Our first week of homeschooling  (last week) went rather well!  The first couple days were a little rocky just like our trial week back in February.  But once we got into our groove and once I figured out my curriculum and lessons, etc we were running like a well oiled machine for the most part!  Here’s a few highlights:

-We set up an obstacle course around the house for break times that grew each day.  We added a floor of the house to it each day.

-Instead of sitting still at a desk, Reagan got to run and jump around while he answered math questions.

-The boys decided on their own to  memorize several of the extra verses of the primary song Book of Mormon Stories and begged to sing it every morning.

-For science this week, the boys studied an animal of their choice.  We checked out books at the library on Cheetahs and Peregrine Falcons and learned all we could about them.  Then we typed them into Google and watched all the fun videos we could find of these beautiful and amazing animals.  I loved watching and learning right along with them!  Cade was so excited about science this week he was literally running and jumping all over the house.  Here’s a picture of his little page that he wrote for his science binder.

-And the biggest highlight was our first ‘Friday field trip’ to a creek that runs through one of the parks in our town.  The boys have been begging to go fishing here for weeks, so they made their own fishing poles with sticks, string and some bent paper clips and we headed to the park. 

I chose to ignore my irrational fears that someone  would stop us and demand to know why my children were fishing (FISHING!) instead of sitting in a classroom somewhere or that Child Protective Services would show up and haul me away.  It’s striking how strong societal norms and the need for conformity really are.  I’m told it gets easier with time, this being a rebel.  And we had a great time! We hardly saw any fish and none were caught, but we saw some great animal tracks and bugs galore and Levi had a blast running through the creek  in his galoshes.  It was the PERFECT thing for little boys to do.  They wandered all over the creek, climbed the banks, looked at rocks and bugs and it was just wonderfully NATURAL!  And as people walked past us on the path I just smiled, looked them in the eye and said, “Hello!”

Tying the worm on the hook.

  Deer                                             Raccoon