I can hardly believe that it has already been a month since my last post. As promised in my last post--yet, arriving in a less timely fashion than I intended--here are some pictures of Brinley that I took during her first couple of weeks of school. I know that the idea of homeschooling is foreign that many of you so hopefully these pictures will give you a better idea of what our days and her schooling consists of. I initially thought that we would school all five days during the week. However, in order to ease both Brinley and myself into the schooling atmosphere I've decided to school 3 mornings per week--Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That leaves a couple of mornings for us to concentrate on 'life skills' as I like to call them--grocery shopping, errand runs, baking, visits to the park, etc. Also, you'll probably notice from the pictures below that I try to move her around throughout the morning. I *try* not to keep her in the same spot for two activities in a row, but sometimes it just can't be helped. We do go over our morning board (explained more below) in the floor, but then I might move her to the table to to a writing or coloring activity, then back to the floor for a more hands-on activity and then to her white board to end things for the day.

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Brinley's First Day of School Tuesday, September 6, 2011

(Please excuse the bruise in the middle of her forehead...she and her push-buggy and a run-in with each other the day before.)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am using curricula from Homeschool Creations, 1+1+1=1 and ____. To start off each morning we go to our morning board and go over things like the weather, the day of the week as well as the date, what season we are in, our memory verse that is based on whatever letter of the alphabet we are studying that week as well as the Pledge of Allegiance.

'A' is for apple tree. Brinley coloring an apple tree and tracing letter 'A'.

It was her idea that the tree had both red AND green apples.

Brinley working a letter 'A' lacing card. These are made by printing out a large letter on cardstock, laminating it and using a hole-punch to create the holes.

All done!

Next activity was to put together a 6-piece puzzle. This was a puzzle that I printed out on cardstock, laminated and then cut into separate pieces. The recommended was to start with six, but Brinley breezed through that just by reading the sentence that was on it and putting it in order by that. So, I guess from here on out I'll be cutting them into 9 pieces or maybe even 12 to be more of a challenge for her.

The last activity for her first day was to match colored magnets to each of the the white circles on the picture.

To start off on Wednesday, Brinley worked on a cutting practice worksheet.

Next she used Do-A-Dot markers to stamp an uppercase and a lowercase letter 'A'.

All done!

Matching the number card to the number of apple seeds on the apples.