Tonight was the opening night of Awanas for the year. My girls were more than excited; they were ecstatic! Before we left, they were outside playing with their neighbor friends. Next thing I knew, my girls were inside begging me to take them as well. Since my hubby was staying at home, I figured I had enough room to put them in the van. So, I agreed so long as it was okay with their folks. A few minutes later I had added two children to my troop.

Awanas went great. My second grader was in Sparks with her friend and the other two were in T&T with their friends. My youngest was in Cubbies, which was where I began the evening. I sat in for the first few minutes, to make sure she would be good-tempered for them (she's kind of unpredictable when in 'non home' settings). She seemed to be fine, so I headed out in the hall to the sign-in table to sit and do some lesson planning for school tomorrow. It wasn't long before I heard her familiar cries. Ugh. I went inside and sat with her the rest of the time, to keep her calm. I was able to sneak out during 'instrument time' for about five minutes. I was then back in there having her sit on my lap since she refused to participate. On a good note, I got to sing some songs that I haven't sung since I was in VBS as a kid! ha! ha! At the last segment of classtime, she sat in her chair and colored so long as I was sitting within sight of her. I just did the rest of my lesson planning while sitting in there.

The rest of my girls LOVED their Awanas time tonight. The older two got their new Awanas books and have stashed them in their school cubbies at my desk. My second grader will need a little more help in getting her book, since she cannot read sufficiently enough yet to read the verses on her own to memorize and recite. So, I will have to work with her a lot until next week so she can obtain this goal. Nonetheless, she had a wonderful time too! All in all, it was a good evening back in Awanas. I am so happy that they love going so much!

Our new school year officially began yesterday! It didn't go quite as smoothly as I had planned, since the girls had to share books for the reading segment, among other inconveniences. The library still hasn't gotten the books in that I need for my second grader. Ugh. This evening I picked up the double copies of two of the other books we are using, so the older two will each have a book to read from.   I've also given our four year old a couple of preschool pages to do each day...just some coloring stuff. She also wants to keep practicing her letters, so we've done that. She's doing good.

Despite the little hit or misses with the smoothness of our day, the girls are really enjoying it. They even got to use their new Encyclopedia Brittanica Home Edition. It's awesome! I put it in 'elementary' mode and it was very easy for the girls to navigate. We did our map study and dictionary work on there too. Lovin' it! Afterwards, the girls were looking up all kinds of information, videos, games on there to learn. I've never seen a bunch of kids so excited to learn ANYTHING on a computer. They can even do math, science, and social studies with it. Pretty nifty! Great investment!  Our day yesterday and today took approx. 4 hours each. So I'm thinking that will be our norm for school...depending if we have science or art projects to complete.

This Thursday will be our challenge day to see how well we can integrate co-op and our own homeschool schedule.