Our First Week of School

On Monday, school started for Samuel and Brianna, and we started homeschool with Jack and Eli, as well.

This is Brianna's first time in school since kindergarten, and freshman year is quite a bit different than learning to write your name and stand in line without touching anybody.  We seem to be through the locker troubles and changing of schedules, though.

A couple hours after the big kids went to school this showed up at our house.  Lukey has different drivers in the morning and the afternoon, but they both seem pleasant.

On Wednesday, after Katie popped out of the house to check out the bus (she loves buses!), the morning driver asked "how many kids?" with a vague wave at the house.  I said eight.  She said, "So this is a daycare?"  Um, no.

Eli was my photographer for Luke's first morning on the bus, and he hopped on to get a pic as she was strapping down his chair.

Bye bye, Lukey!  School seems to be going well for him.  He made some contented noises over the weekend.  The teacher and aids seem to like him, and there is another student (for a total of 2) in his class now.

As for homeschooling...  We're having a great time!  Still trying to get into the swing of things.  Math and writing are not "fun" for the boys, but we have plenty of things that are fun.  Like making this "library" of books of the Bible from matchboxes.  This helped the boys understand the types of books and the groupings within the 66 books.

Even the tiger found this concept fascinating, apparently.  

The boys got new t-shirts on the first day of school.

And Katie did a color matching activity with a bus printable and the bucket of pouch lids.

On Monday, we cut cardboard and glued it together for a frame.  On Thursday, the glue was nice & dry for us to make faux wax tablets like those used in Roman schools, by pressing non-hardening clay into the frame.

The teacher's manual calls for sharpening a chopstick in a pencil sharpener to use as a stylus, but we used bamboo skewers instead.  They worked great!

Eli's written the time period we're learning about in Roman numerals on his tablet.  He also brought a piece of PVC pipe inside to use as a rolling pin to smooth out his tablet between uses.

The boys messed with their tablets through most of the morning's readings and while we listened to our exciting new audio book (review coming soon!).

by Eli

We learned about Hannibal, leading Carthaginian troops over the Alps to attack Rome from the north, and that they brought elephants with them.  We also learned the origin of the word Europe.  I'm still dumbfounded that we have an entire continent named after the good rope made by people to the north of the Roman Empire.

I gave the boys each a blank Lego guy printable and told them to make any guy they wanted.  They could then cut him out and add him to a background, as Eli did above, with his race car driver, or...

...they could write a story about their guy, as Jack did with his Crook!  It was actually quite a story, too.  A bank robbery involving a mine.

We played a game one morning, more on that later.

And Eli came up with a tasty new snack:  Duck lip sandwich.  Made from Pringles and rolled salami.

One of our science books has gone missing.  Please pray that it turns up, as I don't want to buy it again, and I don't want to get horribly behind while we wait for it to reappear.

It's good to be getting our school routine going.  We have 2 weeks to go until Hannah goes off track (no school for 3 weeks).  Katie will be happy to have Hannah home to play with.  I'll be happy to not have Hannah's homework every night!

Thanks for clicking for us!