Monday, August 24, 2009

First Day of School 2009-2010

Today was the first day of school for these two, just like AISD. It is true, we usually don't start until after Labor Day weekend. But every year I get to hear about their friends being off for a teacher work day or something like that. So I decided we would give it a try. We will be off when they are off and on when they are on. But that means no more "free Friday's" and no more "no book work the whole month of December" with only crafts and reading projects to do then. We usually spend December focusing on Christ's birth and all the things that go with that special holiday, like making gifts for others, serving others and just enjoying our family time when the rest of the world seems to be so wrapped up in commercialism. We will still have two weeks off in December so we will make the best of our time. We will still finish school the first week in May, like last year. I really liked being done with school before the book fair that weekend. It made looking for next years stuff so much more fun. Instead of having to go home from the book fair and having to work so hard for the next few weeks before summer, we were able to just enjoy our time and look forward to the next year.

Of course, we had to do the traditional "first day of school" pictures! I have done them for years and years, even though we homeschool. Why should we not when that is part of the fun? We get to look at them each year and see how much they have grown. These two have grown so much this year! I now have a 3rd grader and 5th grader.

I just love her smile! She makes me smile when I see it! She was really excited when she found the purple binder. We tried to find hot pink but it was a different type of binder. These are really neat, they have two sets of rings inside! So I got those so they would have similar binders. I have some great ideas on using the binders and keeping things more organized this year.

He wanted to take the picture with his backpack even though it is the same as last year. It has stayed in such good condition we didn't need to buy new ones. He has a cool red binder. He was trying not to smile too big in this. I think he thought he was too old to take this picture. But I am glad he did! He won't be this age ever again and "mom" needs the pictures so I can look back and remember!

This year we did some things differently to help them with their organizational skills and just to make it more fun. Also, so they could grow in their writing. We have many aspects of English. I am looking forward to see inghow creative they can be with their writing. We have three composition books each; story journal, daily journal and newspaper journal. I am sure the first two are pretty self explanatory. But the third one you might not know. Each week they will have their own Sunday paper (I buy more than one each week for the coupons). Each week they need to look through it and find an article that catches their attention, cut it out, and paste it in the journal. That way they get used to reading the paper and finding articles of interest. It will also help them learn how a paper is put together. By the second half of the school year I would like for them to be able to put their own "paper" together monthly. We will send it to family and friends. And possibly "publish" some of the articles on this blog.

We will be doing Grammar together. We will be memorizing the prepositions and playing fun games to help us remember them. Plus other fun grammar games. I have a writing book, The Write Stuff, that has some neat writing assignments in it that we will do throughout the year. They will also be required to write a REAL letter once a week and mail it. Not an e-mail, but a hand written letter. It seems to be a lost art these days. We are still using our Spelling Power for Spelling. They placed very well on the test, both 7th grade spelling levels! I was impressed!

The Bible verses we will learn this year are many, instead of one large one. They will have weekly verses to help them towards their goals in GA's and RA's at church. We will learn the verses from Ephesians on the Armour of God since last year we did the Beatitudes. They still have their daily devotion books plus we have our Discovery 4 Yourself studies we will be working on through the year.

I think we will have a great year!!! So far, so good!!! I am very happy with how things went today. They worked hard! I am trying to keep things fun so they will want to keep working hard.

That is our progress report for today. Thanks for stopping by.