The first week of school!

I have been homeschooling my kids longer than I've known until this week. We started homeschooling on Monday. We decided to start now and do kind of a year round type of school, taking breaks when needed (or wanted) and just going at the pace of the girls. So far so good. On the first day when I told them that class was over for the day (9AM- 12 Noon) they didn't like that idea and wanted more stuff to do. I was a little tired myself so I told them they'd have to wait until tomorrow. It's been a lot of fun. Daily I have been switching things around bit by bit to try and figure out what's going to work best for us so I'll be trying to post every once in a while to blog my changes. I'm mainly doing this so family back home can see what we are doing and for my future references for next year. (and maybe years to come.) Here's a little bit about what we did this week. (Not everything is included here, just highlights or like today a lot of pictures of books because I didn't have my camera out much. I will do better next week, if we have it next week because of the 4th.) Anyways........

These pictures are very out of order but they'll have to do. We discussed Vikings on Friday (today). We came across this book which has some of the characters from "How to Train Your Dragon" in it so the girls thought that was pretty awesome!
I read this book out loud to the girls as they colored Leif Ericsson ships.

At the begininning of the week we studied the Pledge of Allegiance and what all the words mean and who wrote it and how it's changed over the years. Some things I didn't know like "under God" was added in 1954. Anyways, we got this book from the library and Alyssa read it at the library and her mouth dropped open. She had just learned about this and all the information and more was in this book. She was so excited! My 8 year old LOVES to read and learn knew information!!

This is the art curriculum that comes with Adventures in My Father's World. I'm loving it. We bought a copy for each of the girls and I have been making copies for myself to do it along with the girls since I'm not very good at art this might teach me a few things as well!

This was the first page we did in art. Left to right is Alyssa, Samara, and Natalie.

The 2nd page we did. Left to right is the same, Alyssa, Samara, and Natalie

We are using Math U See. Natalie-Primer, Samara-Alpha, and Alyssa-Beta.

Samara and Natalie are using Explode the Code for Phonics.

Their centers baskets. Each day they have something in here they can do while Mama's busy helping another kiddo with their work.

We will be working on a U.S. folder since we are studying the U.S. this year. We did the first four pages this week and this is the first one.

We learned about where we live in America and what NSEW is and the oceans and what countries border us from the N and S.

This is upside down and Natalie's. She colored the words Pacific and Atlantic Oceans instead of the whole ocean. Oh well, she is only 3.

Syssa's Leif Ericsson summary.

Natalie has been reading Bob Books. I know you say "she's only 3!!!" I say "I know!!! holy cow!" I do not push her to read she simply sees her sisters read and says that she needs to do that too!

This is the Spelling curriculum we're using.

Natalie is using this to learn to read. I love this book!!

This is their chore chart checklist. Some of their chores change, some of them don't.

The next few pictures are check-off sheets for me and the girls to see what they did on what days and to make sure they do everything they need to every day.

This is our daily schedule to give you a little bit of what our day looks like just click on the picture above and check it out.

Hope you enjoyed this post. I'm loving being my kids mother and teacher. They refer to their sisters as their classmates during school time. It's really cute!