My kitchen table

So guess what we've been up to this week?

Monday was our official start to school. I wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion, so that morning the children and I went to one of their favorite restaurants for breakfast: IHOP. I took my camera along to take some pictures but realized the camera's batteries (and the backup batteries) were dead after we had settled into our booth. Then we went to Wal-mart to pick up a few things and then the dollar store. Noah bought 2 items w/ his tooth money and I got a few school supplies. Then we came home to actually start school. We mainly just looked thru his books and talked about what we would be doing this year. We did complete the introductory math lesson as it was quick and easy and I read the page about killer whales to him out of his animal encyclopedia. The plan is to do 1 animal a week for science, 20 animals in all. He's really digging orcas (another name for killer whales) right now, so we started w/ that.

On Tuesday we did a full day's worth -- math, reading/phonics, recess, handwriting, and then a trip to the public library to get more books about killer whales and Noah's very own library card. We've been doing Bible/history time after our main meal w/ Daddy everyday.

Here are some pictures from Wednesday's recess:









In case you're wondering, this is what "kitties playing soccer" looks like:





We combined today's recess w/ a lesson in auto mechanics, taught by Daddy. It's an integral part of every proper kindergarten curriculum, you know.



Today I had Noah tell me what he has learned about killer whales while I typed it into the computer (a narration). I had to do some prompting, but it is really quite neat how much he has retained. Then we found a spiffy picture on the internet, put that at the bottom, and printed it out for his science notebook. Doug suggested I look on YouTube for some killer whale videos. There were a couple of really neat clips from SeaWorld that the children enjoyed thoroughly. Also a few National Geographic-type videos of orcas in the wild.

Overall, he has been very receptive and cooperative about school. He tends to get tired after math (he has 1 worksheet to do every day and writing seems to tire him), so I do reading/phonics first, then math so that he has a break after that. He is holding his pencil correctly now, thanks to some triangular crayons and a special pencil grip I got for him.

It's quite satisfying to hear him talk about things he has learned outside of "school" time. He was playing like he was a killer whale today and told me that Chloe's pajama bottoms were his "prey"; he then started to "eat" them. I praised him and reminded him that he was the predator of the pajama bottoms. Then Claire held up a pillow and said she was going to eat and pray. So I guess she's learning something, too. :)