First Days of School

School is back in session here at the Mathews home!  And oh, my, the kids may not be loving it, but I AM!  I love structure, I love schedules, I love being productive.  Summer included none of those things I love (though I love it in it's own way, of course). 

 

As a teacher, I get the blessing of having the same students as I had last year :)  They are just older now and still growing.  Meet my class:

 

 Petite is in K-4.  K for her first name, 4 for her age, though she's in denial about being four.  Three is her favorite number.  She loves Minnie Mouse more than anything, as you can see by her dress and her painting.  She also loves to be read to, will draw on every sheet of paper available to her, and complete a coloring book in one sitting. 



Mister is fourth grade this year.  He's a budding magician, inventor, Lego Master builder, and quite a few other things interest him as well. In fact, we never quite now what he's going to ask to do or what sense it makes, like digging a giant hole in the backyard, but we know the Lord is really up to something with Mister and we're blessed that God entrusted him to us.

 Brown-Eyed-Girl is in third grade this year. She still loves animals of every kind and art is her favorite subject in school, except for reading.  She's a free-spirit and lets her paintbrush go wherever the mood takes her. In the case of her back-to-school painting, she went through about 23 coats of paint and ended up with this.  She wants to take a tumbling class and loves Sonic the Hedgehog.

Meet me, in my seventh year of teaching.  I LOVE that I get to homeschool my children.    It's the best and the hardest thing I do.  When I'm not lesson planning, teaching, and taking care of the house, I can be found cooking just for fun, reading just for fun or reading because I'm continuing my own education.  I love finding wonderful used books at Goodwill and yard sales. The UPS man frequents my house because I. love. Amazon. Prime.  Latest purchase today: youth biography on Harry Houdini for Mister and Season Three of Duck Dynasty.  I watch very little television, but two other shows I really enjoy via Netflix are Man,Woman, Wild and Wild at Heart.  I think I'm really British and meant to live in England because I love their classic literature, roses, lavender, rainy days, and Winnie-the-Pooh.  But I don't love tea so much.  Good strong coffee is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

 

Our first two days of school went much better than I expected. Honestly, I just really felt this week would be awful.  Perhaps because I so badly wanted it to be awesome.  Perhaps because no one else was ready to see summer go.  In any case, a family meeting the night before school started seemed to get everyone on the same page and attitudes have been very positive.

 

Just a few fun things we've done so far:  Mister wanted to make a fossil using a recipe found in one of our Kid Concoction books.  He even went out and scooped sand out of our driveway to make the impression in.  We mixed up some plaster of Paris and let it set and voila!

A rather cool fossil (sorry for the sideways photo).  And we just happen to be learning about dinosaurs too. 

This Friday to Saturday evening we'll be celebrating the Sabbath.  Friday night we'll have a feast and really make things special. One of the suggested activities was to make a challah covering for the traditional bread served for Sabbath.  We each made one (minus Petite. Where'd she go?  She never passes up the opportunity to use markers!).

Oh, there she is!  Coloring as usual.  And soon-to-be covered in markers!

It's pretty much sacrilege to serve your kids anything healthy to eat on the first day of school.  Even the strictest vegan, organic, whole-foods homeschooling moms agree with this.  "Happy first day of school! Here's a veggie burger and a salad!"  As Grumpy Cat would say, NO!  For us, it was the special and rare treat of pigs-in-a-blanket for lunch.  Be it known that I do buy nitrate free turkey dogs that are darn good, but there's not much I can do about those pesky crescent rolls in the poppin-fresh can.  Except maybe make the kids try to sound out the names of all those unknown ingredients and call it reading for the day.

Whew- we made it!  Two days down.... 173 more to go.  Can't wait!  There is just so much to learn and so much fun to be had.

Love the ones your with!