First Day

Kate's broken elbow has meant that most of the summer time pass times are out for the moment.  She's supposed to sit and, well, sit.  What fun is that?  So rather than sit for the next several weeks and then sit for the school year...we started school around here yesterday.

It's been a bit of a rush, but the first day went off pretty smoothly.  I placed the last of my school orders on Saturday, so that should be here in the next little bit.  The big things in that order are:

• Phonics cards for Gabby: I went straight into a McGuffey Reader with Kate, but I'm taking a different approach now.
• New math books:  We should run out of Kate's math in September (she started first semester 2nd grade math last spring).
• A Workbook for our writing curriculum:  I found all the selections last year, but in looking at the requirements for this year, I decided I would really appreciate the time it will save to have that done for me.  She can't write at the moment anyway, so we'll not be using it just yet anyway.
• Pattern blocks:  I have always thought these are really neat and I found a good sized set of used ones for sale at the online shop with the phonics cards.  It made me feel better about paying the shipping that was more than the cost of the phonics cards too!

1st day of Kindergarten

2nd grade

classmates

Gabby tells me her favorite part of her first day was making a pattern with her name (in math).  Kate tells me her favorite part was the school bell (we picked up a service bell the other day on a whim, but it does get their attention from most parts of the house without me having to call for them!).  When I pushed her further, Kate liked the etiquette lessons we do on Mondays.

I think it will get easier when Kate can write for herself.  For now, I have to try to keep Gabby in fairly independent work while Kate is doing her paper based work, since I'm scribing for Kate at the moment.  Soon enough Kate will be able to read some assignments and write her answers independently and I can just answer questions as they come up on her practice pages.

They are doing history and science together, though Gabby is mostly listening in on those at this point.  She did answer one of the history questions yesterday.  We will get some of her social studies and science from the Five in a Row books we're doing this year too.