Our First Weeks of School?

So, we've been on "school break" since December (when I was great with child), and instead of waiting for the Fall semester of school to start, I decided we should just go ahead and get started! We are currently in our fourth week. Woohoo! School in the summer! Well, I suppose we just want to  continue to prove that we are capable of being "just weird like that."

Zoe is now first grade, and Cameron is pre-K. My ideal was to do most of school with both of them (I'm still doing Five in a Row) and then do the other subjects with just Zoe. I imagined us sitting together, reading together, learning wonderful new things... well, as Cameron would have it, she is not so interested in school right now, so I'm letting her do whatever she wants during school time as long as she doesn't interrupt (easier said than done). Then, there is also Noah. He is a wonderful little man, but he has to eat sometimes right in the middle of school time, or he's just not feeling the school thing and would rather I just hold him while walking around the house. So, we take a break for "recess." How great is that!

Though it may sound like I have it all together and am as cool as a cucumber about it all, that could not be further from the truth. It could be because, as I'm writing this, I'm totally distracted by Cameron using her Tag Junior in the next room which has two volumes: "Loud" and "Louder."

Anyhow, just to tell you how quickly we went from "Yay, school!" to "School again?" (insert whiny voices), let me bring you through our first two days. The first day we started a new book called "Three Names" by Patricia MacLachlan 

A wonderful book about a kid hearing his grandfather tell the story about when he used to go to school when he was a little boy ("about a hundred years ago, he liked to say"). The dog always went with him. The first thing we did was visit an old one-room schoolhouse.

It was super cool, even though we couldn't go inside (but I did get a picture of the inside through the window in the door).

The wood burning stove was still in there! It is now used as a Quaker Church.

We also practiced our letters in sugar (I believe some was eaten, but I'm not telling).

Cameron's "E"

I think Noah even enjoyed school that first day

All in all, we had a great day! Then it was time to get up the next day and do it all over again...

Needless to say, the fun we had the day before was just that... the day before. We struggled through a couple more days, though, and then I figured out that we should start our school mornings praying for one another which really seemed to make all the difference. Now I don't think that it was some sort of magical thing that happened, it was just the grace of God to help me realize that we can't do this apart from God's grace! I can't be patient and flexible day to day (or moment to moment, really), and the kids can't be attentive, obedient and excited to learn all in our own strength.

Now that it's our fourth week, we're in a bit of a rhythm (though, we will march to the beat of a different drummer some days). Every week, I put together a schedule for school:

Thanks to Donna Young, I didn't even have to come up with my own template. So far, it's working pretty well. I'll let you know more as the months go by! Until then, please enjoy these faces...