Our first week of school . . .

We "officially" started school on Monday, September 8th. Prior to that, I'd been working really hard on creating an ideal routine for us and we have been working really hard to stick to it. We have not yet had a day where we really did everything perfectly, (don't know if we ever will,) but we are striving. (I do have a potty-training two-year old who empties drawers!)







Here's our "Ideal" schedule:

Morning Routine
5:30 I wake up, personal prayer, scripture study and meditation
6:00 MWF yoga, TThS walk--water garden
7:00 Girls wake-up, family prayer
7:15 Start making breakfast--girls help
7:30 Bless and eat breakfast
8:00 Clear and clean table & kitchen--girls help
8:30 We all brush teeth, make beds and get dressed for day
9:00 Short morning walk
9:30 Snack
9:40 Circle time-- prayer, sing songs, read stories, or play a game
10:00 Put Ceci down-- School time till 12
12:00 Prepare lunch--girls help
12:30 Eat lunch!

This is what we do each day in the afternoons:
Monday--Cleaning and make food day--soup, chili, hummus--girls help
Tuesday--Meet home school group at the park or go on a field trip
Wednesday--3:45-5:15 Art Classes at Armory (starting this week)
Thursday--3:30-4:15 Ballet(starting in October,) Farmer's Market
Friday--Meet other home school friends for a nature walk & painting day

Evening Routine
4:30 Start dinner
5:30 Eat dinner
6:15 Clean kitchen (leave it spotless!) put girls in bath
6:45 Brush teeth, pajamas, Scriptures, stories (Mondays--Family Home Evening)
7:20 Girls IN BED!
7:30 Asleep!
8:00 Craig & I read scriptures and pray together
8:30 -10:00 Mommy & Daddy personal time!!! Read curriculum books--prepare next day's lessons, blog, play guitar, finish projects.
10:00 Go to sleep! (This is the HARDEST part!)

I hope this isn't too much information!! You'll notice that we do our schooling from 10am-12pm. I'll be blogging more later on what we do during those hours--but I just want to clarify that I believe children are learning every minute of the day and that the most important thing is having an established routine that they feel secure in. Some of the most important things they are learning are when they are helping sweep the floor or cut vegetables or just getting along with each other. And I believe their most important learning of all takes place during their free play time while acting out their stories, using their imaginations.






Anyways, so here are some pics from our first week--I didn't take too many because I was so focused on our routine-- but the ones above are the girls on a couple walks--we met some nice kitties. We went to our home school group park day and met up with our friends Tamar and Callista. We also visited Brieanne and her wonderful children (where we get to play with chickens and bunnies!) and we made a DELICIOUS apple crisp! Perfect because we've been talking about harvest and apples.

I'll try to blog soon what we did in our second week of school and our family activities too! :)