First Day Of School

We did it - the first day of school - and we survived.

I really need to tweak the system I tried today - the routine is definitely in need of adjustment.  But, in hindsight, I mean, every routine needs some adjustment.  Anyway, here's what we did today:

Woke up and started the day by getting ready immediately.  We were dressed and fed and beds stripped and little girl hair brushed and everything by 8am.  This seems early, but we didn't wake up any earlier than we usually do, we just got our act together a bit better.  I liked this part and how it set the tone for the day, but looking back I think we need to have clothes laid out the night before to avoid issues, and also I need to plan a bigger breakfast to see everyone through the morning.

We started school with a circle time which is an idea I really like but needed to plan out better.  We prayed for our school day, and then did some exercises and songs.  Again, really like the idea but need to implement it better.

Then we moved on to read-aloud time.  I had a specific book I was going to read to them but I thought they could choose some stories to have me read aloud first.  Not the best idea, maybe, since they were pretty tired of sitting by the end of it.  So tomorrow we'll just read the book I choose and maybe try a second story time later in the day if I can handle it.

We read our book, and then I asked the boy to tell me aloud what the story had been about - he did really well with this!  I need to read more about doing narration with small children but I was impressed.

Then we moved on to our activity - since the book we read was Blueberries for Sal I made letter circles and hid them around the house to find.  Then we laid all the letters of the alphabet out in order and again I was really impressed by how well this was done.

Finally we made blueberry muffins for our snack.  Sigh.  Cooking with small children.  Anyway.

So that was our first day of school.  It was about 2 hours long, which is more than I planned for but the game and muffins went on much longer than I thought.