This has not been my favorite Back to School. In my dream world, I would have ordered my curriculum and had it delivered two weeks before school started. I would have had plenty of time to go through each book, determine how quickly each book would be worked, and entered the information into my database. I would have had two computer stations, a geography station, a science center, and a baby/preschool center set up and ready to go. I would have had meals ready to go for the first month...okay, now I'm joking. I would never be that organized.
Instead, the school district sent both curriculum orders to the wrong address and had to have them reshipped. Several items are on back order. My arts and crafts order was "too big" and put on hold until someone with "more experience" in the school district could approve it. By the time I got off the phone with the principal, it was clear who has the most experience educating my family. I got my order (I sure have a lot of paint and poster board).
The first day of school was last Monday. As of today, I finally have my materials. I am slowly introducing new subjects and figuring out how our day will flow. So far, we start the day with our "social studies." This is the loose term I use to describe history and geography. We do this subject as a group, one room schoolhouse style. Each kid, from F on up to IJ, works at their own level (D plays in his prison-I mean play yard). Social studies takes from 15 minutes to over an hour, depending on what we do. We are using an assortment of material, secular and not, official curriculum and winging-it supplies. After we clean up, everyone is hungry and needs a break. I need coffee.
Next is math. I work one on one with E while the boys take turns on the computer and playing with D. E is using Saxon 1 this year, S is finishing Teaching Textbooks 4 and starting 5, and IJ will be using Saxon 6/5. F needs to learn how to count. She'll hang out at the table during E's math lesson and learning through osmosis. IJ takes over an hour to get his math done, so by the time he is done, it is time for lunch!
After lunch, D goes down for his nap and the rest of the kids work on Language Arts. This is the most difficult challenge of my day so far. Each kid needs to work at their own level. Each kid gets started on something and then interrupts whomever I am working with. F usually runs down the hall screaming about this time and wakes D up from his nap too early. And I feel like this should be the end of the day.
But nope! We still have Latin and Science. Today we started Latin at 4:00 pm. For the last two years, this has been the time we are running madly to an activity. Or we were already gone. But this year, we are watching Latin instruction on DVD and listening to our vocabulary on CDs. I'm going to have in principio erat verbum stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
Science is only reading so far. We have yet to receive our science kits...but we have plenty of things to keeps us busy until then!
