First Day Back to School 2013

It's a good thing I said yesterday that I didn't plan to do much, because.....we didn't do much. : )

The first thing we did was dig into Jacob's Algebra. I explained the basics, let her look through the book, and we did the introduction, which was a series of number puzzles that I had her do on our whiteboard. Both girls enjoyed the puzzles, and we actually spent over an hour doing them. Mr. Jacob's did well using these for his intro to algebra. After doing several of them, he showed how to use symbols to figure them out, no matter what the number. So Colleen was doing algebra, and not even realizing it. She enjoyed them so much, she wrote down the steps so she can amaze and stump her friends with these little puzzles.

Emily then proceeded to take over the whiteboard, and drew, "a ship with a bottel in it" [sic], and a castle.

When I was able to get the whiteboard and markers away from Emma, I showed her her new spelling book. (MCP's "Spelling Workout"). I "pre-tested" her on her first list of words, which she got all right. She always aces all the words IN the spelling book. It is transferring them into real life application where she goes horribly wrong. She was sad, because I didn't get her the 5th grade book, or even the 4th grade. She is in level B, which technically would be second grade words. I anticipate breezing through level B, though, before summer is over, and moving on.

Emily then asked if she could use one of her new spiral notebooks I'd bought for school, for writing in. I'm all for writing, so I said she could have it. Now I am short one notebook for school, but that's ok. She then decided the cover was too "plain", and drew, colored, and cut out a rainbow to tape on the cover so that it would be "beautiful". If left to her own devices, this child would do nothing but art all day long. I am guessing the stuff between the rainbow and the grass is rain.

We then went on to U.S. History. Prior to our break we had left off at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. We began talking about the writing of the Constitution. We will finish this chapter, and then my daughters will branch off in their history studies. Colleen has a 9 week course in nothing BUT the Constitution, and Emma will be doing Abeka's, "Old World History and Geography." I went ahead and went through the first-day-introducing-new-books of Emma's OWHG, and we got sidetracked looking at pictures, and discussing places.

That's it. Somehow that took us about 3 hours total, and we didn't really DO much, but it was a nice ease-back-into-school-day. I kind of like those days, where they can take their time, and not be rushed through several subjects. Unfortunately, most days aren't as relaxing.