How homeschool is going...

On the first day, we got through all our subjects (except for science, but including music (at least for Miriam)). I drove her to our new homeschool orchestra all by myself (after practicing the route with Andrew on Sunday afternoon). It's a 25 minutes drive, so this was no small thing for me.

Miriam enjoyed orchestra.

We hunkered down in a small classroom off the main room where Benjamin and I worked on social studies together (Benjamin picked out a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition to read together, which we'll be focusing on for a while). Zoë and Alexander played and ran around a little too much.

I know it was a little too much because Alexander tripped and fell, cracking his head on the table in the room.

I'm sure the orchestra enjoyed his lusty screams.

That is not a shadow on his forehead, sadly

By the time we got home we finished up a few things (except science) and certainly got in our 4.5 hours. Benjamin found Khan Academy thrilling (and then Rachel helped him set up a Prodigy math account) so he was doing math for well over an hour.

During scripture study in the evening, Zoë and Alexander were fighting over who would get to sit on a box and Alexander lost, earning another bump on his head (and much more lusty screaming for our ears to endure).

It was an exhausting day and I can't wait for our textbooks to arrive so I can stop cobbling together so much curriculum!

On the second day, the kids slept in. I woke Miriam up at 8:30 and she hopped right to work on Duolingo (she's been studying German for the past year or so on her own, anyway, and is excited to have more time sanctioned for that) and Khan Academy. I had to pull Benjamin out of bed, which I thought was rather a bad omen (and really had me second guessing this decision).

Benjamin did his math work on my iPad while lying in my bed.

I had to drag him out of bed to meet at the kitchen table for some breakfast and a quick lesson on punctuation (that child neglects his quotation marks, which makes reading his stories rather confusing) and some writing time.

He was resting his head on the table and being sluggish in general, but I gave Miriam and Benjamin their tasks and then ran upstairs to check something. And while I was upstairs, Benjamin ran to the bathroom to puke.

So that explains that!

I'm just happy he made it into the toilet. He felt much better after that, though spent the rest of the day rather mopey (though I didn't mind his sluggishness anymore since I knew he wasn't feeling great). And he did a ton of reading on the couch, so...

Benjamin making a list of biotic and abiotic objects

The kids spent "recess" drawing with chalk and riding scooters and tricycles (we've yet to get actual bikes for our big kids). Alexander flew off the scooter he was riding and banged up his chin really good. So he's looking like he's been going around picking fights...

He didn't want to show me his chin

We went to the school to formally withdraw the children and pick up their things.

We forgot to look in the lost and found for Miriam's music stand (so we'll have to go back another day).

We finished up our afternoon with social studies and science lessons.

Miriam practiced the organ (I still need to get her to practice the cello) and I practiced the piano a little bit, but I haven't started Benjamin on music lessons yet.

We'll wait for our actual textbooks to arrive (have I mentioned that I can't wait?!) so that we can hopefully have more of a system to our day (though I'm pulling together their language arts/reading and social studies curriculum together on my own still so it will still be a bit of work for me).

Two days down...149 to go (they've had 29 days of public school and 2 days of homeschool this year). Eventually I'll stop writing about school, I'm sure, but for now it's new for us so bear with me!

Miriam working on a timeline of WWII (this wasn't an assignment; it was just something she wanted to do)

I suppose we can't leave Zoë and Alexander out. They have been loving homeschooling as well. They follow the big kids around with their pads of paper and "take notes" of things all day. Zoë has also been loving her reading lessons; whenever we finish with one she asks to do another and another and another. I've been cutting her off after three. But she can't wait to be reading fluently and is spending quite a lot of time trying to figure out our early readers by herself (as well as with me).

These two accompanied us outside for our science lesson