August! Back to school!

We had a great back to school the 2nd week of August and got a good early start on things.

First day!! Our classroom looks a little different than most but it works for us! The kids have desks in their rooms, but they seem to prefer to work in the kitchen/dining room because that is where I am most of the time.

And no, they don't do school in their jammies, at least not most days!





We have already changed our schedule a bit! Have to find what works right? Anyway, when we first started I was trying to get up and work from about 3-7am and then be available to get the boys up, feed them breakfast and start school. But with that model I was just too tired when they needed me to be on target for teaching so that wasn't working. Especially because I have a household full of night owls who didn't like for mom to go to bed at 8pm! So now we start our day around 6:30 with breakfast, bible reading and showers and are ready to start classes by 7:30. They each get a weekly schedule with all the lessons they have to accomplish on the schedule for the whole week, and they get to choose the order they do them in. This seems to work well for us and they seem to like to hit it really hard on Monday and Tuesday and have lighter days on Thursday and Friday. We finish school around 2:00 or so and then they have an hour or so of free time and then they have to help mom with chores, cleaning and fixing dinner. After dinner we all clean up and then dad gets them ready for bed while I go work until my work is done. I usually get done around midnight or so.

Our time seems to fill up really quickly! I laugh at these folks who question me about whether or not we are worried about the socialization that the kids do or don't get...I really don't think socialization is going to be a problem for them! Let's just look ahead at next week's schedule! Friday Keenan has a friend coming over. Saturday they are going hiking with dad and some other kids. Sunday we have 2 meetings. Monday we only have school, all day! Tuesday we have a library meetup with some kids from their old school. Wednesday we have meeting. Thursday they have Lego Robotics club and they have the booster buddies meeting (Moms work on planning field trips and kids play). Friday morning we have a field trip to the Olympic Training Center and in the afternoon they have a middle school meetup at the Penny Arcade in Manitou. And that doesn't even include the 3 live class sessions that each of them will be attending next week!

I may find that we are more busy doing home schooling than we were with public school! But at least I know who they are socializing with and what they are doing!

So far they are both progressing really well with classes. Conner really zipped through the first 5 units of math since it was all review and now he is getting into some new stuff. The great thing about COVA is that he has that option. As long as he passes the assessments he can go on to the next lesson. Keenan is flying through Vocabulary, which I am sure is a surprise to everyone who knows him! Of course that would be HIS favorite class! Neither of them just love history but we are working on making that more interesting.

And I am developing a much more profound sense of AWE for those teachers in my elementary country school who taught more than one grade at a time! This is HARD! Keeping track of everything, covering all this material! It would certainly be much easier if we had them sharing ANY of their classes! But nothing overlaps this year!

Oh, and Conner had his birthday August 26. We had a friend over for the weekend and they made slime...a way too much fun science experiment! The made about 400 paper airplanes and then they went swimming all day Saturday. I made his cake, and it is obvious it is an amateur job but they liked the flavor and that is what matters!





PS....when you put a straw into the center of a ball of slime and blow air into it...it makes a sound that only boys can appreciate!