Thoughts on the first week.

We're closing in on the end of our first week of kindergarten, just as summer is beginning for everyone else. Our son knows no difference, so that helps. Lots of people have asked me why we are starting now and not in August or September, like normal people. One of the many things I embrace about homeschool is that you can start whenever you want. It's our lifestyle, so we're kind of always "schooling." We plan to go year-round, which was always a crazy concept to me, but we won't really be going year-round. We will take a break for a family vacation, we'll break for Christmas and dive into a unit study...we'll take as long as we need to in certain subjects, so nobody falls behind...In other words, we're leaving wiggle room for life.

Yesterday, I had an allergic reaction to some berries that I unintentionally ate. I had to lay down for a while to allow the Benadryl to work, so we had to take a break. Our son said, "That's ok, Mom, I'll just learn like ole' George Washington did..." and he went to his little work table and created a timeline, just like we had learned about in history the day before. He began with a sun that was smiling (as he so sweetly pointed out)- that symbolized the beginning of history. In the middle were 3 crosses- one was red to symbolize Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, which was the middle of history. The last picture was a rocket ship and a birthday cake for the end of history. He told me those were important things. Cake is always important.

Something I've learned in this first week is that I need a really good planner. My curriculum came with places to write down my lesson plans for the specific subject, but since I'm using two different types of curriculum (Heart of Dakota and ABeka), I found it difficult to flip back and forth to find what I was going to do that day. I just ordered this wonderful teacher planner on Etsy from Plum Paper and I think it's going to be just perfect. Plus, it let me pick my start month for June, not to mention I got to put my monogram on it :)