Our First Day

Our first day of school was this past Wednesday. This is the first moment I have had to write about it! The past week was one of the most hectic in recent memory, although it could have been worse, I suppose.

So, we started a day later than I had originally planned. We had camped the week before and all came home sick. So, I didn't get as much ready during the weekend as I had wanted, plus there were a couple other committments on Tuesday.

So, Wednesday morning dawned and the kids arose bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to begin their new grades. David entered 6th grade, Emily is in 4th grade now, and James is sort of in 2nd grade. Suzy is officially a preschooler!

First I introduced the kids' new chore charts and reintroduced the concept of chores at certain times during the day. Most of the daily jobs were reassigned, which I do about twice a year.

Then after the first set of morning jobs were completed, we had a dual treasure hunt. David and Emily paired up for a word scramble treasure hunt and James and Suzy did a color treasure hunt. The prize at the end was their new school supplies! Who doesn't love new school supplies?

Once they had ooh-ed and ahhh-ed enough over their new notebooks and crayons, we did a short drawing assignment. Ice cream sundaes is a new tradition we started last year for the first day of school, so that was our snack.

David and Emily did a history review of last year's information in preparation for their end-of-year test (yes, that should have been done before we went camping, but that's the beauty of homeschooling! lol).

Lunch fit in there someplace and then we had our new afternoon chores. At 4:00 I had a staff meeting at work, and so I trooped off for that and then went to the grocery store.

And thus ended the first day of school this year!