We started our day with a special treat at breakfast. I'd read about a German tradition of giving a child a schultutte (spelling is probably wrong) on their very first day of school, and we thought it sounded like fun, so we decided to adopt the custom, although we might do it every year on the first day. Basically, it's a cone filled with school supplies and a few treats. Here's Nick opening his:
Most of the things we gave him were small, but the last photo shows the leapstart math game that we gave him as an extra special treat.
Before we started our actual homeschooling, we took a picture of Nick in front of the homeschooling room :) The lego car has nothing to do with homeschool, he just wanted it in the picture.
Then we did our circle time. For us "circle time" consists of marking the date on the calendar using the correct sticker to keep the pattern going, finding the cards to put the date into words on our pocket chart, counting (by 1's two days and week and by 2's 2 days a week), changing the clothes on weather bear and graphing the weather, counting the number of days we've been homeschooling this year with popsicle sticks, and our problem of the day (critical thinking type problem).
Then it was on to the workboxes. Workboxes are boxes that contain all of the things he does for the day. It helps keep me organized and will also allow him to gradually become more independent in his work, plus I can add in fun stuff to do that we might otherwise forget about.
Nick then decorated his first day of school sign so that we could use it to take pictures and decorate the homeschool door (it was blank in the first pictures). He really surprised me when he decorated it with rainbows and butterflies.
Worked on his "All About Me" lapbook, which is a fun project that I hope to do every year at the beginning of our school year so we can watch how he has changed. I'll post photos of it when it's finished.
We finished up with Patty and the Pie Pan by Beatrix Potter.
It was a great day. All in all we spent about 1 1/2 hours on homeschool and although we didn't start with much academic work, we had lots of fun.
Tuesday we'll be starting in on our full homeschool program.
