Kindergarten!

Grayson is a Kindergartener. That's crazy! And we are trying out homeschool this year!

We are now in our 5th week of school. We started the third week of July. June was crazy and full of travels, and I wanted to start before traditional schools, so that I felt like "ok, we are really doing this" and not feel behind/overwhelmed when the regular school year starts. We just went for it! I figured I would never get to feeling like I was totally ready and so we just started.

Some random thoughts:

-I don't remember ever thinking "I want to homeschool my kids". Yet, here we are. I have to say, it combines two things I'm passionate about: (1) being a mom and (2) teaching elementary, and so far I'm really enjoying it.

-homeschooling is very intimidating to me. It's a weighty task!

-School stuff doesn't currently take us too long. Maybe 30 min-1 hour, sometimes broken up.

-there is a great homeschool community here in Clemson

-Grayson is SO, SO eager right now. I want to keep that up and encourage it for as long as possible!

-The library has been our best friend.

-Bowen, of course, doesn't want to be left out. So he usually tags along with whatever activity G is doing or will get out his "school stuff" too, but will lose interest and then run off to play. 

-Isn't Kindergarten totally about playing, fun crafts, fun snacks, and reading books?

-I'm trying hard not to overschedule us. I like to be busy and get out, but the boys have been playing SO well together at home, I'm trying to let them enjoy that.

-We're just planning to take it a year at a time, a kid at a time. 

-Everyday won't be fun, crafty, exciting and there are days where we just get the basics done and rush off to appointments and playdates.  But I think school/learning should be fun and want my kids to be excited about it.

-I had no idea that there was such a "world of homeschool". The curriculums are overwhelming!

-We started implementing a morning basket of sorts last Spring, and it's worked really well for our family... it has set some good morning rhythms (some pictures below)


And here's a bunch of "Kindergarten" randomness... 

Here is what's currently in our morning basket. We don't use all of this each day... but use it as a basket of tools over breakfast. The sight words cards were great when G was learning to read, and work for Bowen too for questions like "Bowen, what color is the "h"?" We try to make a list of things to pray for each week, choose a verse to work on, catechism questions, read a Bible story each day, work on Spanish words... 

This is our new little school cabinet. Really the only place to "do school" is our kitchen table, which I kind of love. So we put this little cabinet beside the table to kind of corral all of our stuff. 

We made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast to celebrate the first day!

Miller is usually just running around the house, but this was day 1 and the blocks were new to him :) 

And then just some random other pictures from the last few weeks... (these are all "picture-worthy" times. We have non picture-worthy times too!)

I love that I can tailor stuff to their interests. We were learning about community helpers/policemen and they loved this police car picture, so I recreated it and let them label/color it. G still has it hanging by his bed. 

art projects

 Fun morning date!

One day Grayson set up an envelope store and then made a bunch of different envelopes (any friends fans out there? the whole time he did this I was thinking "Types of celery... regular celery!" about his different envelopes for sell) He was using money and counting and I totally counted this as part of math for the day.  

family game night fits into our social studies standards!

 I usually try to give Bowen an activity or two to do each day. 

G and B went on a number scavenger hunt around the house and then G helped them organize them on the number line (while Miller pulled them all off)

Some more Bowen (and Miller) activities...

And here's some of the activities that we did along with one of our author studies: Laura Numeroff

It was a super rainy day, so we started off by by making muffins and then reading "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" . The best read alouds are over a snack, right?? 

sequencing "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

"If You Give a Dog a Donut" with apple/peanut butter donuts

and Grayson came up with his own story like Laura Numeroff's books and I think it is so cute and so him. Nona even sent him some lollipops after he read it to her :) 

(also these blank books from Target's dollar spot are so great to have on hand! I stocked up on all of their teacher/school goodies!)