In the Beginning

This is going to be our first year homeschooling and I am hoping to document the trials and triumphs along the way!  :)  Our official first day will be August 13, but we have already begun easing into our schedule.

 Two weeks ago we began with working our new chore chart(more about that later!), that went really well.   So then last week we started using our school schedule (more about that later as well!) and that went so well that we actually began doing a little work.  So this week we decided to go ahead and dive into our books, we are doing a little of something everyday.  Monday we began with doing a little phonics, and then we worked on our Olympic Lap book study.  Tuesday we added in some Language, Math and then continued the Olympic Lap book study.  Today we did Math, History and Spelling.  My goal is to figure out exactly how long each subject is going to take, and then work out a new schedule from that.  I realized from day 1 that my time frame and what I thought Big E could accomplish was just not realistic.  So I had to scale back my expectations a little, which is fine, I was expecting that changes would need to be made.

Our curriculum for this year consists of the Christian Liberty Press 2nd grade Curriculum for Big E.  That will entail:  Math, Phonics, Language, History, Science, Spelling, Reading and Bible.  With this being our first year we didn't really know where to start, so we chose a boxed, ready to go curriculum set.

Our curriculum for Little N who is 4 years old, I originally bought ABC Jesus Loves Me, but recently after weeks of struggling to put it all together, realized that was not a wise decision on my part.  So I think we will be ditching that and going with our gut instincts of just doing some Kumon workbooks and reading with him.  I tried so figure out how I could fit everything that the ABC Jesus Loves Me had into my day, it just was not working!!  So in order to save my sanity, I chose not to stick with it.  So we will be focusing on fine motor skills (cutting, pasting, tracing, writing), Letter and Sound recognition, Shapes, Colors, Counting, and then he will join us for some of the Science activities as well.   We are also doing the Bible Curriculum as a family so he will join in that as well.

For Baby Z, who is 1 year old (almost!), he will join for some crafts and field trips.  But mostly for him I will be just trying to keep him occupied and engaged in quiet activities.

So that is the beginning summary of our year, later I will be posting our chore list, our daily schedule and then a little bit more about what I hope to accomplish this year.