Today was the "official" first day of our homeschool.  Of course when I told Rigel that a couple of days ago, he looked at me like I was crazy and said we had been homeschooling.  OK Rigel, point taken.  But today was the first day I had a real plan of what to do and started using the shiny new curriculum.  Here is Rigel's announcement over breakfast of what we were doing.

And a few photos of the finished classroom....

Our timeline is on the wall outside of the classroom.  We haven't started using it yet, but plan on starting history on Thursday.  We'll be making a timeline of Rigel's and River's lives on the opposite wall.

Our calendar corner...

My desk with River's right to the right of it.

Starting the day with eggs and oatmeal...why not, no bus to race too.  I also read the first chapter of The Trumpet of the Swan.  It was one of my favorite books when I was in elementary school.

Brushing teeth as part of the "I'm going to turn on the music and you have until it ends to be in the school room with clean teeth."

How Rigel greeted me when I arrived in the school room late!  The vuvuzela announced the beginning of our day.

Rigel fills in the calendar sheet (which is the exact same one they had at the CLC last year).

And colors the anteater that we fed the review words as part of the All About Reading program.

Coffee.....

We look at a picture from Earth from Above and then find it on our world map.  This morning the photo was of Sweden which led to an interesting discussion on how best to travel there.

Rigel's corner....

OK, a quick overview of the day before I fall asleep....

We lit a candle and blew the vuvuzela and then started the day with calendar basics (calendar, calendar companion, days of the week song, address, picture of the day out of geography picture).

We then discussed what we should name our school. Rigel continued to promote Everest because “well you know mom, all those things we talked about the other day like courage and working together’. So there you have it....

We started our reading and spelling curriculums, all about reading and all about spelling, and it went well. Rigel especially enjoyed feeding the anteater the paper strips of review words. At this point River came in and was a bit antsy so we moved to science (REAL Science Odyssey Life).

I read the science lesson and talked about the characteristics of living vs non living things.  Rigel had obviously discussed it before and was familiar with several of the categories.  He was very curious about the reproduction stuff…”mom, how do people have babies if they just fall in love and then have a baby?  I mentioned that boys have a special cell and meets a females special cell and then a baby can grow.  I told him the boys’ cell was called sperm and the female’s cell was called an egg.  At the end of the conversation he seemed to imply that the man gave the woman the cell somehow into her side and I didn't correct him. He also wanted to know then why people don't have babies all the time.  I explained that the egg cells get old or the boy doesn’t have as many sperm.  To which he replied that I need to start having lots of babies because ‘it would be fun and then you’ll get to change a lot of diapers...’  Yeah, about that Rigel. Then of course at lunch in the dining hall Rigel asked Darik how the man gives the woman the cell…. Darik said we could talk about it at home and the conversation is over for now.

Before that we'd had a snack, went outside and threw rocks off the bridge and finished the science lab sheet. We then watched Everest...the IMAX movie. It was fascinating but somber with the death of the narrator's friend.

After lunch while River was sleeping we started our Singapore math lesson.  Rigel was quite tired and had trouble concentrating.  It is my hope in general to finish all of our school work in the morning, thus leaving the post-lunch sleepy time for independent projects and pursuits but that part of our rhythm was off today.  Hopefully it gets easier in time.  The first IEW PAL writing lesson went well though.

Overall the day went well but took a lot longer than I anticipated.  I know we got off to a late start which was part of the challenger, but I just didn’t think I’d still be doing school with him at 3.  We’ll figure it out I think once we know better how each curriculum goes but for today it was a surprise.

Rigel then had a couple of hours of downtime and then we headed off to his gymnastics from 5-7. He loves his coach and it seems to be a really good match for him.

That's about it. Overall I was pleased but really do want there to be more time in our day for interest-led exploration and art and all that stuff. Today felt like school done at home...which was fine, but I want to make sure there is time for all that important other stuff that doesn't come in a curriculum. All in all though I'd say it was a good first day.