First Day of School

I still haven't attained my ultimate goal for our school room, but, nonetheless, start schooling we must.  I plan to add a school table and get rid of these individual desks so that we can all sit together.  I am going to keep one of the individual desks for Isaac's room because he often gets easily distracted during independent work and needs an isolated space.  

On our very first day of official homeschooling, Judah had his eye doctor appointment that we had waited weeks to get.  So we packed up some work, but mainly we just planned for a shortened day and got to work when we got back home.  Isaac stayed at home and got a head start on his independent work while the rest of the boys were with me.

We started with our Morning Time which, if you're not familiar with that, is just a combination of  reading aloud and memory work altogether.  Our Morning Time this year looks different than it has in most recent years because I am back to having younger kids in my "classroom."  We ring a bell to begin and start with the Pledge of Allegiance followed by quickly moving straight to the piano where Isaac plays the Tantum Ergo for us as we practice it in Latin.  Then we begin with Religion memory work, followed by the current religious story book, John Bosco.  Next is Timeline and History memory work and a reading from Story of the World Vol 4.  This is followed up by some part of our Shakespeare reading or memory work.  We are focusing on Twelfth Night this year and using both Charlotte Mason Shakespeare in 3 Steps and Ken Ludwig's How to Teach your Children Shakespeare book.   Finally comes either art appreciation/study or The Story Book of Science to finish up our time altogether.  

Drew and Judah have been working on addition facts and we play memory games together, followed by some readings from a formal Religion book and a formal Grammar book.  These two also have two pages of math workbook and two pages of handwriting, in addition to each of them reading aloud to me for 10-20 minutes.  It sounds like a lot for young guys, but most of it is fun learning or playing and listening so they don't mind it so much.

Judah wearing his sunglasses after his eyes were dilated on Day 1 of homeschooling

Isaac working on line art as I read aloud

The first day was a really good day and we are hoping for many more.  We have a lot of doctor/dental appointments going on right now, so it's going to be all about the flexibility for our Morning Time on those days, but we hope to get our independent work completed everyday minus field trips, holidays, and co-op days.