Day 2 of Week 1

I was advised that it would be a good idea to blog every day this first week of our homeschooling adventure. That way I will have a record of it to look back on later in our journey and remember the beginning.   As we continue after this week, I will probably only blog once a week about our homeschooling. 

After 2 days of homeschooling, I feel tired but fulfilled.  I'm not sleeping at night (it's after midnight now and I'm up writing this) but I don't know if that's because of being nervous about having everything together or what.  It's hard to go to sleep at night.  This morning we got up later than I planned, but I couldn't help thinking that if it was a school morning last year it would have been so stressful and it wasn't at all.  So, I started school in my pajamas...worse things have happened! 

One thing I have planned for Tuesdays is "tea time".  Dh laughed a little when I told him about this ("You had a tea party with your boys?") but he really does get it.  Yes, I put a tablecloth on the table and took out our nice china and a few punch glasses to have blueberry muffins with the boys this morning.  As they ate, I read to them from A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young.  They really enjoyed it (mostly due to the blueberry muffins, I'm sure) and Ethan says he wants to try hot tea next time.  Maybe I need to hint to someone that I need a set for my birthday.

This afternoon we had our first science lesson.  The lesson was about why we organize things into categories.  Since my background is as a science teacher, it was interesting to get to plan the lesson for my own kids.  I also am accustomed to teaching 11 and 12 year olds, so 7 and 5 was a little different!  I took them to their bedroom and talked to them about how their things are (supposed to be) organized.  The action figures go in this box, the cars go in that box, the airplanes here, etc.  Then we went into the kitchen and talked about how the kitchen is organized and we also discussed how the food is organized in a grocery store.  We went to the library so the boys could pick out their free reading books for the week(also discussed how the books are organized in the library), and when we got back home I had them record a couple of sentences in their science journals about why we organize things into categories.  It took Isaac a while to come up with his sentences, but he finally was able to come up with a good answer.  We are using the book Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding by B. Nebel, and that is where a lot of the ideas for this lesson came from.

I asked the boys today what was different about homeschooling than going to school.  Their responses were:
-"We get to spend more time with Mommy."
-"We don't have to get up and go anywhere, because we're already here."
-"We don't have to go home at a certain time, because we're already home."
-"We don't have to ride a school bus."

Tonight I took Ethan on a date to see the movie Brave.  We really enjoyed having one-on-one time.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the week, and hoping I can get some rest in at some point!