Back to (Home)school – Week 1

For at least the last month, Esther and I have both been soooo excited to start back at school! We’ve had 2 and a half months off over the summer while we moved house and I planned out this year of school and had books shipped over, and it definitely feels like time to get back into the swing of things!

On Sunday night, after dinner we gave Esther a back-to-school present and card, played a game together and prayed for her new year of school. We all enjoyed that and I think it will feature as a tradition for future years.

 

I wanted the first day back to be fun and light, so I had planned a surprise day at the beach (take some books, read, walk on the beach, swim...). But when I told Esther in the morning she looked completely crestfallen and asked why we couldn’t start in the schoolroom today! So we started in  on Monday, going at half speed. My plan is to start with just the basics, get into the new routine and gradually add in other subjects as we pick up speed. Also some of our books hadn’t arrived yet, so even my ‘go slow’ schedule had to be pruned back a bit! I’m aiming for full speed by week 3 or 4.

Our schedule:

After breakfast, Esther has half an hour to run around outside and get some energy out. She also has a couple of Brain Breaks through the morning to stretch, dance and go a bit crazy. I’ve realised if we don’t do this, the school day is very quickly derailed! This year we’re starting with 5 minutes of memory work. I’m using a book called ‘Sword Fighting’, which gives a Bible verse to learn each week with a daily Bible study. We’re just doing the memorising for now. Esther has a great visual memory, so this is a good way to start the day with something that plays to her strengths.

Then we have half an hour of maths. Our maths books hadn’t arrived at the start of the week so we played maths games this week instead.

 

This year we’ll be focusing on the Middle East and Asia for History and Geography. I try to weave Esther’s interests into what we do as much as possible, and she had asked if we could learn about Asia this year. As I hunted for homeschool curriculum on Asia for 2^nd grade I found... a big fat NOTHING. So a lot of my time this summer has been spent putting together a booklist and activities on Asia. (This is the kind of thing I could happily spend all day doing!) We’re learning about the Middle East until Christmas, and we kicked off the year with Iran, just because those are the books that had already arrived.

 

For science, Esther has been very keen to learn about the human body, so I decided we would spend a year on that and really get into it. She loves engaging books, and hands-on activities, so (after 3 years of homeschooling Esther!) I’ve finally figured out that as long as I base my curriculum on those we stand a good chance of success. I looked for a premade curriculum that would meet our needs and couldn’t find anything that fitted. Then I found a plan another homeschool mum had made for her son, which was such a God-send. I had to tweak it because Esther’s not so into blood and gore, but it was a great base to work from. This week we’ve been learning about bones. We read, and played a game called Skeletons in the Closet which helped us learn the names of the major bones (and we had a lot of fun playing with the skeletons after too!).

We’ve also been tracking new words we’ve come across on our Word Wall. Looking back over the week’s words they seem a little gruesome! We’ve had abyss, massacre, cartilage, stench, scorn, terror-stricken and vertebrae among others! That’s what you get for reading about a 12^th century trip across Asia, and skeletons.

 

We had Outdoor Hour on Tuesday, and collected some interesting things from the garden to study. Any advice on how to identify what we find gratefully received!

We had a Letter Writing session on Wednesday. Esther wrote a birthday card to a friend’s imaginary little sister called Dorothy. I didn’t get a photo before it went in the envelope!

On Thursday morning, Esther didn’t look too good and asked if we could skip school for the day. She rested and played and we read together a bit. On Friday she spent the whole day in bed and then threw up in the evening. Today she’s totally back to her normal self, and we were able to have friends over this morning. I’m so glad she got rid of whatever it was, and we’re looking forward to cracking on with week 2!