School is in Session!

I have to admit, I've been seeing everyone's first-day photos on Facebook for over a month and feeling like a slacker for extending our summer break. But in my mind, school starts after Labor Day so that's what we did. Plus, it worked out better with our trip last week. But being "behind" did put on some pressure for coming up with a really great first day. I'm happy to say . . . mission accomplished!

We began our day in the classroom with reading time. Since we're doing a unit study on the United States this fall, I picked a new book, George Washington. Ava picked Little Black, A Pony, and Noah (as expected) went for non-fiction with The Flip Flap Body Book. After reading, the kids did their "life skills" while I made breakfast. Today, this consisted of cleaning their rooms and taking out the recycling, but we'll mix it up each day according to what needs to be done.

With chores complete and the kids fed and dressed, we went back into the classroom for the juggling portion of the show - trying to work on curriculum with Noah and guiding Ava through activities at the same time. Truth be told, this act needs a lot of work.

Since our Rosetta Stone software isn't functional at the moment, Noah only had Language Arts, project time and computer time on the schedule today. He completed his project (combo art and writing) first, then we moved on to Language Arts. This is our first time tackling this subject with actual curriculum, and I chose Language Smarts by the Critical Thinking Company. He loves mind benders and brain teasers, and I love that this book uses those fun activities to teach language arts skills.

While he worked on that, Ava was in the family room on Starfall. She is just figuring out how to use the mouse on my laptop, so she still needs a lot of help. Due to battery issues, my laptop isn't easily portable right now, so I spent a lot of time bouncing back and forth between the two rooms. Whew!

Moving on, Noah chose IXL (math) for his computer time today. As we plugged away at first grade activities, Ava suddenly felt the need to do IXL as well. She sat with us the whole time, and I think she got a little frustrated when she didn't pick the correct answers. Fortunately, we had time for her to work at her level before we closed the classroom for the day.

I'm incredibly excited to see her interest in learning explode, but it actually makes things a little trickier since she often wants to do exactly what Noah is doing (which, of course, she can't). I'm trying to find the right balance so she doesn't get frustrated, and I'm hoping that once we all get into a routine, they'll both be able to work a little more independently on certain activities. Seriously though, I have no idea how homeschooling moms with big families do it!

So, with classroom time complete, we made a quick check of the garden before heading out for the day. We stopped at Ethos (best school lunch ever!) on our way down to EPCOT, where we headed straight for the American pavilion. We kicked of our USA unit study by seeing the American Adventure show, listening to the Voices of Liberty choir and enjoying a performance by the fife & drum corp.

Looking back, I can't believe we fit all that into one day . . . and we certainly won't attempt to on an ongoing basis. But we all had a great time together (Noah nicknamed us the "Threeway Advanture Club"), and it was a great start to what were all expecting to be an amazing year!

A-V-A Spells Ava!

Okay, well she's known that for quite a while. But the highlight of my week has definitely been my little girl starting to read three-letter words! As you know, she learns much differently than Noah does and if I push her, she definitely pushes back. I'm the same way, so I get where she's coming from and have just been waiting very patiently (and I'm not a patient person!) for her to become ready to learn.

Recently, she's been really enjoying Starfall and asking to work on her letters every day. I've been amazed by the amount she's learned in such a short time, but I guess she was just ready. Since she now knows all the letters and sounds, I wondered what would happen if we built a little word. I opened up my word processing software and typed CAT in a really huge font.

After just a few minutes of coaching, she read "cat", followed by "hat", "mat", "sat", "fat" and "rat". Since then we've worked on "ig", "it" and "un" words. Noah suggested that she try Starfall reading (we've just been doing the alphabet to this point), so that's our goal for tomorrow.

Of course I'm excited for her to learn, but the best part has been seeing how proud she is of herself; it's like she's just realized that learning can make her feel good.

Back to Basics - The ABCs and 123s

So with Ava turning three last week, it just occurred to me that she doesn't know a lot of the things Noah did at this age. Now I know that all kids are different with varied interests and learning styles . . . but I also suspect that I may be slacking.

Since she was born, I've had a hard time "bringing myself back" to the age she is at. I'm constantly reminding myself that I can't expect her to act like a 5-year-old . . . but I'm also constantly forgetting. Will my oldest always be my benchmark and the place I seem to get stuck in time? I certainly hope not!

Looking back, Noah seemed to learn by osmosis - like he suddenly knew things without me having a clue how he knew them. And I assumed that Ava would be the same way. But of course, if I think about it a little more, I know that I spent all my days doing age-appropriate activities with him. And Ava spends her days doing age-appropriate activities for a five-year-old.

So, my next hurdle is to include activities for her every day. Can I even remember what a three-year-old needs to know? Why is this so difficult? For our summer session, we added game time for her a few times each week - simple stuff like Memory and the great new Curious George game she got for her birthday. Today, we dove into Starfall (both the game and the website) and she loved them. We've tried a few times in the past, but she didn't show much interest. Perhaps she is just ready to learn now.

So rather than beating myself up for slacking, I'm trying to feel good about picking up on her cues . . . but of course still feeling some tiny pangs of guilt for not noticing sooner.