First Day of Homeschooling

Ben was so excited when he got up and saw that the room had been decorated, his desk was set up, and everything was ready to go!

We started the morning with the 'hard' work - phonics, reading, handwriting, math; we broke it up by taking the dog for a walk around the block and doing a little play-dough. Things went pretty well... the phonics game was a hit... but he has become SO resistant to phonics practice after his time with the reading teacher at school and the ensuing confusion about letter sounds. He wants to move on but we still does not reliable associate the vowels with their short sounds. We may try moving on but starting every morning with a short-vowel sound drill game.

After a snack we talked about continents and countries, found Egypt on the map, read about the geography of Egypt, looked at a satellite image to see the tan of the desert and the green corridor around the Nile, and labeled our map.

Then we started talking about 'ancient' Egypt. I asked him how long ago he thought ancient was... 15-20 years. So we took class outside. We drew a line in the road using chalk and labeled it labeled it 2000 - the year Ben was born.

Then we decided that each step was 100 years -- how long someone might live. So we walked and marked 1000, 0, 1000BC, 2000BC, 3000BC. We talked about when some pivotal events -- knights, pyramids, books, Greeks, Egyptians, cars, Christ happened on the timeline.

(I am taking the picture at 2000AD -- Ben is the little dot WAY down by the phone pole; he is standing at 3000BC)
Then we came inside and wrote and illustrated a page about what we had studied today.

After lunch we grabbed Nik, got library cards and checked out some more books. We found a new park and spent 2 cold hours at playground. We just had tea and the boys are 'resting' for an hour while I prep for tomorrow.