First day of school!

Today was our official first day of school. We have a tradition of photographing the first day. Usually we gather all the kids together for a group shot. Since Tommy is now attending school and they started last week, he got his own picture (but won't let me post it). So I went ahead and shot the other two individual pictures as well. Here they are:

After spending much time designing schedules and courses of studiy we finally put it to the test! The hardest part was getting up at 8:00. Although one of the beauties of homeschooling is getting to sleep in, sleeping til 10:00 is not going to happen this year! I was tired of still schooling at 5:00 because we got started so late. So this year that's going to change. The other change is having an order to our day. In the past they could work on whatever they wanted to work on first but I found tthat we would "forget" to do things that way or "save" our least favorite things to the end of the day.

So the plan this year (so far, I'm sure we'll tweak it as the week progresses) is as follows [for Timothy. Annie's schedule is somewhat different]:

8:30 Bible, CC Review

9:00 Math

10:00 Writing/Grammar

11:00 History

11:30 Science

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Piano

1:30 Reading

2:00 Electives (Logic, Music & Art appreciation)

I made an excel spreadsheet for each child and it's in a page protector so they can check things off or at least refer to it. I'm trying to have them rely less on me and more on their own ability to self govern. Let's see how it goes!