First day of school!

1 day down, 179 to go (more or less).

Things went fairly well today. I had our schedule all laid out, but it's going to need some tweaking I can tell. History took way longer than I'd allotted, and science took less (though they were begging to do more science, but I held them off - leave them wanting more, I say!). A. did three times as much math as I was expecting ("One more page?" does a page "Can I do one more page?" does a page....) He even did a page in handwriting, which I wasn't expecting. I'd figured we'd alternate math and handwriting for him so he'd only be doing focused work for no more than 10-15 minutes/day (trust me - I've seen plenty of learning happen in the past 8 years that didn't require sitting down to a desk - 10 minutes is enough for my 4 year old). At any rate, I certainly wasn't forcing him into anything today, so that was cool.

N. dragged her feet on handwriting this morning. She and I have been having a lot of heart-to-heart talks recently about what my goals are for her, and what her goals are, and whether we're on the same track or not. We seem to be on the same page - she wants to read better, and be able to write more/faster - but disagree about how to get those results. I think she'd like the abilities to magically appear. Last I checked, that's not likely to happen. If you want to become a better writer, you're going to have to sitdown and write once in a while. Same goes for reading. I'm not into torture - I think that 15 minutes of handwriting (OMG - can I tell you that it took her that long to do two pages in HWT today???? Thank goodness two pages is all I have planned for her each day for the next three months), and roughly that amount of daily reading aloud is not unreasonable. I almost broke out the "If you won't do this work at home, than I have to send you away to school" (ie. public school), but I've kind of promised myself I wouldn't use those tactics this year, and definitely not on the first day. Nothing a few deep breaths on my part couldn't take care of, LOL!

The kids LOVED working on History Pockets today! Very glad I found those. They also totally loved doing Lentil Science. Today was more of an introduction to the materials, and making observations, but they of course took it further and started creating their own experiments. That's pretty much what I was hoping would happen with the science this year. N. has been so eager to have her pail filled with knowledge, where science is concerned - which is fine, not awful. I'll still read to her and give her the facts she's after, but I really wanted to find something that would get her wheels turning on their own a little more - light the fire, so to speak. We'll see if this does the trick.

Timing-wise, the day went something like this...
9am - Natalie does two pages of Handwriting Without Tears (Andrew did one page)
9:15 - History (SOTW, Encyclopedia of World History, narration, History Pockets)
10:20 - short break
10:40 - Science (TOPS, job card A/1)
11:00 - lunch/break
12:15 - calendar/math (computer game and workbook)/read-aloud (narration)
1:10 - Done! (though Natalie will need to read to me this afternoon)

I think I'm going to swap history and science. History required too much sitting and listening after N. had just struggled with handwriting. I think it would have gone better if they could move into science after that, and then put history on it's own with a big break afterwards. Total time to get all that covered: 2 hours, 35 minutes. Shhhh.... don't tell! :P