The first day of school this year fell on Graham's birthday. Don't feel too bad for him; he had an excellent day. Over the summer we had the idea to make the co-op's first day of school extra special day. To do so, we rented out a neighborhood community clubhouse right on the lake.
The weather was delightful, and since all the neighborhood kids were back in school, we had the lake and park to ourselves!
I treated my kids to first day of school/birthday doughnuts.
We spent most of the morning giving the co-op teachers a chance to introduce themselves and their classes and having the co-op kids play team building games.
We have eight returning students from last year and five new students.
Having a set-apart day for them to get to know each other in a beautiful, fun environment was brilliant.
After lunch we hit the water. The co-op kids and my kids kayaked, used the paddle boards, jumped off the dock, swam, and pretty much had the best first day of school ever.
They all relished telling their public school friends about how they'd spent their day. I think we'll have to make this a first day of co-op tradition.
The co-op and my boys had their first official day of school work the following day. Things went great with the co-op, but I can't say the same for our home. We had a doozy of a day. Nellie was a disaster. The boys didn't want to do their work. I was impatient. It was ugly.
Thankfully, things have steadily improved since then (I guess that's a silver lining of having a rough start). Seven weeks in and we've got a pretty decent groove. Bryce and Thane have figured out that if they get up and immediately get started on their independent work, they have lots of free time later on in the day. That's been especially helpful with Bryce.
Another things that's really helped is that now that Nellie is no longer napping (can I just say that again. Nellie is no longer napping! We have no nappers in our home. That has NEVER happened before and it is fantastic!), we have scheduled almost all of our outside-the-home activities for the afternoons. Every day has something fun scheduled that the boys can do if they get their work done and behave themselves. They are super motivated by the carrot at the end of the stick. One week Bryce missed his robotics class because he didn't get his work done. That was a super sad evening, but I doubt it will happen again.
Our Road Trip USA curriculum includes recipes for most of the states we study. So far, we've made Connecticut clam chowder (which was fairly decent, but was more of a soup than a chowder), Delaware crab cakes (Mark and Nell loved them, not so much everyone else), and Massachusetts Boston Cream Pie (which Bryce claims is now his favorite dessert ever).
So far so good. Wish us luck as we try to finish the whole year's curriculum by the end of April in time for our road trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment