First Day of School

Just to warn you, we'll have three "first days of school"...and today was the first, first day of school, which means Lukas started first grade, homeschool today.  In two weeks he'll have his first day of school at the homeschool co-op where he goes once a week, and then Natalie will have her first day of school.

It went well!  I wasn't certain how well it would go since Natalie and Konrad have lost much of their "sit still and be quiet" skills over the summer.  And I'm also teaching them to raise their hands before they speak when I'm working with Lukas on class.  Natalie and Konrad currently have very short attention spans when it comes to table work:  puzzles, play-doh, coloring and books only hold interest for a few minutes before they want to move on to something new.  But we're working on it...it's only the first day.  Dominik cooperated by napping the whole time.

Lukas enjoyed the lessons he had for first grade.  I had been talking to him about how he would have more work as a first grader than he did in kindergarten (and I'm going to follow a curriculum more strictly than I did last year), but I think he was pleasantly surprised at how easy the work is the first day, to ease him into school.  I didn't get any pictures of school at the table, but this is about how it looked.

After breakfast and chores, we had Bible time.  Then school started and we were finished with Lukas' lessons by about 9:30 a.m. and moved on to puppet play.  Then snack and outdoor play, then a few minutes of one of their favorite shows, Word World before we left for Natalie's therapy.  Monday and Thursday we eat lunch in the car on the way to therapy.  I'm not completely convinced this is the best idea, since Natalie arrives at therapy with lunch all over her face and clothes (most of it is in her stomach), so I might just change our lunch time from noon to 11:30 to make everything easier.  In fact, I think I just decided to do that as I'm writing this blog post!

While Natalie was in therapy, the boys and I went to a park to play (and feed Dominik).  Another 5-year old boy fell and skinned his knee, and his dad wasn't there, so I wiped it with a baby wipe, put some cream on it and then a bandage.  He was there with his 7-year old cousin and 9-year old brother, who said their dad was walking dogs...that's what he does for a business, so if we need our dog walked...! That has to be the first time I've come across kids who had been left at a park to play without supervision.

This week is finally supposed to be summer weather...over 90 most of the week.  So since we already had lots of outdoor play, we spent the afternoon inside with duplos.

Tonight Lukas said, "Tomorrow is the second day of first grade!" before he went to bed.  Success!