First Day of School

Today marks a milestone in my life, oh ya and in Summer's life too because we started school today! I am still getting the feel of it but I have help this time, thanks to a program I found, Time4Learning, I now have some help. Teaching Summer is so easy, honestly, she loves learning and was really excited about starting school.

Of course the day didn't start as I planned, I woke up constipated (thank you pregnancy) and spent a bit of time in the bathroom. I had Summer sit on my bed and watch cartoons while I suffered a bit, but finally we got on track. We had breakfast together at the kitchen table, we got dressed for school, and we were on our way.

We start school each day by looking at the calendar to see what day it is. Then we took our daily blank index color, pick the color we want, and Summer got to choose her word of the day. Any random word. She chose mouse. I helped her write mouse on the index card and then gave it to her with a piece of tape to hang up. I bought these refrigerator daily reminder things that I am using for her performance, every time she does something good, completes a paper or whatever, she gets a sticker. Today she ended up with 4 stickers!

She also writes in her Hello Kitty journal daily. She can write whatever she wants. Today she wrote her name, she wrote "cat" and "dog". She can also draw a picture on her page if she wishes.

After that we worked out of some workbooks. We did the number 1, she had to write it a few times, then she had to write the word "one". We also did some counting where she has to count the pictures and write the numbers out beside it. She is doing so well with her writing, her numbers 1-10 are coming along nicely. Since we were working on the number 1 I went ahead and took out the foam clock and taught her how to tell time. Just the hour times (o'clock). That seemed almost too easy. We did a little addition, added stickers to numbers, I really just went with the flow.

After that we headed over to the computer to start the school preK software. She likes it, I guess we spent at least 30+ minutes on it. We skipped ahead to the PreK2 because it seems a bit harder and she learned about mixing colors. We did the section on mixing colors and for our project I took my ice tray and food coloring and let her see how mixing colors works. It is in the freezer now, as soon as it freezes I will continue using it as a teaching aide somehow.

Overall I am satisfied with how this is going to work, a few hours in the morning and of course the learning never ends throughout the day.

Hopefully I don't wake up constipated tomorrow :o) I guess I will drink more water today, maybe eat a few raisins. The joys of being pregnant ... oh and speaking of my pregnancy, I have less than 13 weeks, which seems like it is getting closer. I bought my first pack of diapers the other day. I have an appointment on Friday, just a normal one I think, oh and I will find out if I passed my glucose test too.

I didn't take any first day of school photos yet because while we did get dressed we didn't brush our hair, so I will try to get some of those later. Until then ...