First Grade, Week One

Well, it's been 3 days since we started school, so I thought I would give y'all an update on how things were going.

We began bright and "early" Monday morning at 9:00.  I woke Ty up about 8:00.  He always starts his day with breakfast and a cartoon, so I wanted to give him time for that.  He didn't complain about having to get up, but he immediately fell back to sleep as soon as he got to the couch :)

Our first subject of the day is Phonics.  So far we've just been reviewing.  We've done all the short vowels sounds, and Thursday we will begin reviewing the consonants.  All this review has proven pretty boring for both me and Ty, but I know it's helping him get back into the swing of things.

Next on the schedule is Reading.  The aBeka curriculum doesn't have any lessons scheduled for reading during the first week of school.  So instead of just skipping this I've pulled out some of Ty's Kindergarten readers to get him some extra practice.

After reading we try to get in some seatwork.  Again, aBeka doesn't have any seatwork scheduled for the first week, so I've pulled out some extra Kindergarten worksheets for Ty to do.  I'm just trying to get him used to the idea of "seatwork" at this point, and I must say that so far, Ty has surprised me.  It's amazing, but he has actually sat and done his work in a reasonable amount of time.  Whooopeee!!!

After a short break, we tackle our writing.  This year I am teaching Ty cursive.  The aBeka program actually encourages parents to start this in Kindergarten, but I didn't use aBeka last year.  Ty's been really excited about learning to write in "cursip" as he calls it, and he has been doing very well.  So far he's learned to write lower case e, i, and u.

Here's a picture of Ty doing some writing practice tonight.  He wanted to know who was gonna see this picture.  He was proud of the way he was sitting up straight and holding his pen and paper.

The last subject we cover before lunch is arithmetic.  I think that out of all the subjects this is Ty's strongest.  We're just reviewing this week, so he's been breezing through the material.  I mean, how much time can you spend counting to ten?

After lunch we have another slot scheduled for Reading, and after that is Activity time.  Later in the year we'll be working on geography, health, or science three days a week.  Two days a week are reserved for music and art.  Until we begin our social studies I'm supposed to read Ty a story 3 days a week.  Today I read Ty some poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.  He loved them!  Tomorrow is supposed to be music day.  To be honest, I'm not really sure how to approach this yet.  Ty's not really excited about music time, and neither am I for that matter.  But Ty does like classical music.  Weird, I know.  Maybe I can find some way to incorporate this into his music time.

I really expect Activity time to be Ty's favorite part of the day.  When our curriculum arrived several weeks ago, he got so excited flipping through his science and geography books.  He wanted to stop immediately and do some of the experiments.  Ty seems to have inherited my love of arts and crafts, so he is reeeeeeeally looking forward to Art day.  I think I'm going to save this for Fridays, you know, sort of bribe him with it the rest of week ;)

Our last subject of the day is Poetry.  The first poem Ty has to memorize this year is "The Elephant."  Well........he's memorized it.  Already.  He's learned the motions to it and everything.  I guess you could say that he has a memory like, well, an elephant.

And what is Lucy doing this whole time?  Well, part of the time she's asleep.  That's the easy part.

The rest of the time she's making like a goat...CLIMBING.  On anything she can get her leg up on.  Ty didn't do this.  We've had to totally remove the coffee table from the living room because we couldn't keep her off of it.  She doesn't seem to mind though.  Now she just scales up the couch, chairs, end table, stools, boxes...you name it.   See for yourself.

When she makes it to the top she is so proud of herself.  You've never seen such a big grin.  Then she gives herself a round of applause.

Well that's pretty much it for our day.  Oh yeah, Ty has homework.  Imagine that.  Homework.  For a homeschooler!  It's Reading.  No big deal.  He's just supposed to read a couple of pages to his Daddy every night.  Kind of hard to do on nights when Daddy closes Fox's.  So tonight he just read to me again.

So there you have it.  A day in the life of our little homeschool.  Nothing extraordinary really.  But it is pretty special.  Pretty special that Ty gets to spend those important hours at home with Mama (& Lucy.)  I know what he's learning.  I know what he's hearing.  I know what he's seeing.  I know what he's doing.  Some folks may think that I know too much.  Maybe they think that he's gonna be "weird."  Maybe they think that he needs to get out.  Maybe they think that I need to let go.

Well, you know what I have to say to people who think that?

Phooey!