We survived the first day:)

We survived our first day of homeschool together!  Thank goodness!

Before school, Bryce did his items on his checklist and we went for a quick walk/bike ride around the block.  Amazingly, we started right at 8 AM. 

We started the day with a ritual of lighting a candle, saying a poem and doing a song.  I still need to find a good song.  But we've got a "start of the day" ritual started!

I chose math to start with because I wanted us to be fresh for that.  It took only about 15 minutes.  Then I let Bryce choose next.  He picked science!  We talked about the earth and how it spins around the sun.  We did it with our bodies and balls.  We also talked about how the Earth is made up of the crust, mantle and core.  Sonlight suggested we compare it to an egg.  We opened up two eggs looking at "our earth."  That was fun!  Bryce also drew a picture of the Earth. 

Bryce then wanted to draw his own picture.  So I let him.  He drew a picture of a knight and wanted to cut out a sword.  Random but I wanted to let him explore some too. 

We then did history where we read about dinosaurs.  Bryce traced a picture of T-rex, we talked about how long ago dinosaurs where and learned new vocabulary words. 

We then did the read-alouds from Sonlight of the Boxcar Children and a poem about opposites.

After 1.5 hours, we were both ready for a break.  We took a 30 min break where we ate a snack and jammed to music. 

Then it was back to work.  By this point, Bryce's frustration level was higher.  He still kept at things but it was much harder.  We still had language arts to do.  (Note to self.  Do earlier in the morning).  Bryce read, we did spelling words and copy work.  Then we did handwriting.  Basic capital letters and Bryce hated this! 

Most of the school work was done at this point.  We took a break by playing an Uno game.  We then did "sewing" where Bryce did a little on his pot holder.  I've also added "life skills" so we then worked on tying shoes.  Neither of these things took that long but I figure a little each day will go a long way over time. 

Then we finished with violin after a longer break (cause I thought Andy might be home on Labor Day to do it with him).  Overall, we were done by 1230. 

I consider today a successful first day of school!  Bryce didn't get too frustrated and I didn't want to quit.

This is a picture of Bryce working on handwriting. A hard subject for him. Next time we won't do it at the end of our school time. I'm going to move it first thing next to Math.
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Whenever Bryce was reading or we read together, we would sit together on the big, comfy blue couch.  We both liked this:)