Well...homeschooling came a little quicker than I thought. After speaking to the Charter School about enrollment and how the funding works, if we didn't start until January, I would have about $300 less in funding than if I started now. Even now, I've already lost about $60. So, I scheduled her last day at Deterding for Tuesday, the 4th and our 1st day of home schooling today. :)
Yesterday, we met with our new ES (Educational Specialist) Miss Kristi. She is awesome. So nice, a local mom that lives just about 10 minutes away if that. Alyson gave her big hugs when she left and we will see her again in 2 weeks for a visit before the holiday break.
Now on to today! I had a plan, typed it all out and hung it on the fridge. Alyson is very much a creature of structure and following a schedule-much of which she learned at traditional public schooling. So having a daily schedule is good for her (I'll explain an example in a moment).
We started the day by getting ready...dressed, brush hair and teeth, eating breakfast. One of her items was to help Molly get ready for preschool so she picked out her outfit (and she did a great job!) and then we drove her to school at 9 a.m. When we got back home, we started the day with some Kid Yoga! We read about yoga and breathing and then we started with some of the breathing techniques. As you can see in the picture above, the Lion's Breath was Alyson's favorite...we laughed and laughed!!! We did some poses, too which were fun. Namaste!
After this, we sat down for Math. She loves Math. I bought the 2nd grade Math book and told her for 20 minutes, do as much as she could-knowing that she would whip through a lot of it since she learned most in 1st and beginning of 2nd grade. She got all the way through the first chapter and is ready for the post-test, which will be on the schedule tomorrow. After Math, we did a Rhyming exercise with -ick. We both came up with as many words that rhymed with -ick and then made up little stories using those words and wrote them in our journals. Again, this was really fun and she already picked out tomorrow's...-ice.
After that, we took a break for snack and "recess"...I told her that she could do anything she wanted to do, but since it was raining outside, she had to stay inside. She didn't know what to do. She was confused at this part. I felt sad for her at this point because I think being in public school, kids are so scheduled that they really don't have any time to just be and play. I brought her to her room with her toys and gave her all kinds of ideas or said she could color or I could put on some music and she could dance...anything. She didn't want to do it. I think she's stuck in the school mode, she got confused as to what she should be doing. This will take some time. So I asked her what she normally did at her recess adn she said eat her snack and that was it because that's all the time she had. So today, we made celery with peanut butter and yogurt and she ate her snack and then wanted to get back to doing some school.
The next thing we did was a December writing prompt. I had her draw an idea and then she was to write in her journal. Her's was, "The Runaway Snowman" and she wrote this cute short story about it. She wanted me to do it, too...so mine was "5 great things about your family". When we were both done, she read mine and I read hers out loud. She seemed to really enjoy this activity.
The last thing we did before going to get MOlly from preschool was game time. We played Crazy 8's and Old Maid.
After getting Molly, we went to Lakeshore learning because I needed to laminate some homeschool things (do you know they only charge $0.29/foot and Office Depot charges $1.29 per page!!! I only paid $.90 for 6 pages at Lakeshore-would have been like $8 at Office Depot!!). I also picked up some construction paper, a blank book for something I am going to do with Alyson and the 2nd grade Social Studies book that I am looking forward to starting with her. They had a great time and Alyson got right on their big computer thing and did some math games. We left and stopped at Burger King for about an hour because the girls saw that play area when were were at a light and I thought that would be fun for them to get some fun play time since it was raining.
Home now, Molly zonked out in teh car and is asleep-Alyson is watching Swan Lake for Quiet time and I am blogging. When Molly gets up, I have a craft I had planned to end our home school day....cotton ball snowman...I think they will both enjoy it.
I asked Alyson how she felt her day was going and she said it was good! Gave a thumbs up :)
All and all, I think it was a pretty successful day!
Angel :)
