Today has been awesome! The schedule I made worked really well for us and the girls did amazingly well!! Alaina told me that she didn't know school was going to be so fun!! I have to admit I was a little worried they wouldn't adjust to a strict schedule well or they would butt heads with me because they didn't want to take instruction (especially my Taryn) but it was the complete opposite. They were begging me for more!
Not too long ago, Alaina saw a picture of one of her friends with a sign for her first day of the school year and of course she had to have one too. She was so excited to color in her sign and pose for the camera. Here she is on her very first day of kindergarten.
The day wouldn't be complete without Taryn wanting to do everything her sister does so here is her picture.
I can't wait to see what tomorrow will hold. I am so proud of my girls!
I'm so excited! Alaina's books came today!! I already got the workbooks I'll be using with Taryn for preschool so we're all set. I was planning on starting school Wednesday but now I'm thinking Monday! I can't wait to get started. The girls may think differently since this will be their first school experience but they were as excited about the books as I was. Alaina immediately asked to look through her books and of course that meant that Taryn needed me to pull hers out so she could go through them. I think that's a good sign for the year to come.
I'm really hoping to make this as fun for them as possible. I've already come up with a schedule for the school days. It will probably have to be tweaked a little since we're new to this but for right now it looks good. I've seen talk of work boxes and I want to do them next year since we'll have more books but for this year I'm using binders. I guess it's kind of the same thing. It will let them know where they are in their school day so they can keep track.
Alaina's so eager to learn! She wanted to start today but I need time to go through the books and get my lesson plans in order. It is going to be so much fun teaching her! Taryn is another story all together. She is very, very smart but not quite as eager to take direction so I'm hoping the preschool we're doing will get her more adjusted to the idea. Wish us luck!
As part of my plan to get organized I have decided to make a list of daily chores as well as extra chores to do each day. I am very hopeful that this will help eliminate the days where the bed is so covered in laundry that needs to be folded that it can't be slept in. I will post my list once it's done and let you know how it's going but for now it remains a work in progress.
Since I don't yet have a system in place, I spent most of the morning folding clothes from a pile very similar to the one I have just described. I felt very accomplished because I was almost finished but my Taryn decided it wasn't meant to be. She thought it would be fun to take the clothes I had folded and throw them around the room while I got lunch ready. I came back into the bedroom to find complete chaos instead of the neat piles that had been there just a few minutes before. Now I get to fold all the laundry (again). Yay!
No wonder it takes forever to get anything done around here!
It doesn't sound like it would be incredibly difficult but it has been far more challenging than I had imagined. The day started off with my thinking I would spend a few minutes filling out my letter of intent to send in for Alaina's schooling this year only to realize the curriculum portion I needed to send in with said letter wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. So, two hours later I had finally completed it and was ready to put it in the envelope. What envelope? I have no idea. The only envelopes I was able to find were the check sized ones so I had to go through every bill I had in order to find an envelope without any writing on it that could be used to mail the letter in. I did finally find one and so the crisis was averted.
I then began coming up with a daily schedule that will be used throughout the year. I have never been known for having a schedule but I feel that it's very important to have one since we're homeschooling. Once I got that ready I realized that the whole day had passed me by and I hadn't decided our 180 school days yet so I cheated and printed out a copy of the local county's school calendar and will be using the same days it does.
Tomorrow I will begin making lesson plans. The fun is only just beginning!
