First Week of School

We are on our second week of school now  We started out pretty good!  Jade is actually doing her work, with minimal fussing from me.  She's excited to get smiley faces which will earn 30 min of game play of their choice.

James is doing pretty well with school, although he's not happy with having to review things because "I already know that"!  Now that we're getting back into the swing of things though, I can definitely see which are their favorite subjects.

This year when coming up with the schedule for the school day I made sure to break up likes and dislikes, taking both Jade and James into consideration, plus making sure there is enough stagger in the day that I can work one on one with Jade and Steven during the day.

So we're doing Bible first, starting the day off with something the kids enjoy.  All three of the older kids have to participate in that, then we move on to phonics.  Only James and Jade participate, Steven is allowed to go play for about an hour or so.  I give Jade her phonics paper to start with, and explain it to her, making sure she understands before moving on to James's lesson.  Jade, while doing her paper usually pays attention to James's lesson too (which is good since it's 1st grade reviewing still).

After phonics we have morning reading.  I have James read first, to give Jade more time to finish her phonics paper and start on her writing paper.  Then when James is done he finds his poem while Jade does her out loud reading.  Then Jade starts her writing paper while James reads his poem.

Then I give and explain the writing paper for James, and they both work on those, and about that time I put Willow down for her nap.

Once they are done with their writing papers we move on to signing.  We either watch the DVD, listen to the song (signing mandatory) or we go over all the signs covered in the lesson (which lasts 2 weeks).  All three children have to participate in the signing.

We then do the afternoon reading, this time Jade first, then James.

After signing we have seatwork time for James.  I explain all of his individual work to him and then let him get to it.  I then give Steven his two papers for the day, and we go over them, once he's working on his papers (coloring/tracing) I move on to Jade.  I go over the work she's already done and let her know what needs to be improved on and go over anything she may be having trouble with.  I give her her one page of seatwork and her Bible Friends coloring page to do.

About that time it's time to make lunch so while they are finishing up their seatwork I make lunch. Steven is then done completely for the day.

We break for lunch then, and when we come back we have science, which right now is reading out of  a book we got at Barnes & Noble called "The Solar System". Then I read Jade's science book. After science we move on to arithmetic.  I explain Jade's paper to her and she starts that while I do James's lesson.

After science James and Jade have to do 15 min of silent reading of a book of their choice.  They are then done with school.

We usually start about 9ish and we finish somewhere between 2-2:30pm with an hour break around 12-1pm for lunch.  Everything is not incorporated yet, we still have tests to factor in, and spelling lists, which will come in next week, and then at the 6 week mark James starts the abeka science.  Until then we'll use the solar system book to read from.

I have high hopes for this school year!