One Week of School Down

Well, our first week of school is over. I think we're going to do just fine.

My main concern is going to be fitting everything we want to do into the week. I'm thinking about setting a rough schedule, or at least doing things in the same order each day. I want to allow for a lot of flexibility, especially since the kids are so young, but we all really enjoy some predictability and structure.

Having the days somewhat planned ahead somehow makes it easier for me to get up and get going in the morning. Just planning things takes so much energy--I like getting up in the morning knowing exactly what my first step needs to be and what to do next. For instance, if I lay out our clothes and think about breakfast the night before, getting ready in the morning is so much easier.

Of course, it helps that Baby E has slept through the night (6-7 hours or more) quite a few times now. Last night she slept from about 10:30 or 11 until 7 or 7:30 a.m. Hooray! 8 1/2 weeks old and well on her way to better sleep. That longer stretch of unbroken sleep sure makes a difference. Now if I can just get myself to bed earlier, so I can sleep while she does . . .

I've decided that since the weather is getting cooler and rainier and I really need to get in shape, we're adding P.E. to our curriculum. It helps break up the "chair work" and we all get some exercise.

On Friday we did phonics and math workbooks after breakfast, then we read and discussed a Bible passage. After that, we turned on a low-impact aerobics video and exercised until Mommy got tired (LOL). We had a lot of fun with it even though we all had a little trouble keeping up and getting the moves down. Then we were ready to sit down and practice reading for a while.

I notice that having the structured lesson time really makes the kids appreciate quiet time to play by themselves, so I'm going to schedule in "recess" breaks once or twice during school time, too. We really only do a couple of hours or so of academics, but by the time we add exercise and a craft or something fun, plus a break for lunch, and I spend some time reading to them and/or playing a game with them, it takes up most of the day.

AJ is really taking off with her reading. She's reading at least one book a day (on Tuesday she read three!) and it's getting smoother and easier. I'm impressed with her reading comprehension, too!

MM really wants to read, too, but getting her to sit down and work on learning her letters is a challenge. Yesterday I made little cards with capital and lowercase letters and pictures of items that start with each, and that worked better. AJ and MM worked together to put the capital letters in order and then find the lowercase letter and the picture that matched each one. We'll play games like Go Fish and matching games with them, too. MM seems to enjoy a hands-on learning style. She likes being able to manipulate objects with her hands and play games with them much better than just sitting at a table working on learning the sounds.

As the weeks go by, I look forward to figuring out what combination of learning approaches works best for each child. I'm learning a lot, too!

It sure doesn't leave me much time for anything else, though . . . it may get easier after a few weeks, but I expect blogging will be light on school days.