Our First Day of School

Yay! Our first day of school finally arrived. We had such a blessed, fun time together. Jake and Jared were both very ready to get to work. This really surprised me! First, I will share a few pictures of our classroom.

These are our "rules"or our Signs of Growing Up. I love the fact they are stated positively! We started off the day by talking about each one and what it meant.

This is our work table. This is where we sit to do guided work. I love this table. The height adjusts to grow with the child and it folds away for easy storage. I got it at Wal-mart. I do need to get the boys some better chairs, but we work with what we have for now!

This is our independent work space. This is where the boys work individually and independently when Mommy is working one on one with the other child.

 We are blessed to have an extra couch that we can use to read together!

This is where we do our "board" work. It is also where we store our manipulatives and school books.

This is our map and schedule. Jake and Jared both love maps. They love locating places we have been or places we are talking about in school.

These are the boys work boxes. I saw this idea on another blog. (Thanks Lindsey!) Each child has a box for each subject and the materials we need to complete the subject are in the box. This is a great way to keep me organized and give the boys and idea of how much they have left to do!

My sweet Jared ready for his first day of Pre-K. He was so excited to start Pre-K. I was honestly surprised with how intently he worked. I thought it would be more of an adjustment for him. (learning to sit still, follow directions, etc.) My little man is growing up too quickly. I feel blessed to be able to share this experience with him.

My sweet Jake on his first day of FIRST GRADE. I can not believe he is already this old! He is so excited about first grade. He has said since the moment he finished Kindergarten that he is in first grade. I wouldn't trade my experience of teaching him last year for anything! I am so looking forward to teaching him again this year and watching him grow by leaps and bounds!

The boys are working in their Calendar Binders in this picture. This is a concept I learned about from the website www.hubbardscupboard.com. This site is also where I will be getting most of the curriculum I use to teach Jared. In the Calendar Binder there are a series of pages they will work with each day. It is a great way to get in all of our morning activities and allow each child to participate in counting the days of school, working on place value, writing the date on the calendar, and singing the months of the year and days of the week. We also chart the weather, and review our letters/sounds. This link is directly to the calendar binder.  http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/character_activities.html#CalendarBinder

After we finish our calendar binder activity we spend time talking about our character quality of the week. We talk about what it means, learn a scripture that emphasizes that quality, and read a Bible story that demonstrates that quality. This week's character quality is "orderly". The story we read and talked about was the creation story. We also worked on learning 1 Corinthians 14:40. This verse states, "But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way."

This is a close up of Jared working in his Calendar Binder. He is creating a pattern by circling the day of the week with colors. I put the calendar in a sheet protector and he is using a dry erase crayon to create the pattern. This is easy to erase if he makes a mistake (which he didn't) and it's also something fun for him to use.

Jake is quietly working on his seat-work while I spend some individual time with Jared. When Jake finished his seat-work he was allowed to do something fun (playdough) until I was ready for him!

Jared worked very hard cutting out his pictures that started with the letter A. Then he glued them on a piece of paper and used the "Aa" stamp to stamp around the pictures. He really enjoyed using the scissors.

This year Jake will be learning to write in cursive. He was pumped up to be doing something that was "grown-up." He really disliked writing last year so I made an effort to really build up writing in cursive. Early on today, he struggled with it. Then I realized we (mainly me) had his paper slanted the wrong direction. Once we turned his paper the right way, he was good to go. He whipped out these cursive e's with little effort.

As one of Jared's independent activities I had him review the order of the days of creation. I wrote the numbers on the board and had him place the days of creation in order. I was stunned when I checked the board and saw that he had only gotten one wrong. WOW! I did NOT expect that!

Our last time of the day together is activity time. During this time we will do a variety of things. Some days we will learn about science and social studies. Some days we will sing and other days we will do art projects. I also plan to use this time to incorporate some computer activities as well. I bought Jake a typing software program. I plan to use this program during this time too. Today we read through Jake's Ranger Rick magazine. It's a great tool to use to teach science to little boys in a colorful and meaningful way. We read about Seahorses and then began to make our own seahorse. We will finish up our seahorses tomorrow.

I was a little worried about balancing teaching both boys. However today went very smoothly and we all had a great time. I can't wait to see what the rest of the year holds.