first week of school.
We started kindergarten and 4K on Monday!
Our Classical Conversations campus meets on Monday mornings, and I love starting the week this way. I think it’s going to be motivating for both the kids and for me. I’ll go into more detail later about what we do at Classical Conversations, but our first day was wonderful. Truly wonderful.
Everybody was so very friendly and kind to us, the kids loved their teachers, and I left feeling for the first time like maybe I can actually do this homeschooling thing.
Then we had our first day of “at-home” homeschooling on Tuesday. Thanks to lots of good ideas I got at Classical Conversations and from friends, I felt really organized. I’d post photos of our homeschooling room, but it’s not finished. Because, well, life happened. And our toilet broke. So guess what got first priority?
But the good news is, you don’t need a blog-worthy homeschooling room to homeschool. We have a table and some chairs, bookshelves, and the little chalk board I bought is currently sitting on the futon.
We had a very sweet first day — the kids absolutely loved it, and so did I.
And then this morning after breakfast I told them it was “school time” instead of “play lego time,” and they were like, “Wait, we have to do school every day!?!”
So there were a few attitude moments, but the Lord gave me patience. Our family has so not-been-in-a-routine for awhile that it may take awhile to sink in that this is what we do now, every single week day. But it’s going to be good for all of us.
I’ll do a post soon of our schedule and curriculum for the year because, well, I think it’s fun.
But for now, here’s the really fun news: Judah is reading! I can’t tell you how much more exciting that makes our day. I feel like he can reach out and touch his dream of sitting with an Avengers comic book all by himself, so he’s been motivated to work on reading and writing thus far and asks great questions.
I wish I could tell you I taught him to read, but I didn’t. He just learned somehow, David was the first to start reading the BOB books with him a few weeks ago. So now we’re working through a reading text book during our school day and it’s more fun than I can describe.
Right now, on Wednesday afternoon, I feel very blessed by this chance to do school with my children. I’m excited to see what our year holds.
4 Comments
Lauren
This post encourages me! I’m going to start doing a bit of school with the girls this year, in an attempt to see if homeschooling will work for us. I look forward to reading about your schedule and curriculum for this year; I’ll be ordering our books over the next couple of weeks. (We aren’t starting until end of Sept).
jgentino
Glad you feel encouraged! You are brave for starting out with a new baby in the family! The best thing that homeschool parents have said to me over and over is: “You can do this!”
Linda Gentino
What are the BOB books? Also, sorry about the toilet. Ah the joys of being a home owner 🙂
jgentino
Hi Mom! The Bob books are a series for beginning readers that Judah has been loving: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bob+books+collection&sprefix=bob+books%2Cstripbooks%2C180