Full and Furious

Our first week was a success. A few bumps in the road. Some things that needed to be tweaked and we are on our way to our second week! Today is Monday, September 14, 2009 (as I'm getting Kali to write on all her papers). We had a FULL day today. I'm exhausted and all ready to go to bed. Than I realize that I STILL have to make dinner! Don't teachers have cooks? lol Kids are with daddy at Gema's to clean up from the weekend camp out day and expend some energy. I thought I would get on and relax in my blog before going down and folding some more laundry and getting the kids things ready for bed. Here is what our day looked like.

I slept in until 8:30 today, yes I did. Daddy and Nia were up and he had already made her eggs for breakfast. He left for work and the rest of us ate, dressed, brushed teeth, made beds and I then attempted to jump right into school. However, I did get side tracked during "dress time" folding laundry (has to be done sometime right??). Finally got house picked up and we headed up for prayer and bible time (circle time). Great time of prayer and thanksgiving with the kids. Bible memory verse Prov. 3:5 (in short) (still the same as last week). Read Psalm 46: 1-7 and had the kids yelling out and mimicking strength as we recited, "God is our place of safety. He gives us strength. He is always there to help us in times of troubles." They LOVED this. Especially Nia, she had the most fun with it, the other girls were just laughing at her. We than read our story, "Braving the Storm", still demonstrating "trusting in God" and how God takes the things we think are ugly/bad and turns them into blessings. Great story. On to music time!! Nia's favorite today because she got to play the drums. We actually had to give everyone a chance to play drums today. The kids just wanted to beat the heck out of that little drum set..hmm..(wonder what they are thinking while beating that drum)..Anyways we Sang, "He's got the whole world in His hands" again, and a few other bible songs the kids each picked while jamming out on their instruments. Did a few stretch songs/games and than each of the girls got to "lead" the "head, shoulders, knees" song. I was pooped after just this. However, as they say "school MUST go on" (someone said that right??).

At this point I had Nia and Anyssa take a basket down and pick out some toys to play in school while I worked with Kali on the 3 R's (reading, writing and arithmetic). She is doing much better recognizing her alphabet, she knows the basic sounds to the letters, just has a hard remembering the names of a couple of the letters. We then worked on her practicing her writing letter formation and number identification. We used the It's a Match Level 3 math game from Discovery Toys that Gema had gotten for the girls (seemed to be a hit) and than did a few work sheets (Kali loves her math). I'm also working on her writing out her 100's chart. Not her favorite, but I feel she needs this. I took an idea from Elizabeth's Zoo train and we started making an Alphabet train today. We got the engine made and the first three carriages Aa, Bb, Cc. Kali wrote out the letters and tomorrow we will write out all the phonemes of each letter and cut and past pics that represent these sounds in our carriage cars. I figured each day we would get three letter carriages finished. Kali is loving it so far.

Anyssa had a fun filled educational day too. We mostly did "learn as we go" today. I had her counting out her toys and books to pick up. We worked on "size" recognition while she helped me find 3 different sizes for the wheels on our train. I had her work on her color match puzzle on her own and name off the colors (which I don't know why I'm having her do this, because she doesn't have a problem with her colors). Than her and I worked on a 48 piece puzzle together (I'm learning this is her favorite mommy/me time thing to do). I did not get to her letters today, but we will have time to do this tomorrow.

All in all, a busy day with all three girls. Nia was my little helper and she got to do a few puzzles as well. Fun times. Tomorrow I am going to try and get them outside for some exploration. We have a busy school week ahead. Wednesdays and Friday's are our library school times. The girls and I are looking forward to this time. Wednesday is also play group. Take a deep breath, pray and GO!

Here are some great sites I found today. 

Mathematics at About.com

A to Z Phonics.com

   Songs for Teaching