A Smashing Succes!

We began a new homeschool journey today ~ 2nd and 4th grades. I must say, although things were consistently about 30 minutes past my "ideal", the day was a total success. Although I completely forgot to break out my camera, I thought I'd share some of this day with you while it was fresh in my mind.

In all honesty, I was concerned that today would not go well because the girls went to bed much later last night than they should have. Blame football. We'll have to work on our Sunday evening routines!

Either way, the Hippie woke up raring to go, excited to start school and fired up.

The Princess, not so much. She was tired this morning. I'm happy to say, though, that even though she was tired, she still came out this morning, dressed, teeth brushed, room tidy and bed made. Good girl.

We began the day like we usually would with morning chores and breakfast, but you could feel the difference. The Hippie took care of the animals and the Princess happily started a load of laundry (she loves starting laundry). I cooked breakfast on the stove, had Mozart playing softly on the speakers and set the table for breakfast.

At breakfast, we enjoyed The Light of the World by Katherine Paterson and I quite enjoyed the conversations that sprung out of it. I just love listening to these girls talk about God! After that, we read the poem "Come Little Leaves" by George Cooper a few times through ~ we are hoping to memorize it this month (the Hippie memorized the first stanza in no time flat ~ the Princess was "tired").

After our poem, we all went our separate ways for a bit, the Princess washing the dishes, the Hippie vacuuming their bedroom and I sweeping and mopping the laundry room and kitchen.

Then, it was time to start.

I had planned for that to be 9:30, but it was 10:00. I had a feeling that would happen.

We headed out the door for a short walk to get the wiggles out. To my surprise, both girls had excellent attitudes about the walk. The Princess said that she didn't used to like walks, but since we walked so much in Germany, she likes them now and that our walk reminded her of Germany, so she wants to do them every day. :) Good thing, since that was my plan!

We saw all sorts of nature ~ a bright orange lizard, an orange moth nearby (the girls speculated that they both ate something that turned them orange), one tree that was turning colors a bit (we are in Florida ... fall doesn't come to us like it does to the rest of you), some moldy ivy stuff growing on a fence, an Osprey (we saw him twice), squirrels gathering nuts and so much more. The girls were disappointed that I didn't bring my camera. So was I.

The rest of the morning sort of flowed back and forth ~ I worked with the Princess while the Hippie worked, I worked with the Hippie while the Princess worked, we worked on some things together and so on.

The Princess read to me today from a Treadwell reader, we did a couple of English lessons orally (she loved that) and we had a sort of phonics lesson on the board. She then worked diligently, drawing pictures of three "ch" words and three "sh" words and doing a bit of copywork from the book Bambi. I only required her to write for 10 minutes and only wanted as much as she could do perfectly in that 10 minutes. She didn't quite finish the sentence I had written for her, but what she wrote was beautiful. She will finish the sentence tomorrow ~ again, only as much as she can write perfectly in 10 minutes. She finished reading the story "The Lad and the North Wind" silently and then narrated it to me beautifully.

The Hippie and I did a dictation lesson today for the first time ever and she loved it. According to her, it was her favorite and she wants to do it every day. Bless her heart, I only have that scheduled once a week. :) I allowed her to choose if she wanted to do it from Bambi or from The Last Little Cat (two books we are reading aloud at the moment) ~ she chose The Last Little Cat because her cursive copywork was from Bambi today. As I said, it was the first  lesson ever and she did it perfectly. There were no misspelled words, the punctuation and capitalization were both correct and her handwriting was beautiful. A smashing success for the child that supposedly hates to write! On her own, the Hippie did cursive copywork, 15-20 minutes of typing, read about 5 pages of Bard of Avon and a did one math lesson and worksheet.

As a family today, we read The Legend of St. Christopher (the Princess narrated this beautifully), did German for about 15 minutes (The girls loved the German!) and listened to two chapters of Our Island Story on librivox (the Hippie narrated that wonderfully). After listening, we found Great Britain on the globe ... and of course, the girls had to find Germany again and trace our plane route.

As I write this, the girls are finishing up their after lunch chores ~ the Hippie is washing the dishes while the Princess folds the laundry. After chores, the girls will read and rest a bit for quiet time and then play this afternoon. All is right in the world.

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Don't you worry. I am not naive. I know that the enthusiasm for school wanes. I know that things will not always been smooth and lovely.

But, today was good.

I want to remember today. Regardless of tomorrow.

Until next time,

IrieMomma