School Days

*Blogger made my night! I can choose more than 5 pictures at a time AND they upload in the order that I choose them!!!! Amazing! *

Aliza is 12 days in to her first year of school. Her first day of school was August 15. My thought was to do 1 day the first week, 2 or 3 days the second week and then a full 5 days last week. Well, the first week she wanted to do school as soon as she woke up every morning so we did 4 days of school the week of August 15. 

Aliza was particularly excited about Math. She is good at math and she couldn't wait to learn about numbers. When we started the lesson, she had a paper in front of her turned upside down. After the lesson on circles I asked her about the paper. She showed it to me. On it she has written 3, 3, 6 and 4, 4, 8. She said, I know plus 3 plus 3 is 6 and plus 4 plus 4 is 8. Suffice to say, math has yet to challenge her.

Here's a look at school at our house:

First day of school.

Doing worktext. Since the first day, Aliza has learned to hold her pencil correctly.

Preparing the snack of the week. I figured since it was her snack, Aliza should put the batter in the cups.

A unit on firefighters and we made fire fighter hats.

Josiah working hard. Cutting and gluing.

Paper chains to learn about patterns.

Practicing patterns. It was at this point that Aliza started making more complicated patterns on her own than the examples. We put away the DVDs for a while.

I have gone through my own range of feelings these last 3 weeks. School has added a whole new dimension to our lives. I feel like I have worked harder than I ever have before. Some days I feel like all I accomplished was running circles keeping children satisfied. Other days have felt productive. Last Wednesday I had the "my daughter is in kindergarten" cry. I didn't leave her at school, but I needed to cry over my child growing up and reaching this milestone. I also realized that I either "do" school or Aliza goes to school. We aren't just playing school for the fun of it. That was a reality check and maybe for a few days I felt trapped in this new phase of life.

I can confidently say that is the best thing for our family at this time in our lives. That is a good feeling.

I don't want this blog to be all about school. I'd like to share exciting milestones--like this week Aliza will get her first reader with sentences for her to read! But I also don't want to put Aliza in a position where she could be judged by others on her progress. Back to that balancing act of life!