Our first day of the new school year

This morning at 7:20 a.m. Kylie headed off to 7th grade. We are thrilled that she has her favorite math teacher again this year. She also has 3 of her classes with her best friend Sabrina. I'm happy for her. I hope to get a great report when she returns back home.

At home we began our year by reading. We began 'My Fathers Dragon' for Sam.

Lilly has been beading this morning and made 3 beautiful bracelets. Today was the first day that she actually did the crimping and added the toggles all by herself.

Paige spent time writing in her journal. She is confused by having the freedom to being able to decide how to use her time. She keeps waiting for me to tell her what to do. I'm instead asking her questions and hoping her answers will lead her to learning and activities. I can tell it will take some time before she trusts herself to just 'do'.

Sam choose a letter of the day: 'A'. He made a little booklet where he wrote out several words that begin with A or have A in the middle. He also wrote out two sentences for me. I have these really cool large foam dice. Sam pulled them out and began throwing them and then adding up all of the dots. He was trying to beat his previous 'score'. I didn't even suggest that and it turned into a great math game.

The last couple of hours all of the kids have been at the kitchen table painting with Tempera Paints. Sarah did 4 or 5 paintings with a brush before she realized she could use her hands-aagh! Sam also painted several things-a dead tree with one apple, a red power ranger, a green frog...Lilly has painted several abstracts and an amazing underwater scene. She sprinkled salt on top of the wet paint and it caused these really cool bubbles. She also added air bubbles with white crayon on top of the paint. So cool! Paige is still working on one landscape scene. She has been working hard on mixing colors to get the right sky color.

Paige and I did some research on lapbooking and I found a great site HERE. We decided that since the kids loved working with paper and glue and loved making books, we would choose a subject and make a lapbook. We are actually really excited. I'll print out what is offered and have it if they choose to use it. I think they will because they really like this type of thing.

I'm finding it hard to not dictate how or what we should do. I think that unless I get a fight from them, I'll offer suggestions and ask for certain things to be done? Hmmm...here we go!