First day of school!!

Well, the milestone has been placed, Caroline has completed her first day of Kindergarten!!

I was so proud of Caroline for how well she handled herself throughout the entire day.  She completed circle time, Math, Handwriting, Science, PE, and homework in Math and Handwriting today.  She thrived on our schedule and loved checking things off our list as we moved through the day.  At one point I asked her if she liked her first day of Kindergarten and she gave me and enthusiastic affirmative response.

Here she is working on her Saxon 1 Math.

Charlotte's first day of preschool had a mixed result.  She's fighting some sort of virus with minimal external symptoms short of a fever and a horrific temperament.  Like any mother of a Kindergartner, I had my share of tears today, but not from leaving my child in her first classroom.  Things did improve after I put in a call to the principle (aka Daddy) and we decided to just let her watch TV so I could make the most of Caroline's exciting day.

We did manage to carve out a peaceful time to spend together to do a letter A activity and play with the letter A sensory box of beans while Caroline was having free time.  Charlotte is pretending to be a cat (a frequent occurrence) in the second photo.

Now, here's some of the nitty gritty details of our first day.

I spent about 6 hours on Sunday afternoon (errr, evening) getting everything finalized.  I cleaned our craft cupboards (why it mattered to me at the time, I have no idea).

I finalized lesson plans.  I laminated an outline for myself so I can update it each week with a dry erase marker.  I have a more detailed schedule on the other side for myself and a copy for Caroline on the fridge.

I got circle time set up. 

Our run through for this fall is:
- Sing "This is the Day the Lord Has Made"
- The Pledge of Allegiance and "My Country tis of Thee"
- Put date magnet on the calendar
- Sing the days of the week song (to the tune of "Brother John" and our new months of the year song to the tune of "Ten Little Indians")
- Add a straw to our ones/tens/hundreds cans (not very exciting at the moment)
- Read and discuss our ABC theme Bible verse ("A soft answer turns away wrath." Pv 15:1)
- Sing our ABC theme praise and worship song ("All in All")
- Discuss the letter and teach Caroline the sign for the letter
- Do our ABC theme rhyme or game ("Let's Sing Hurray for A")

The, I set up presents for the girls.  Since Kevin and I feel that "gifts" is a strong love language for Caroline, we try to make the ordinary feel special.  They already had these lap trays (on sale for $5 at Michael's this week), so I stuffed some of our new school materials in the side pocket with tissue paper.  Our schedule is also on top of Caroline's pink tray.

I also got the girls matching apple shirts at Target.  I'd had plans on making some, but when I found them for $5, I decided to save my energy for school preparations instead.

The girls had fun opening their school supplies in the morning and then we had pancakes for breakfast, at Caroline's request.

I'm so glad to be "back to school."  I feel so much more organized following our schedule and it's so much more relaxing to know what we are doing next.  I was also relieved that everything except our science lesson took less time than I'd allotted.  I'm just so excited about this school year!  It really is so much fun to homeschool.  Yes, there will be days that I want out, but it really is so amazing to be their teacher.