A new school year!

Since classes began at Bucknell today (Paul only has a lab on Mondays from 1-4), I decided August 24 would be Ian's first day of Kindergarten and Nadia's first day of second grade. If it were up to me, Ian's schoolwork would have taken 30-45 minutes. We started a Kindergarten science book, did spelling (lesson 6 of level 1) on the whiteboard, and he did some cutting to work on his scissor skills. I intended to do a little reading, but this boy is on a mission to earn more Legos so we did a LOT of reading today. He has completed 35 of the 51 lessons in the Level 2 reading curriculum as of today. Whew.

I know at some point I will need to homeschool all three at the same time, but I am trying to give them one-on-one time as long as possible. This morning I worked with Nadia individually for 2 hours. During that time the boys played together (yay!), and Nadia did math, spelling, handwriting, piano, science, and social studies. Then while she did reading and art, Oliver had 30 minutes on the iPad, and I did schoolwork with Ian. Hopefully this schedule will continue to work for us this

year. Once I start doing activities related to various countries, I plan to include Ian and Oliver in many of those (particularly the picture books, crafts, music, dvd's, and cooking). I gave Nadia a geography pretest today, and she has a LOT to learn this year as this far she could only identify two countries on the maps - the USA and Brazil (thanks to Uncle Maurice having lived there the last 3 years).

I took pictures like I did last year. Nadia still wants to be an astronaut and artist. Last year Ian kept vacillating between police officer and fire fighter, but this year he has been talking about working for the Lego company, which is very logical given how many hours he spends almost every day playing with them. At some point I will start teaching Oliver his letters, but for now I'm focusing on Nadia and Ian. He gets to enjoy most of the field trips though. We have quite a few field trips scheduled for the next couple of months including seeing Joseph in Lancaster, the science museum and children's museum in Baltimore, a few field trips at Camp Susque, Steamtown National Historic Site, and much more.

Gymnastics resumed for Nadia today, and the boys will have their gymnastics classes on Tuesday nights while Nadia is at soccer practice with Daddy. The gym class on Friday mornings, AWANA on Wednesday nights, and kid's choir on Sunday nights will all be starting back up in the next couple of weeks. Here's to hoping the four of us have a great school year together!