First week of school

Because we homeschool, people always ask me if we follow the public school calendar or if I give them a summer break, so I decided to answer that question on my blog. Last year, we did follow the public school calendar pretty much, but not exactly. This year we decided to try things a little differently. We actually started this week and will go through mid September. We'll take our family vacation then and have a week off from school. Then we'll start back and go through the week before Thanksgiving. We'll take Thanksgiving week off and continue to be off through the new year. We'll start back in January and go through March, where we'll take our Spring Break and then back to school from March til early May and we should be through. This is approximately 180 days.  This is the schedule we have planned on paper at least. Hopefully, this will go well for us. 

As I stated earlier, we started back this week. This kids did great and were actually very excited to be starting back. I got them up at 7:00 and fed them breakfast and they were all ready to start by 7:45 each morning. I hadn't planned on starting til 8:00 but who am I discourage them from wanting to learn. I'm well aware that the excitement will calm a bit and I'll have a harder time getting them up but for now, I'll take it.  We are using Heart of Dakota curriculum this year as well. So far, I love it and the kids do too. My oldest even said he is enjoying it, which is a huge deal, since he's not a school person. We got done every day this week by 11:00. I think the latest we went was 10:45 a.m. That's not too bad and everyone has the rest of the day to play. Here are some pictures I took this week of them. 

First Day of School 

First Day of School 

First Day of School

First Day of School

Driving his cars on the letter A

Sneaking a Froot Loop

Gluing Froot Loops on the letter A

Cutting out her cross

working on her cross collage

Working hard

Coloring his Shield of Faith

P.E. (LOL)