And We’re Off! Plus Our Daily Rhythm ’12/’13

by Mrs. Mallard

 

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Botany lesson
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Experimenting with The Crow and the Pitcher by Aesop – too yucky to drink.
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Everyone is part of our day.

I was a little worried yesterday morning when my fifth grader balked a bit about getting up for school, but I took a deep breath and everything turned out well. 

Here is what our school days look like this year:

Mama rises early and prepares for the day. (So glad I already have a few weeks under my belt!)

All three kids rise and take of care of morning tasks. (Dress, prayer, teeth, hair, bed, tidy room)

Second grader piano, Fifth grader piano

Breakfast

Morning Devotional (Song, Prayer, Memorized Scripture, Scripture Reading)

Walk

Opening Verse, Pennywhistle

Toddler songs and poems

Second Grade Main Lesson (Includes academics, art, extras and 10 min. of read aloud.  Fifth grader helps with toddler and prepares snack.)

Snack

Fifth Grade Main Lesson (Includes academics, art, extras and 10 min. read aloud.  Second grader helps with toddler.)

Lunch

Rest Time

Fifth Grade Extra Lesson /  Second Grade Independent Reading

Spanish (M,W 5th grade; T,TH 2nd grade) / Handwork (T,TH 5th grade; M,W 2nd grade)

Fifth Grade Independent Reading/ Second Grade as needed

Our days are longer this year, but the flow feels good.  (Granted we’ve only completed two days, and all schedules are subject to change…)

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The challenge for me on our first day was making it special. We are using almost the same rhythm we used last year, so I had planned to just plop right back into academics.  I’m glad I had sudden inspiration over the weekend to slow down, review the “rules,” and do something enjoyable. So, for fun yesterday we made a “Recipe for Success.”  (I pinned a little snack mix on Pinterest a while ago which is where my idea came from, but since we are at home I thought it would be much cuter to make something together.)  I got a cookie recipe that looked really good and changed all of the ingredients to words that I wanted to emphasize in our homeschool time together.  Then I labeled all of the ingredients with their new words.

The recipe looked like this:

Recipe for Success

3 kids (eggs were labeled “kids”)

1 cup love (sugar was labeled “love”)

Etc.  You get the idea.  It was really cute.  The kids had fun, even though they pretended to think it was dumb.  The cookies were delicious.

Thanks so much for visiting today!  Leave me a comment or link and let me know what you are up to.

Mrs. Mallard