a week. She gasped with JOY when she saw her language book. And looked horrified when she opened it up and a huge bound section fell out. (We ordered another one.)
Yup – with all those plans in place we started out the morning with out schedule, a timer, and a LOT OF PRAYER.
Off the bat we realized we couldn’t find Stewart’s spelling CDs. Okay. Okay. Not a problem. We can miss one day of spelling for a kid who scores post-High School on his Stanfords. Then it dawned on me Nigel’s copy of Pedro’s Journal didn’t come yet; I ordered it from Amazon a week ago. That’s okay, that’s okay. He’ll just need to read extra tomorrow, or Wednesday. No problem. Then there was the realization that Tab’s spelling lists are too hard for her to manage and locate in the big instruction manual. The bell went off in my head and I remembered needing to type the list out for Marie in 2010. No problem. I’ll have time later. Right? And Marie needed a notebook for her spelling. That’s easy. I’ll just get her one out of the bag of supplies… you know they bag of school supplies I bought last week WHEN I FORGOT TO BUY A SINGLE NOTEBOOK!?!
We actually started school a half-hour early due to enthusiasm. And each of the kids did a fairly good job entertaining Johanna during their assigned time with her. She wasn’t all that keen on the whole business, though. That is going to be the toughest part.
We actually started school a half-hour early due to enthusiasm. And each of the kids did a fairly good job entertaining Johanna during their assigned time with her. She wasn’t all that keen on the whole business, though. That is going to be the toughest part.
After lunch (served on time! Thank you, LORD) Johanna went to her nap and the overall tone of the house simmered down a bit. Whew. We all felt it. And the kids were pleased to hear me give the day, at that point, a 6 out of ten.
We did science and the big pat on the back goes to Tabitha who listened better than everyone else. She got three fist bumps out of it. Go, Tab! And the day ended with Stewart working on his history (art) project, which called for making salt dough… Hmmm.
It was a TOTAL fail, so we resorted to play-doh to make an arch. Hopefully it will dry out enough overnight to decorate.
It wasn’t all fun and games… the garbage can was upset during lunch clean-up.
And much to Nigel’s disappointment I hadn’t gotten to the library to pick up his and Stewart’s storytime book (a/k/a read aloud) and we had to eliminate that for today, also.
All in all, we got about 90% of each person’s work done, except Nigel. So he decided to do extra math to fill up his time. But I figure that we managed to do more academic work than most first days of public school. After all, I didn’t need to establish any assigned seating, or go over the protocol to request visiting the bathroom. Marie had to alphabetize names of Old Testament prophets. Nigel did two worksheets on action and state-of-being verbs. Stewart had to make salt dough! LOL…
It’s only one day down… and 179 to go. But if today is any indication
WE ARE GOING TO SURVIVE.
(But it is going to be messy!)
Dayspring Disciples 
Ah, great start! Does this mean I have to get organized? This is the first year I have wanted summer to keep lasting longer and longer 🙂 Hoping the next 179 days are filled with smiles 🙂
Ah, great start! Does this mean I have to get organized? This is the first year I have wanted summer to keep lasting longer and longer 🙂 Hoping the next 179 days are filled with smiles 🙂
I have a copy of Pedro's Journal in my classroom if you need one!
I have a copy of Pedro's Journal in my classroom if you need one!