One week down...

Seamus woke up this morning asking what we'd be doing for school today.  As I groggily attempted to explain that it was a Saturday, that we didn't have any school work planned for the weekend, his face fell.  "But I love kindergarten!  I really, really, really want to do some school today!"  Who'd ever expect to hear that from their child on a Saturday morning?!

So...some school work was done.  BOB books and word searches, math manipulatives, more books about our solar system, and an art/science experience - creating Neptune & Uranus with the wet-on-wet watercolor technique.

Adding Neptune to his model of the Solar System.

We're one school week into our homeschooling experience...and so far, so good. We did switch up our phonics curriculum only two days in.  Hooked on Phonics was a bust - Seamus hates it, and I can't say that blame him.  Something about the sing-songy yet frustratingly repetitive narration on the CD had us both bored to tears.  So I've returned that to the library (thankfully it wasn't a curriculum I'd purchased!) and will be going another route.  I have the first set of BOB books, and we'll be using Progressive Phonics as well.  I'm also debating either ordering the Explode the Code workbooks or signing him up for the online version, but ultimately decided to hold off for a bit and see how he does with what we have right now.

Seamus has been interested in learning about outer space, so we focused on learning about the planets this week.  Each day we focused on one or two specific planets.  It's so much fun to listen to your five-year-old explaining the difference between gas giants and terrestrial planets, or how Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, or that Saturn's rings are made of rocks and ice, that Mars has polar ice caps like Earth, and that Venus has massive active volcanoes.

We've been done with all formal school work well before lunch, so we've had plenty of time for various adventures this week:
A nature hike with friends who are also homeschooling.
A trip to the zoo.
A walk downtown to our local library, followed by a long playground visit.
A lazy afternoon spent collecting, observing, and releasing hermit crabs at a favorite local beach.

Unexpected biology lesson - the behavior and habitat of hermit crabs!

I think we could very quickly get used to this.  In fact...I think we already have!

Day One: Let the Adventures Begin!

After weeks of counting down, we began our homeschooling journey today.
Seamus is "officially" a kindergartner!

Today went unexpectedly well.  I was expecting there to be hiccups (and there was - midway through the morning Declan threw a record-breaking tantrum).  Honestly, I'm expecting hiccups all through the week - and possibly weeks - to come.  We're all going to be finding our footing, developing a new rhythm, and naturally there will be missteps along the way.  But seeing that this was our first day, I'm pleased with how it went.  

The only formal curriculum that we're doing is for math, phonics, and handwriting.  I chose Math U See (Seamus is going to be doing the Primer level), Hooked on Phonics, and Handwriting without Tears.  Everything else is going to be touched upon through either unit studies that I'll pull together around his current interests or literature-based units from the Five in a Row curriculum.

Over the summer, whenever we'd talk about the upcoming school year, Seamus would insist that the first thing he wanted to start learning about was outer space.  So I spent the last several weeks gathering  resources - requesting piles of books and several videos through inter-library loan, and scouring Pinterest for project ideas.  Of course...Seamus had quite a bit of input which is influencing our plans this week.  

He decided that he wants to create a model of the solar system, and focus on a different planet each day.  I thought we'd start with Mercury, seeing that it's the closest to the sun.  He had another idea.  We need to start off with Earth, "since we live here, after all."  So, Earth it is.  

Referring to a photo while painting Earth.

We've also been involved in a postcard project, which we began participating in last spring.  As postcards have arrived, we've been taping them to the wall around our map, stretching a length of string from the postcard to it's point of origin.  The photo below is out-of-date - we're pretty much out of wall space and at last count have received over eighty cards!  

Since we're rapidly running out of room, Seamus decided that he was ready to start taking older cards down in order to make room for new ones.  Today we began a new project, and sat down to create a state "book" (three-ring binder) consisting of maps of each state and our postcards.  I'm hoping we can really focus on one state a week, in order to stretch this through the entire school year.  I'd love to wrap each week up with cooking a dish traditional to the state/region that we're studying.  

The start of his State Scrapbook

All in all, day one went better than I could have hoped!