Back To School

Our first week back to school went well. We started out with a short week since Monday was a holiday, but it's always easy to absorb one day into the rest of the week. The kids...and I....settled back in better than I thought we would. As wonderful as summer break is, I am always glad to get back on a schedule.

The kids and I made biscuit donuts together for breakfast on Tuesday...our first day. Then, we ordered pizza for lunch. My kids love tradition and pizza on the first day of school has become one that they do not let me forget!

Last year, we began a study on the different continents, but concentrated mostly on North American history. This year, we will take each continent and do a deeper study on it. I bought boxes for the kids to decorate and fill with items from each continent. We'll work on the boxes throughout the year. We started decorating them this week.

We studied animals this week in Science. Each one of the kids picked an animal and had to find out different things about it (number of young, hibernation or not, form of communication, group name, etc.) We made a chart with all of the information that they found. We also talked about instincts, learned behavior, and habitats. On Friday, we went for a walk outside to find different animal homes. I let them take Polaroid pictures of the homes they found, so they could use them to draw pictures during their journal time. The kids loved this activity and enjoyed journaling it.

To help with our study of animals, we took a trip to the zoo. We went on Saturday, so our neighbor's son was able to go with us. I didn't try to turn the entire trip into a Science lesson, but it was amazing how much of our lesson they brought up during the day. I think it was fun for them to actually see some of the animals that we had talked about and looked at in our books. Carter and Madison rode a horse at the "Giant Horse Riding" exhibition they had set up. Carter has been telling me that he wants to ride a horse, so he was very excited about this! We also rode the boat, so we got to hear a lot of good information about the animals from the guide. The highlight of the day was getting to see a little joey kangaroo!!!!! It was SO CUTE, and we even got to see it climb into the mother's pouch.....WOW!!! It's still very hot here, so I took the kids for ice cream after we left the zoo...okay, I wanted some too :) !

I think we all had a good time our first week back. I spend so much time planning our lessons out during the summer, so it's always exciting for me to see them come to life. I'm so lucky that my kids enjoy the things that I plan for them, which makes learning so much fun! No, they don't always like to sit for the book work, but if I mix enough fun stuff in with it, everything balances out!