First Day

She came bouncing down the stairs at 7:15 this morning exclaiming "It's the first day of school! Let's get started! I'm ready to learn to read!" (Early for this one who usually isn't up until 8:30!)

**We made a special breakfast: cinnamon rolls

**Did "Table Time" (her words) where she practiced writing upper & lower case A's; she explained to me all about amename's; worked in her math workbook---patterns, sorting & counting. All things she already knows. I had to explain to her that we're practicing & will gradually add things in.

**She began working on her Book About Me

**She wrote the grocery list for me

**We went to the playground & walked the length of a local village

**She and I sat down and made our own princess paper dolls

**Before rest she read some books to Veronica then I read a few to them both

**after rest she wanted to learn about volcanoes & lava so we found a few videos on YouTube

We didn't get to the reading lessons....I promised that would be the first thing we would do tomorrow

It was a very fun, busy day. Right now they both are outside with Daddy running around & I can hear her yelling "it's my first day of kindergarten!" loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear!

Kindergarten Overview

After much discussion & prayer we have decided to homeschool Marie-Therese for kindergarten. The past month we have been brainstorming & organizing & thinking of storage solutions & schedules.

This is my place to keep all our activities & lessons & readings organized.

Our school district doesn't require that we send in a letter of intent for kindergarten nor keep any formal records to hand in at the end of the year. For my own discipline I will be keeping the same records as if I DID have to check in periodically with the district.

This blog will be my journal. To document through list form & pictures what we are accomplishing & working on throughout our days. I also plan to use the hashtag #marietheresedoeskindergarten over on Instagram as a way to document our days.  

At the bare minimum each day I wish to accomplish:

** reading lessons

** some form of writing (copy work, lists, practicing letters & numbers)

** some type of math through workbooks, games, baking, etc.

** read a-louds

Of course there will be so much more as we move through our days: 

** art

** music

** nature observing

** playing with little sister

** baking

** movement

** get togethers with homeschool groups

** religion

** Rhode Island Adventure days (once a month or so)

** and much more

Ronnie is planning on working on civics with her this year, the states in our country with their state flower, song, bird, etc.

I have put together a loose theme for each week...working a month at a time. September is pretty much all planned out. Of course there is room for movement within this plan. If she is interested in another topic, holidays that come up, feast days, etc. 

We have a folder for each day of the week. For next week I have put in the worksheets/ideas/lessons that I am planning on accomplishing each day. I think this will work well, each morning I can pull the folder out in order to see what we have to work on. I can also grab it if we are on the move that day: lessons in the backyard, at Nana's, on the go.

For my own organization I am setting up my own form of a bullet journal. The calendar is glued in ready to fill in our meet up's with homeschool group. The facing page will be my general list page for September. Ideas, books to read, things coming up in future months. 

Each successive page will have the current days date & I plan on writing down as we go along what we are working on or what she is independently doing. As well as keeping track of what day we are on....we have to stick to the 180 days just like the schools. 

At the end of our year I am planning on turning these blog pages into a book. So we will have a documentation of what we worked on for her kindergarten year.