1st Day of Home School

Many of you took extra minutes out of your day to help me out when I was nominated for VoiceBoks.com’s Top 10 of Military Blogs. That meant a lot to me that you would take the time to do that, so I want you all to see that your votes added up, and this blog landed at the #4 spot.

To see the whole top 10 and the write-up about my blog, just click here: Top 10 Military Blogs on VoiceBoks.com.

It’s so exciting to be in the top 10 for something. As an adult, we don’t win a whole lot of accolades/awards/etc, so this is super exciting for me. Thank you so much for reading and voting.

I’m also happy to report we made it through our 1st day of school.  We managed to start at 9am and be finished by 1:45pm.  Classes go faster when you’re teaching 4 rather than 28. I told Alan I’m so worried, just about keeping up with all my different jobs as a wife/mom/blogger/teacher. Alan said that in his line of work they say that when you’re juggling a lot, remember that some balls are rubber and some are glass. You just gotta make sure you don’t drop any of the glass ones. The rubber ones will bounce back.

Can’t I just find a nice china cabinet for the glass ones?? I need a nap.  No, really, after listening to Caleb read 10 books today and coping with Daniel’s interruptions I could really use a nap!!

Caleb wins the “most enthused” award. I kept trying to end school, but Caleb kept wanting to read more books to me. I took full advantage of it. One of the main reasons we are doing this is that I want to catch Caleb up in reading. Last year, getting him to read or write at school was a struggle. This year I just want him to be home so I can stay on top of him!

This child is so ridiculously adorable……..and apparently the blue marker was a mistake.

I wish I’d gotten a JD photo!!!

Positives:

I will EASILY be able to bring Caleb up to where I’d like him to be in reading this year. He is easily motivated by rewards involving Disney Infinity.

Joshua was able to pay attention without all the extra noise of a regular classroom. I noticed that even when it was Caleb’s turn to answer a question, if Caleb took more than a second, I was already losing Joshua. I’m still feeling intimidated about having to introduce Joshua to both multiplication and division in the same year. However, I do think math is easier to teach than English.

I still feel like I can do this. This week we are only doing reading, writing, math, and learning cursive. We won’t begin Classical Conversations until after Labor Day. I did make them listen to the Timeline Song, though. We are just easing into it.

JD was surprisingly good.

Negatives:

Daniel.

John David.

Seriously. Especially Daniel. JD is a good napper, so that was a lifesaver. I definitely need to work on my Dan Plan!!