One week down...

We have just started our second week of school. I feel as though I am already playing catch up. :) I hadn't finished everything on my to do list before we needed to start school and that is contributing to the problem. However there are two other contributing factors....my expectation of starting off the school year in a blaze of glory with everything working like a well oiled machine. LOL The other is that when I am saying yes to things I'm looking at the calendar only thinking of what time we have open but I'm not taking into account the time I need to get ready for the things I've got planned. For example on Sunday we went to church and then taught Sunday school and went out for lunch with some friends. After that we stopped at the library to pick up some books on hold. Then we were home by 2:30 but had people coming over for dinner at 4pm. So after our company left I needed to clean things up and then prepare for the school week. Well that didn't all happen. I only got the bare minimum before I fell into bed exauhsted. (did I mention the Sunday school class we taught had 23 4yr olds :) ). Lesson learned. I hope.

Our lessons have been pretty good. I'm still trying to find the order of subjects that works best for us. Turltle Toes has had alot of time with nothing to do during school so I have rearranged the schedule a little bit by having FIAR happen right after phonics. That way I am spening some one on one time with him before he has to play on his own while I help Turkey Lips with Math. My idea now being to alternate between subjects that Turtle Toes is inovolved in and ones he is not. Then he won't have big chunks of time that we aren't all participating together. We will figure it all out it will just take some time.

Big hits so far....Geography Songs http://www.audiomemory.com/geography.php They love these songs and I hear them singing them all the time.

Famous Men of the Middle Ages - Turkey Lips is enjoying this book as a read aloud. I am surprised by this because I thought that alot of it would go over his head. However he will stop me and have me sort out "which guy did what" or "where did he live". So I guess he is enjoying it. It might have something to do with the fact we are learning about the Barbarians right now and there are alot of battles :)

Indpendent work: Turkey Lips likes this alot. He had me label a folder "My Homework" for all of his indpendent work :)

Things I still want to work on:

We are doing devotions in the morning with Honey before he goes to work. I would like to add in learning about character traits at this time.

I still want to have a planner for the kids. Turkey Lips is a planner :) and he would like this and it will start to give him some of the responsibility for getting work done.

I want school to be more fun! I know this will come but sometimes it feels like we are just checking boxes. :) This is a case of high expectations I think because the kids seem to be enjoying things the way they are.