School is Cool

Today was the first official day of school.  Things have been working out pretty well so far.  Seth's school area is all decorated and mostly organized.  I'm still tweaking some of the organization things as we go along, but what is organized so far seems to be working well.  The only thing our classroom lacks is some overhead light.  I tried to wire in some track lighting, but another wire has to be pulled from the existing lights to work and we haven't torn that part of the basement ceiling down yet.  :(  The lighting we have works ok, but I would prefer for it to be a little brighter down there.




We start each day talking about the date, weather and about what order Seth wants his subjects to be taught.  Then we will say the Pledge of Allegiance and work on the poem we are memorizing for the month.  I might switch it to a poem every week though because Seth is extremely good at memorization.
 


Then we get right into lessons.  Today we did Math, Science, Art, Phonics and Language Arts.  We also had a welcome assembly with the school.  They do nearly everything online and the assembly was no different.  The school uses an interactive classroom program called Elluminate.  It allows the teacher to talk to the students, the students can talk back or type questions, they can raise their virtual hands, tell the teacher if they are confused or if they understand, they can write on a virtual whiteboard and do problems with the teacher too.  It's a pretty cool setup. 

Math was fast and easy today, so it only took us about 20 minutes.  Seth's favorite subject so far, is Science because it is so hands on.  He has learned how to measure length in centimeters, mass in grams, and today we measured volume in milliliters.  This involved using a graduated cylinder and some water dyed blue, we took common household items (a measuring cup, an ice cream scoop, etc.), filled them up and then poured the contents into the cylinder.  Then Seth had to read the measurement and log his results.  It was pretty fun, but the table was soaked by the time we were done.  Art was all about using lines to draw things.  We talked about the different types of lines (i.e. wavy, zig-zag, diagonal, long, short) and then looked at some famous art work that was drawn using lines.  At the end Seth got to draw his very own picture using different kinds of lines.  In Phonics we reviewed the short o sound, reviewed and spelled sight words, did dictation and then read some sentences.  Language Arts was about writing sentences correctly; making sure the first letter is capitalized and that there is a punctuation mark at the end.  We also reviewed a story we read last week and did some critical thinking about what happened in the story.
 


We started the day at 9:00 and were done by 2:30, that included at least an hour for lunch and about a 15 minute recess before lunch.  So it wasn't too bad time wise.  If we hadn't had the assembly we would have been done at 1:30.  Seth is still supposed to do some reading tonight and I am planning to incorporate that into our traditional, nightly story time.  I also need to figure out how the school's handwriting program works, it's a separate curriculum and I'm not sure what to do with it yet.  I plan to study it tonight after the kids go to bed.    

Seth seems to love the work he's been doing.  We did some last week just to get a feel for things and yesterday (Sunday) he kept asking me if he could do some school work.  I feel so good that I am helping him learn and that he is getting such great one on one time with me as his teacher.
 


I'm still a little worried about what to do with Jacob and Lia while we have class.  Jacob is interested in some of the stuff we are doing and I let him help and mimic what Seth is doing as much as I can, but sometimes having him down there with us is a bit of a distraction for Seth.  Lia has been sick since Friday and is sleeping a lot, so she hasn't been too much of a hindrance so far.  I have some toys next to our classroom area and a portable DVD player so hopefully Jakes and Lia can find something to do while I'm helping Seth.  Jacob will also be attending a "Joy School" two days a week with some neighborhood kids, so that will free up a couple of hours where I can work exclusively with Seth.  Although, the weeks I am in charge of Joy school, will be extra hard instead of extra easy.

 

So that's our first day.  It went better than I could have hoped for and I am excited to see what we will learn about tomorrow!