Our First Day of School!

We officially started our homeschooling journey today! We’ve been doing “school” off and on for a year or two but now that G is a kindergartener there’s no option of doing it of and on anymore! The day went great. I really wanted to make it special and fun since G is not always interested in school activities (especially learning to read and write). Here are some of the things we did and I owe most of the ideas to Pinterest. I don’t have the energy or quiet to think up these clever ideas!

We started the morning with donuts and sang “Happy first day of school!”

We took first day pictures

P wanted to join the fun but it’s easier without her so I sent her to bed.

While I put P to bed the boys started putting stickers on their boxes that we’ll keep their special papers/projects in.

 

G was more interested in the magnetic thumb tacks that I bought and played with them while R finished his stickers.

We read The Little Engine That Could and talked about Philippians 4:13 and how they can do all things through Christ (it was a perfect first day activity because both boys use the phrase “I can’t” pretty regularly).

They wanted a snack so we worked on sorting, counting, and graphing s’mores goldfish crackers.

This morning I found this great idea- we used a can to paint circles onto a piece of paper that has Philippians 4:13 on it- “I CAN do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Tomorrow we’ll fill in some areas that they will need God to help them with this year.

While I cleaned up the paint they heard P waking up so they played in her crib with her. The lights were actually off and they were shining their flashlights around the room.

We gave P some goldfish and started working on the secret message. Graham said this was his favorite part of the day. I wrote “I can do all things” on white cardstock with a white crayon. They painted over it with watercolors and the phrase appears. We’ll turn them into necklaces tomorrow so when they say “I can’t” we can put it on and persevere through the work!

We started our 7 Days of Creation Unit by reading about what God made on day 1 (light). We played a form of I spy using flashlights, talked about light traveling in a straight line, seeing pictures of light going through a prism, and using paint and a straw to put bursts of light on the first page of the creation book they’ll make.

While we did this P read her own books!

We began working on their calendar notebooks. These will be done first thing most likely (I could tell they were getting tired by this point in the morning). We worked on some of the pages in July so it wasn’t all new. We started with our big calendar which has an insect theme this month. As we identify the date, there will also be picture of an insect and I’ll share a few facts about it with them. They’re both into insects so they were excited about this! After that we moved onto the calendar notebooks. The boys will use them to keep track of their own calendar, practice their days of the week, write/identify numbers, chart the weather, count our school days, and identify the states as we go through the alphabet. I used a variety of sources to put them together on their differing levels and abilities. G does not like to write so he isn’t thrilled about it, but once he gets the hang of it it should work better. R might not be ready for it yet so we’ll see how he does in the days to come.

The had a muffin tin snack lunch while I began reading The Enormous Crocodile to them.

They ended the day with awards that say “We all agree G/R had a super first day of P/K. They liked these too and asked if the next one could be Transformers. I informed G that awards like this won’t be given out everyday. He suggested twice a week. We’ll see