First Week

We finished our first week sucessfully! Amazingly, it seemed I had more time in the day since starting school than I did all summer. Our days were relaxed and fun. The girls didn't even bicker or complain much. Peace reigned! I thank God for that. (Hey, someone must have been praying for us! Thank you!) We're off to a good start.

I will list why I think our week went well to remind myself when the going gets tough so I can see where we strayed from the path.

1. Schedule! I ran a tight ship. We began each day promptly at 9:00. The girls have a list of things to do before school and worked diligently to complete them. Liana is not a clock-watcher, so she had to be reminded a few times that it was time to move on. I expect her to eventually do this on her own. Last year at lunch we sometimes got sidetracked--I would do laundry or some dinner prep and the girls took full advantage by fooling around for an hour. Then no one felt like returning to school. No more! We ate lunch and moved on to finish our school work.

2. Positive attitudes! We began with prayer and devotion time. We are using a book called A Virtuous Girl: A Bible Study for Elementary Aged Girls by Michelle Zoppa. Right now we are discussing good character. I am encouraging the girls rather than criticizing and it certainly works a lot better. Liana just plain cannot work with losing privileges or anything negative held over her head. She still has trouble fidgeting and focusing on her reading, but she is trying so much harder when I stay positive and praise her effort.

3. Teaching Textbooks! This has freed up so much of my time! Arielle enjoys doing her math on the computer and I am still able to check her work. She is already on lesson 15 because she started it on her own over the summer. I do need to make sure to provide some oversight and keep up with what she is doing. A written textbook is provided and I need to read it.

4. Beautiful weather! What a great week it was--sunny and cool in the mornings when we took our break. Each day we walk outside and admire the Rose of Sharon and mums blooming, check the dying status of our vegetable garden and look for treasures in the grass. So far Arielle found cardinal and blue jay feathers and Liana found an owl feather.

5. Assigned days for history and science. Last year it was just too much to try to cram history and science into one day. And of course, science got left behind just because it harder to teach. This year we will do two days of science and three days of history. One of the history days we are working on a state book I ordered from Abeka for each of the girls. They can cut out pictures to paste in it and look up interesting facts. They wanted to work on this all week. Isn't it great when kids say, "Can't we do more?"

6. Keep the fond memories of last year. We haven't changed everything. The girls begged to continue Thursday as "Stair Day" where we take an oral spelling test on the stairs. They start at the bottom and move up a step if they spell a word correctly. For each correct word, they also get an M&M. Such a small thing that brings them joy. On Friday we take a regular spelling test on paper, but I think it is good they use a different part of their brain by spelling their words orally.

Next week we have our yearly trip to the beach--just for one night this year but the girls can't wait. After that, I know we will face some difficult weeks, but maybe we will have more successes than battles.

Snowball in Summer

We began school today. How did summer go by so quickly? I am so anxious to get off to a good start and not fall back into patterns of relating to each other that are detrimental to learning. The girls and I had earlier held a school planning meeting at our local Panera's over breakfast. We made up a list of ideas to make our school more interesting so we could learn more.

My dear friend in Colorado sent me a beautiful verse. One day while the girls were playing with some Modge Podge, cutting out pictures of flowers from a Burpee catalong and gluing them to wood, I decided to make my own little plaque. It will be on my desk to remind me HOW to teach as well as WHY I am teaching. The verse is Deuteronomy 32:2,3.

"Let my teaching fall like rain

And my words descend like dew,

Like showers on new grass,

Like abundant rain on tender plants.

I will proclaim the name of the Lord.

Oh, praise the greatness of our God!"

I admit that sometimes my teaching falls like a sudden summer thunderstorm rather than gentle rain to nourish tender plants.

We had a special surprise for our break today. Last winter I wrapped up a snowball and stored it in the freezer. Maybe the girls knew about it, but they had long forgotten it. They were delighted to play with the snowball today in the yard!

We had a great first day. I got the best compliment of all from Liana. She said, "School was fun!"