Aug. 29, 2009 - Our First Week of School

The 2009-2010 school year has officially started at Living, Learning, Reaching Homeschool.  LLR Homeschool originally stood for "Little Learning Rabbits"  Homeschool, a name chosen by my oldest when she was in 2nd grade.  Our mascots were her hand drawn pink & blue bunnies.  Now that she's starting college and the youngest is starting middle school, we decided to find another name that fit our initials.

Monday
Kate had her first day at Lewis & Clark Community College.  This first semester, she'll be taking English, Math, and American History.  Everything that she takes this year will also be applied to her Junior year of high school.  The admissions staff at the college has been very nice.  They even stretched the minimum age by a couple of days for us.  (Kate turned 16 two days after school started.)  I didn't get any photos of the first day .  College students just aren't too receptive to posing for Mom with their backpacks in front of the school!  Monday went well despite the usual first day confusion.  Only one of her classes was in the right room.  Another class had gotten too large & was split into two classes at the last minute.  We're having unusually wonderful weather for this time of year, so all the extra walking around campus wasn't too bad.

Tuesday

Luke and I started school on Tuesday.  We jumped right back into our workbox schedule with no problems.  I did try to keep the work load a little light this first week.  Luke had 7 boxes his first day:
1 - All our SL Read Alouds
2 - 45 minutes of Aleks Math
3 - Current Events, I picked two articles out of the Sunday paper - one national and one international.  He read the articles then marked where they were on a map.

4 - All About Spelling, we did a review of the rules that he learned last year.  I had planned to continue review all week, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well he remembered them.
5 - SL Language Arts - This was just some cursive copywork.  He hasn't done much writing over the summer, so we'll slowly transition from copywork to dictation.

6 - Story of the USA, chapter one - I'm breaking each chapter into two days.  The first day we'll read & discuss it together.  The second day, he'll look back over the reading and do the workbook questions.
7 - Reading - the first chapter of Om-kas-toe

Wednesday
Kate turned 16!!  When I picked her up from school, we went straight to the DMV for her driving test.  There were several people ahead of us, so there was an nerve wracking, hour-long wait for her name to be called.  For her first solo drive, she took Luke to Wendy's for lunch.  She didn't want a big party.  After dinner, we had cake and blew out 16 candles.

Luke's boxes today:
1 - Pirate worksheet - a fun word puzzle
2 - 45 minutes of Aleks Math
3 - Current Events, He found pictures online to illustrate the articles and added them to our current events bulletin board.

4 - Make a Hero Card for Vitiamin A, This is a free vitamin study that I found online
5 - Story of the USA, chapter 1
6 - Listen to a Bible Songs CD

Thursday
Thursday's Boxes:
1 - Morning exercises
2 - Growing With Grammar - We just continued where we left off last year.
3 - Art - We read about Leonaro DaVinci in "Lives of the Artist" and then found examples of his artwork online.

4 - All About Spelling - We started on the next level.
5 - New Testament Poster - put the New Testament books in the right order
6 - Apologia General Science - We're using the lapbook from Knowledge Box Central.  Today was two journal entries and an experiment.

Thursday afternoon is Piano & Guitar lessons.  Now that Kate has her driver's license, I get to stay home & clean (or not) while they go to lessons!

Friday
This was Kate's first time driving herself to school and back.  I did, at least, get to take a photo of her return.

Now that we have 3 drivers, I had to get another car licensed & titled which meant another hour at the DMV and a late start for school with Luke.  We still managed to get 10 boxes done before Dad got home from work. (barely)
1 - SL Read Alouds
2 - Aleks math
3 - Current Events - He used mapquest to find out how far it was from our house to the locations of the news articles.
4 - New Testament Poster
5 - Story of the USA, chapter 2
6 - Reading - Om-Kas-toe chapter 2
7 - Find a carrot recipe online and make a shopping list - This is to go along with our vitamin study: a recipe high in Vitamin A.  You can see his choice here: Curried Carrot Soup  We'll probably try it over the weekend.
8 - SL Language Arts - a lesson in Active v.s. Passive Voice
9 - MadLibs online
10 - All About Spelling

I'm happy with our first week.  We'll gradually ease into a little more work each day, but we managed to get through at least one week with no frustration or complaining.  Kate has run into several people at college that she already knows & is definitely happy with her new driving freedom!  Now that Luke is considered a middle-schooler, he's going to Youth Group Activities at church and getting more involved with Boy Scouts.

I have a long list of homeschool blogs that I try to visit each week.  If you're a blogger, please keep posting.  I just love looking at everyone else's ideas.

• Post A Comment!

Comments

Aug. 29, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by crossrhodes

It's good to see things are coming along with the workboxes. I like the way you have things set up. We've been using ours for 4 weeks now. I wish I had known about them sooner :)

Thanks for stopping by my blog.

• Permanent Link

Sep. 19, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous

It was fun to read how your homeschool name evolved. Looks like you have a fun year planned. The workboxes look great.
Jodi

• Permanent Link

| Previous | Home | Next |