First Week of School

Overall the first week of school for us was a success. I like how the day is set up and I think it will allow us to get some good work done as well as get out of the house for other plans with friends. We took 1st Day of School pics and Alex dressed up in her Elsa costume.

Here is how the first week (mostly) went. The kids have a schedule chart on the wall to follow to help us remember the order of things.

-Breakfast with music

-Morning Walk

-Basket (These are activities with both kids together and they change each day. We always start with a little devotion and a couple books to read together and then some sort of game or activity that includes them both. We did color bears this week for 3 days. Monday was sorting colors, Tuesday was making patterns with them, Wednesday was putting them above/below/inside/outside. Then Thursday was play dough. Alex recreated the letters we have been working on and David just played with the dough).

-Alex's School time- Phonics, Handwriting, Math, Social Studies or Science ... plus various life skills

-Alex Piano- my plan is for 2 days a week, but she wanted to do it every day. We will see where this settles.

-Art will be done as things come up or in place of piano. This week I had some crafts that we didn't do and instead completed them this weekend.

Including the walk and Basket time, the whole school day takes about 2 1/2 hours.

It's nice to have some flexibility. We started school a little late Wednesday because of a vet appointment. We then decided to do our morning walk Downtown (near the vet) with Riley.

There were two big meltdowns from Alex in the course of the week. One was because she didn't want to do the assignment given and the other because it was raining and instead of a walk, I tried a kid's exercise video. Despite the two meltdowns Alex asked to do school every day and didn't want to break for the weekend.

David was doing ok with it all. He still requires a lot of help with all of his "independent " activities. So I was spending a lot of time going back and forth between the two kids.

Around the house I've been tending the garden and trying to keep the Mountain Cherries off the porch as much as possible. The cherries are ripening and making a mess of the porch. The birds eat the cherries and make a different mess... and new this year are the bees coming for the sweet berry juice and terrifying the children. So I've been trying to sweep them off a couple times a day.

Friday we went to Dollywood again. This time we planned to get wet. We did all the water rides, splash areas and foam pit. The kids were soaked most of the day but had a lot of fun with it. We also watched the Bubble Show which was a fun break in the day.