First Official Day of 2014

Nathan I don't want my picture taken, do you think I am happy about going back to school?

Of course Gigi is more than happy to pose for pictures.

 

Look how cute Ginger looks!

So today we were supposed to start our first day back with a beach party, but it poured buckets out, so we did school work instead, and I promised the kids to take a day off of school next week when daddy was home and do something fun.

 

We started off kinda late though as I made an opthamology appointment for myself at 9:30, it would have been perfect if we went to the beach!  So we started the day just after 10.  I made up a schedule a few weeks ago, in consultation with Nathan and Genevieve.  So I got out the schedule and asked them what we were supposed to do.  They grumbled a little about starting up story of the world again.  I promised to do the reading, as they don't like the sound of Jim wise baur.  We read a chapter and then looked at a map of the area and compared it to a present day map.  Before we started we also discussed "previously on story of the world".  Nathan thought it was much better when we talked about what happened if we made it sound exciting.

 

Next up was Math, and here is where the struggle was.  I sent Genevieve upstairs to do learning rapups to the learning rap up CD.  Nathan was in tears he did not want to do math.  I said but you like beast academy.  No No No he did not want to do any, finally calmed him down and he managed to read beast.  Then it was time to move onto his worksheets, why do I have to do the worksheets, I understand what they are telling me.  I don't want to do the worksheets.  Get him to the worksheets, I don't understand this, I cant do this, desperate tears coming out of Nathan.  Meanwhile I am also in the process of making muffins for snack for these guys.  Oh boy.  I managed to stay calm and try and work with Nathan, let him know I understood he was frustrated.  Nathan has such a difficult time with change, this is one reason I wish we had done more consistent schooling over summer, but then I think we all needed a break too!  So He managed to get 1 worksheet completed, and I sent him upstairs to do learning wrap-ups with gigi.

 

By this time it is now lunch so I made them lunch.  I read them chapter 1 of Poppy while we were eating.  We answered our chapter questions orally as we usually do.  We then went to the maps we drew this summer from the book Poppy, we located the places on the map that were in the book.  We then completed our worksheets.  Today's worksheet was on combining sentences, I gave both of them the option to choose the easy, or hard worksheet, they both chose the easy one!

Gigi adding to her map she drew over the summer...

Nathan pointing out where Mr ocax lives

Nathan completing his conjunctions

Genevieves worksheet...

So after we did this I stopped as Tyler and Cody were coming over soon, but I realize now we should have made the puppets they wanted us to make, we use them in other chapters to do enactments

 

 

These were the words gigi practiced today in all about spelling we worked on the letter C  We learned that the letter IEY then it is a soft c sound.  I brought Nathan over and asked him if he knew that rule, and he said well know but you kinda already know that when you spell how words are spelled you don't need to know the rule.  I think apparently gigi needs to know the rules...

The afternoon, Tyler and Cody came for a visit, they went for a little walk in the forest and came back extra muddy. 

 

After our playdate ended Nathan was bored, aka tired.  He wanted to do some Geo Puzzles together so I said sure.  We had a good time putting together Europe, and had some great discussions about countries, and about the USSR and Russia now.  Nathan has been curious about the Ukraine and Russia.  We don't even have TV, but apparently he has been reading the news on Yahoo!  Oh my...  Anyway we talked about the countries that used to belong to ussr.  I am beyond glad we purchased these puzzles last year, such a great investment, and so hands on, even becoming familiar with the names of all of the countries is huge, a bonus if we know where they belong :)

And of course 1 puzzle is never enough, we had to put together Asia because you could see part of asia in the Europe puzzle, we made up both and looked at how they fit together, Nathan was the first to notice that the two puzzles were a different scale.  then we built North America, when we placed all three to look like a world map I explained how they don't all look right together because the earth is round and fatter in the middle and the puzzled do not represent that it would be curved and more water in the atlantic area.

On another note, I had a email from their piano teacher that went to my spam folder!  She called today to see if we were coming to piano, I said but we said we would start next week!  Oops  We are going tomorrow at 1!  I hope I don't forget since it is not written on our beautiful and colourful class schedule!

Anyway what a wonderful way to start our homeschool journey on.  I made sure to give them some hugs and let them know how good I thought the day went!  I hope for as much success tomorrow and maybe a few less tears from Nathan!