Motherhood: A blessed Journey: Week One is Finished! (As I wipe my brow in relief, whew!)

What a week! What a busy week! What a TERRIFIC week! We have officially finished our first week of school. We've been doing preschool in the past 2 years, but I consider Kindergarten more official. Its an actual substitute for the traditional school experience. I bought real curriculum (although he is VERY bored with it already and I am finding that I have to add much to it... guess we did preschool a bit too well!). Lily is beginning her first year of preschool. With Zech, we did 2 days a week at this age, with Lily she insists on sitting next to her brother through every day. She will soon be caught up I am sure. I like to push my kids as far as they allow. I don't stress them out, but I challenge them a tad bit beyond each day. When they conquer the task, they are so pleased with themselves! For instance, Although the curriculum at this point is strictly letter sounds, we are reading words that contain each letter. Zech is picking up on this at a rapid pace. When I went over the "it" words I threw in 'mitt' and 'knit'. he didn't skip a beat (although he did say mmmmiiiiiTTT TTT, making two separate t sounds). He now reads words with KN at the beginning without saying KaNit. I understand this isn't kindergarten work (the first week at least) but if I challenge him, he accepts and succeeds. Lily is right by his side soaking it all in as well!
I also take our schedule very seriously. Maybe its my personality, maybe its what seems to work best with our family, but we are pretty strict on school time. With the exception of Thursday mornings, we start at 8:45ish and go until we've finished the days work. I turn the phones off, the computer off (unless its activity time), the tv off and we press on toward that days goals. The kids are loving it. I am loving how easy this schedule went this first week. They seem to be having a lot of fun.
At this point, I am committed to homeschooling as long as it works. As long as we live as we are living now. However, with this economy, with the uncertainties in life if EVER anything comes up that would require that I need to work outside the home, I want my kids to be prepared to enter the public school system. (I OH SO PRAY this doesn't happen... but I want to be prepared). So I try to use the same techniques they would use. We do center time, we do morning routine, we do silent reading. I even make them raise their hands. ( I heard from a teacher that one of her biggest pet peaves of homeschool kids is when they enter the public school and think they can say whatever they want whenever they want, and they don't know how to sit still to do their work.) So we stay seated to do our work, we raise hands when you want to answer, or talk. They sit quietly while I read or teach and so forth. I get that in words it sounds so strict and unwelcomed... but my kids love that they are doing the same things in "school" as their friends who attend up the street. They don't realize all the great things they get to do in addition, and all the things they don't learn that mommy purposefully leaves out.( I will leave that for antoher post someday).
I love the routine, I love that my kids love to do "choice time" and choose a center to work in... which is really just a shelf on the bookshelf, not really a full fledged center! I love that we go from breakfast to lunch learning and growing and bonding!
I make their lunch every day! (I know this is a pain for most moms, and maybe it will become for me someday too) but I thought about the independence that comes with going to school, eating your lunch without mommy hovering over head. So I decided to make his lunch each day, allow him to eat it as he wishes. I do as any mom would do. At the end of the day when I clean out his lunch box, I go over with him what I expect when I pack his lunch. At first he was coming to me asking what he should eat first and so forth... now, he just eats it, then later puts in special requests for his lunch at night. Its just kinda fun!

Here are some pics to show what we've been doing... I am flexible, I may change things as needed, but after the first week, I am so very very pleased. (These pics are all out of the order I would like them to be... but I just don't have the patience to mess with this silly blog right now! hehe)

Silent reading time at the end of the school day.. my favorite part!

The kids lunches, and special school stuff for the first day of school. (I have so much fun doing this!)

Circle time

These are the special treats I made for the first day of school. Although they are fully aware that they are homeschooled, they are obsessed with school buses!

Here are our "Centers". Art/Writing, math manipulative, lacing cards, alphabet games, bingo, and on top there are about 20 file folder games. This is a BIG hit, and my kids beg for extra time every day!

One of the centers (Math). Zech and I played an adding game. Rolling the dice and adding using poker chips. Yes, we are an Assembly of God family... We don't use these for anything else ;)