There are several things that were must-haves for me, and several things that were kind of important but not too important. Here's what our day looked like:
1) Math. Yes, math. No we didn't start with devotion, we started with a math lesson on fractions and baked some banana bread. I got out the one cup measure and all the smaller ones and the 1 T/1t measure and all the smaller ones and then divided the recipe in half so there were harder fractions to work with (and each kid got more turns!! wheee!!!) and then we proved each fraction before measuring the actual ingredient.
"Logan, remember that a fraction is part of a whole. If this says 1/8th of a teaspoon, what is the part?"
"One"
"Good! And what is the whole?"
"Eight"
"Awesome! So how many of these 1/8 teaspoons would I need to fill one teaspoon?"
"Three!"
"Um, okay, let's try that! Was 3 right?"
"No....how about 22?"
Riley did much better :) Anyhow, in the end the banana bread got all its ingredients successfully added and Savannah did an awesome job mashing bananas with a fork (and/or her fingers, a wooden spoon, and a toy dinosaur. He was hungry.) While the banana bread was in the oven...
2) Nature study. This was a non-negotiable for me. I hate that our kids spend almost no time outside and I wanted to start our day each day with a walk or hike. Today we drove (we had bread in the oven) to a local trail and got in a good 40 minute hike before my buzzer went off. I realize that I need a field guide for Virginia. I don't want to be attached to my cell phone all day, I want to use some actual books, and there are just too many plants that I don't recognize. A la:
(Taken from here) What the heck tiny little NEON mushrooms? I've googled you for like an hour and nobody knows what you are!! Seriously it looks like someone spray painted these!
We also had 2 baby deer jump in front of us, found a pond, some ferns, blackberries, a bunny, a chipmunk, another bunny, and a bonus turtle shell which was brought home in the bag intended for any (ahem) doggy incidents and subsequently bleached so it could be thoroughly inspected without mommy creeping out about germs.
3) After we got home, we started on language arts. Riley can do his own work in his reading comprehension book and actually, really loved the autonomy. While I worked with Logan on "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" (dig the title!), Riley just got different books and worksheets and did them. He then presented them proudly to me and had done a great job. He only stopped my work with Logan once to ask about directions for a rather asinine worksheet. It was fair, it really was a dumb one. After our banana bread cooled...
4) We did devotion with Bob and Larry. Because they rock. Surprisingly (for those of you who know me which is, I assume, all 2 of you that actually read this sucker) religion was not one of my reasons for wanting to homeschool. Jesus being welcome is a total bonus, but it was not my main motivation, and with a particularly Jew-esque husband, I am trying to strike a careful balance. Jesus is already pretty big in our house (Jesus Music, Jesus questions, Jesus stories) so I don't want to tilt the balance to so religious that Austin thinks we're all drinking the KoolAid and pulls the plug on the whole endeavor. I like that when my kids ask me where the world came from I can tell them about God making the world and that there are many theories about the specifics, all of which I can detail. That's about it. I think I'd like to work in more prayer and Christian Ed, but not yet because we already do a lot informally.
5) After breakfast Riley started his work on a project while Logan did some self-guided work on shapes and colors. He did a great job. Riley's project is to get ready for our CC cycle 3. We're sending letters (yay writing practice!) to family members all over the country (yay geography!) and asking them to mail us a postcard. Then we're going to get an easy reader about each state we get a response from (yay reading!) and put together a book about the states (yay combination of skillz!) including the postcard, the capital, and a fun fact.
6) I'm giving my kids fake money for correctly completed work the first time, which they can turn in for higher denominations of money when they have it (i.e. 5 pennies can be traded in for a nickle). I am providing healthy snacks. If they want different snacks (i.e. nutella for their provided berries or goldfish crackers) they can "buy" them for a set price. I thought it would help teach them money and budgeting. It's working like a charm so far and it's also made them quadruple check their work. I should probably focus more on being self-motivated, but this is working nicely for today and Logan learned all his coins from Riley in one lovely lesson I didn't even teach :)
7) We made a trip to the library to pick up reinforcement books and get Logan a library card, which now come on key tags!! GENIUS!! He's very excited to have a library card!
**I Just realized I skipped history, which we also did from What your First Grader Needs to Know but I'm not re-numbering. We read about the ancient civilizations of the Americas- the Inca, Maya and Aztecs. The kids were way more into it than I had materials for.
8) Returning home we did lunch and then some reading. I was very excited to find a book of "Great Jewish Heroes" which I believe was Sid's from back in the day. I love the rabbinic tradition stories on the great heroes of the Bible, so we're going to do both the Bible story itself and the stories from this book (i.e. Abraham and the idols). I love the explanation that Abraham figured out their was a God he couldn't see just by using his brain. Riley got it. Logan wanted to talk about Abraham Lincoln. I told him we'd read about him, too.
9) We're also reading fables and fairy tales (love me some cultural literacy!) Today we did the Little Red Hen. The kids made masks (because why not?) of the animals and then "acted" out their parts while I read the story. Seven Times. Yes, it was THAT much fun. Savannah oinked very enthusiastically all SEVEN. Yay!
10) Then we took our show on the road to Grandma's and went swimming.
Not bad for a first day! I realized several things-
1) Need a field guide
2) Need more history supplements. The kids wanted to read way more about the Inca, Maya and Aztecs and I hadn't realized how popular they'd be. We used our dictionary, the internet, and a few pictures from one of my religious texts, but they were still really interested in more.
3) I was supposed to have comparative religion (Riley's request) but my text was at my mom's.
The above took us from 7am to 4:30pm (When we left for my mom's). Holy stuff! But we had fun and it was a great day and I know what I need to procure for the future.
Also, a friend of a friend recommended "A Thomas Jefferson Education" and it's awesome. And, Austin came with me to a CC information session which was great since he was able to understand more about the format and he decided we should order our materials now- which is great :)
