Monday, August 23, 2010

Survivor

Well we survived our first official home school day!!!  Yippee!!!   Little Miss Prissy Pot did so well that we actually tackled 2 days worth of lessons in one!  I did notice that she started getting a bit fidgety once we had been at it for about an hour or so.  She rallied though and we finished the lessons with a little tweaking.


I am not above a little marshmallow tweak!  We used them to mark letters on her ABC chart.  She could eat the ones that she placed on the correct letter and that got rid of the fidgets for a while!

dry erase board from Target for one dollar

Next it was time to pull out the rice!


No, she didn't eat the rice (I wish)! 


We poured the rice in a cookie sheet and practiced drawing her letters with her fingers in the rice!  That was the hit of the day.  However, after a while it became a rice drawing fest with little sister joining in and rice flying all over my kitchen!!!


I didn't mind, though.  We actually (dare I say)





had fun and more than survived the day!  I would love to ask all my BTDT homeschooling friends, for a precocious 4 year old, about how long should I plan for each day?  She really did so great with the first lesson and wanted to do the second but did start to get bored a bit after the first hour or so.  How long each day did you spend home schooling your 4 year olds???

As for the other poor, tortured souls that went off to prison school last week...


they too survived their second week and lived to tell the tale! 



Thank goodness everyone seems to like their teachers.  The jury, however, is still out on one or two of them with Momma Bear!  Heh!

Then there is my eldest who swore that we were out to get him this summer by making him change schools!! 


He was not at all excited about starting a new school this year but we just love to make him miserable and so, off he went! 

Seriously, my heart ached for him that first day and I was just praying he would have a good day.  Of course on the way to his new school on his very first day, what did we run into but...


the daggone train ya'll!!!  This is a boy who DOES NOT like to be late.  Let me repeat that, he DOES NOT like to be late and on the very first day of his brand new school!!!  Well you get the picture - not pretty people!  After some reassurance that we were 30 minutes early (I knew what I was doing), he was fine and ended up not hating it!!!  I will take it!!!  Hehe!!

So off we go into a brand new school year!  Right back to rush, rush, rush and get up, get up, get up and go, go, go and oops


somebody please let the dog out!!!  Hehe!

And speaking of dogs, I would like to introduce you to the newest member of our crazy clan...


Yep, Lily our 3 legged foster dog is now Lily our adopted dog - but you all already knew that was coming, didn't you!!  Everybody else did but me apparently!  She has just attached herself to my hip and into our hearts and we just couldn't let her go!  It's already crazy around here, what's one more!

8 comments:

  1. Congratulations on surviving your first day!!!
    We start school next week and my oldest is going to Junior high ugh... we'll have to see how that goes.

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  2. You are gonna have a blast. When I sat down for the first day of school with my 4 yos, it was 8:00 on September 11, 2001. You do the math.

    I absolutely love three legged dogs. They are my favorite kind right after spoiled Jack Dachs.

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  3. Ummmm hello! Drawing letters in rice?!! Genius!! Love that! I may steal/borrow that idea when two little Mandarin speakers show up soon. I've also heard drawing in shaving cream is also great fun. Thanks for the tip and congrats on the first day!

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  4. What a great post on homeschooling your girls! Looking back those were fun years with my boys. I don't like messes, so never did the writing in a mess, but you go girl! 4 yr olds and homeschooling, you will be able to tell how long, but most likely no more than 2 hrs of straight school. You are obviously creative, so un-school will happen the rest of the day! I have my big boys back home this year, so I have 4 homeschooling. Crazy but fun days with my kids! Blessings, Jaci in FL

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  5. Thanks everybody!! I love the shaving cream idea. I might try choc pudding too! What fun a fun and yummy clean up that would be!!! LOL!

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  6. Love it - we've used the rice idea with our sensory gal, too. And - if you try the shaving cream idea - tape down a black trash bag rather than using a cookie sheet. You can see the letters better against the black and clean-up is easier.

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  7. Hi Annie,
    The other day you asked me how much time I spend HS all the kids. Well we have 6 so it does take more time! The two oldest go to a 2 day a week homeschool co-op from 10:30 to 3. The other 3 days of the week are spent doing homework and doing the schoolwork that they don't do there.(history,latin, etc) They are both pretty independent and keep up with their assignments. I help them when they need it.

    I try and work first thing with Kai and Corwin (both 5). We usually do a bible story first and then maybe a page of explode the code. Then I have them play legos, color or do something else for awhile. So that take about an hour.

    Then I work with my 9 year old son. He is not independent! We usually start around 10 have lunch at 12:30ish and are done by 2-2:30. During that time, I will also work with Kai and Corwin some off and on. Today while Samuel did his math and I sat there, Kai and Corwin sat at the table and did a math page. There are interruptions of course so sometimes we aren't done at 2:30. My 11 year old daughter is really independent too. She looks at the lesson plan book and does the lesson. If she needs help I help and I also check all her work.
    And mixed in all that is meals, laundry, fights, piano lessons, library, etc....you get the picture!
    Lesa

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  8. Oh wow, I like the rice idea! I'll have to try that one one day this week!
    Happy new school year to you and all your brood!

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