Fabulous First Week

The kids have been in bed for nearly three hours and I'm totally exhausted right now.  I really should have been asleep long ago.  Yet, I'm feeling so happy over our week that I just couldn't wait to finish blogging about it.  This has been a wonderful week!  There is seriously nothing better than having school with these awesome kids.  It seems like it should add difficulties into our family life, but it really makes things easier!  Woohoo!  This is when I really berate myself for letting kidschool drop during the summer.  Why oh why do I do that?!!

 

Anyway, I've been enjoying our week so much that I've continued to take pictures (gasp!), and I intend to have this whole week documented.  No worries; I won't be documenting every day this school year.  That would be rather monotonous!

 

Wednesday didn't go as planned, so I might say it was our negative day this week, although it really wasn't a bad day.  My sleep was interrupted so much between two children the night before that I never really woke up that day.  I seriously didn't feel alert for even five minutes that day.  Plus Jim took a long lunch break to run a very important errand with me and that ate up our school time.  The one thing we did that was part of the 'plan' was family devotional.  Amazingly I took a picture, though I can't remember why.  I think Annie chose to read us a chapter our of Job here; for some reason she really likes to read out of the book of Job.  :)

The morning didn't come together like I'd hoped, so by the time we'd finished family devotional it was time to run our errand.  Then when we were home again it was late afternoon and I couldn't see straight.  The kids ended up just having personal reading time during naps that day.  So it wasn't the best day, but it wasn't bad either.  That's how life goes sometimes.

Yesterday and today were magic, though.  Yesterday we got things going at a reasonable time.  We had a positive devotional and then moved into math.  They did their daily review and then we played BINGO to reinforce the new concept we were learning.

After math we wrote penpal letters.

Alex has been relishing his school time with me this week.  He and I did a hand-over-hand letter this day.  He thought that was the neatest thing ever!  I'm sitting down with him during math review time to color or 'work' in his books and he just can't get enough.  His behavior has improved tenfold this week as a result.  Yay!

We then had lunch and painted our volcano.  I love how Alex wanted to wear his chef's hat for painting.

The last official part of kidschool was real aloud time.  Then we did some family work and moved into quiet time.  Annie and Logan have been totally absorbed in their books during quiet time, and Alex has been taking his nap again.  It's been very refreshing and re-charging for me!

Today was almost identical to yesterday.  We had devotional, math review, math lesson, penpal letters again (these aren't usually an every day thing), and erupted our volcano.

We read aloud, did some family work, and by quiet time I was feeling incredibly happy.  The peace and harmony that I was looking forward to with the start of kidschool had engulfed me.  I can't really describe it, but it is the best feeling in the world.  I was actually very tired today because Abby didn't sleep well last night, but I was too happy to take a nap (I didn't know that was possible!).  These days that I've described here sound very plain and full of work, but they bring an incredible amount of happiness to our family.  I am so incredibly grateful for the privilege of teaching my children every day and watching them learn and grow!

I was pretty much giddy with joy by quiet time and then I had a double bonus.  First, Jim arrived home very early from work.  Then while he took advantage of the opportunity for a nap (while snuggling with Logan who was excited Daddy was home), I realized I had an opportunity for some one on one time with Annie.  We had an impromptu date and went for a walk.  It was wonderful! 

When we arrived home again, I was in such a good mood that I made chocolate chip pancakes for dinner as a treat for everyone (this was a first in our family and they are begging for it again).  After dinner the kids redeemed their beans in our school store.  That was pretty exciting for them since they'd worked hard all week to earn them. 

  Logan 'bought' a family movie night, so we watched "Up" this evening.  ("I can smell you!"  I think Dug is my favorite cartoon character.)

Alex 'bought' two pieces of candy.

Annie 'bought' an extra bedtime story and two pieces of candy.

The other part that went so well the last half of the week was this sweet baby.  We worked things around her nap schedule so nicely that I was free to work with the other kids while she was asleep and I could also give her attention while she was awake.

Hooray for the first week of school!  I'm excited for next week!