Weekly Report, Week 1

Our first week went great, but boy am I tired. Everything went so smoothly and I am so surprised/pleased. Last year I was not very disciplined on what time the kids woke up at and what time school started. My goal for this year was to change that. Breakfast is at 7am and school starts at 8am. The Girl, my late riser, has done amazing with getting up early this week. She is up at 6:20am every morning. How have I accomplished this? Easy-Television. We don't watch very much television in our home, especially during the school year, so I made a deal with the kids that they could watch 30 mins. of television in the morning before breakfast and that seems to have worked. Monday and Tuesday I started with one routine for school and learned that it wouldn't work for our family so on Wednesday we began a different routine that I think will work much better for us. Having Boy#2, who is only 2, makes for a complicated school day. My desire was to sit down with The Girl and Boy #1 and just work with them on the same school subjects at the same time and get our school day done quickly while Boy #2 played by himself or had Barney Time. This just didn't work. Boy #1 can not sit still or concentrate for long periods of time...Why, oh why are boys just so darn different than girls! Last year I had read Managers of Their Homes by Steve and Teri Maxwell, and one of the ideas I really liked in it is that children can really only play well with one another, without arguing for around 30 minutes. They also recommend that siblings should have a dedicated one on one play time with each other without any other siblings. We had incorporated this for our school time last year and it worked great, so this is what we began again for this school year. Another idea I incorporated into our school routine last year is the concept of tutoring my children, not "teaching" my children. Here's how the last two concepts work in our daily school routine: We come together as a family for our bible time first, after bible time Boy #1 goes upstairs with Boy #2 for the private boys play time. Thats when I sit down with The Girl and we go over her days school work and I explain anything that is new and do her Grammer lesson with her. After her 30 mins. of tutoring are up we switch. The Girl goes upstairs and has her 30 mins. of private playtime with Boy #2 while I tutor Boy #1. After Boy #1's tutoring time we all go outside for "recess". After recess, Boy #1 and The Girl do their desk work while I play/teach Boy #2 and or he gets to have Barney Time (Nice way of saying watch a Barney Video.) After the desk work is finished we have lunch. Boy #2 goes down for his nap and we do our read alouds, science, and history.

The above is the greatest thing I have bought for school this year, best $15 spent. Scratch and Sniff stickers for school work. They are coveted, getting one to put your penmanship books is the best thing in the world...and if you don't get one for your school work that day, the world will end. I never thought the stickers would be that big of a motivator. The Girl had a complete meltdown watching me put a sticker on her brothers work. I had to reassure her that he was net getting more stickers that she had, I just hadn't graded her work yet.

This is our daily work binders. Each child has a binder with the weeks school work organized by day.
Thursdays are our running around errand day. Starting in September we will have our bible study in the mornings. Then we have piano lessons at 12:30. In September we will also have an afternoon park day. This week we went to the Library and got haircuts. Boy #1 shows off his new cut.
The Girl had her hair cut and was treated to french braids.

Afterwards a very tired mom treated the kids to happy meals. Boy #2 loves his french fries.
Week 1 down only 35 to go!