First Day of School!

Elijah started Kindergarten today!! I have been really nervous about how it would go for Elijah because we are doing a full curriculum and had to do real study time, and just be all around more structured in our day, but it went great! Elijah woke up before his alarm clock went off which we bought yesterday in preparation for school because I want to be sure we get a good start every morning. We started at 8am. After eating the big breakfast I made, we had some play time, we danced around and stretched while we listened to a CD I have with traditional kindergarten songs. Then we did a bible study for kids. We talked about Cain and Abel today and jealousy. Then we got into our math lesson. Today was simple, we worked on the calendar and writing the date, then counting to 100 which Elijah is a pro at. After that we had a break and went outside and had some races and a snack. The we started our reading lesson. Elijah has been having a hard time with reading so it took awhile. We are using the book, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" We will also be using "Explode the Code" online but our charter school hasn't purchased it yet. Hopefully we will have it ready to go soon. After that we had another break. Elijah played with his legos during all his breaks. He likes to build space ships. Then we did our "Five In A Row" lessons. We read the Story of Ping and talked about ducks and China. I showed Elijah China and The Yangtze River on the world map. He cut out a duck and glued it to a paper and we wrote what ducks eat, and that they hatch from eggs and that they can walk, swim, and fly. So those lessons covered social studies and science. We also talked about what a classic story is and why Ping is a classic so that covered literature. For art we talked about how the illustrator for Ping depicts water and we practiced drawing water. Then we had lunch. For more art I got the art kit I picked up with lots of different colored markers, crayons, oil pastels, and colored pencils. Elijah tends to use just use one or two colors when he does art so I told him his assignment was to use every color on one blank page. He could just put a dot, or a line, anything, it didn't have to be a picture of anything he just had to have every color on the page. He actually struggled with that and kept saying his picture was done but he ended up with a good amount of color. I think we will try that one again. After that he had more play time and then we did "History For Little Pilgrims" which is a Christian history book. We talked about how history is a story which is true and that history belongs to God because he created it. History is "His story". So we talked about creation a little and how we all have a story about us. We talked about his birthday and how our parents have a story that's longer. Then we did a little family tree which branches from Adam and Eve then goes to Elijah's grandparents, then to his parents, then to him. We finished at about 3pm. So it was a really good day and we got a lot accomplished especially since during the breaks I have been organizing meals for a friend who just had a baby. Tonight Elijah will be starting "Kids For Christ" which is the children's choir at church for kids in Kindergarten and up so this will be Elijah's first year with the big kids. They are preparing a show for Christmas. We have the songs they are doing on a CD and we listened to it some today and it is so weird to be listening to Christmas music in August but I like it.