1st week of school

We started school after labor day and it has been such a blessing! Here are a few pictures of our days and a breakdown of our daily schedule:

We start our day with devotions, the pledge of allegiance, prayer, song time, calendar and attendance. We go over the rules and talk about the goals for the day. Then we move over to the office room where their desks are set up and we begin lessons for the day. Here is what our rough schedule is:

9:20-10:00 Language Arts

10:00-10:15 Bible Lesson

10:15-10:30 Snack and Stretch

10:30-11:15 Math

11:15-11:45 Science/History/Manners/Sign Language/Piano (we rotate one a week)

11:45-12:00 Song time, end of our school day

12:00 Lunch

12:20-1:00 Free Play

1:00-3:00 Naps

We use Lifepac by Alpha and Omega Publications for Math and Language Arts. I am loving it so far. It is SO simple to follow yet has ALL the extras you could ever think to include in a lesson. So yea, I guess that's the summary of the first week. I'll try to have a weekly summary posted every Friday so you can see what else we get into. Have a great weekend everyone!

Why Homeschool

As most of you know by now we have decided to home school our daughter Emily for kindergarten this year. While some received the news with enthusiasm and great words of encouragement there were still many others who were less than pleased to hear about our choice. It shouldn't have surprised me the opposition that we faced from some, and honestly it shouldn't have made me skip a beat, but it did. It's hard to watch others' negative reactions to a choice we made in the best interest of our daughter. I wrestled for a long time about even writing this post because I feel like I really don't need to explain my reasons to anyone. Family and friends who love us should understand we want what is best for our children and that should be enough. And that's just it. That's what finally convinced me to put this to paper.

~Why are we homeschooling?

~ The answer: beyond a shadow of a doubt we are convinced that this is the best choice for our daughter Emily this year. It's that simple.

Are there a whole bunch of reasons behind our big decision? Absolutely. But you know, none of those really matter. What does matter is that we have been entrusted a beautiful little life (three now to be exact!) and we believe we are making well informed decisions in the best interest of our children to allow them to grow to their fullest potential.

~Pictures of our classroom and our full first week coming on Friday~