Back to School

As I mentioned in my last post, today was Mara Kate's first day of Kindergarten...at home! We are excited about homeschooling again this year and we've already had lots of fun and it's only the first day!

This morning, before Kane left for work we gave Mara Kate a new back-pack with several new school supplies inside to help make today, her first day of official school a little more special and fun. Even though she is doing her school work at home we wanted her to have a new back pack to put her current school books and work in.

Here are some pictures of some of our morning school activities.

With Daddy before he left for work

Excited about her first day.

Looking to see what was in her new back-pack...she loved the princess notebook we'll be using for spelling words.

My BIG girl....growing up entirely too quickly!

All ready to begin. :)

During story time we are reading a biography together (About Benjamin West, an American artist), so today we learned what a biography was by having Mara Kate gather 5 items that would tell something about HER, just like the book we are reading tells true things about Benjamin West. Her 5 items were: A book, because she LOVES to look at books, A bag of yellow rice, because it's one of her favorite foods, a sheet of paper, because she loves to draw pictures, an ice cream cone (cut out of paper), because she loves ice cream and a game because she loves to play games!

Math time...matching numbers to the corresponding number word.

Writing her spelling words for this week. She did great!

Hard at work...practicing her handwriting.

We also did an activity to learn a bit about geography (and the 7 continents), phonics--reviewed in the book we began last year, history and the first pilgrims to come to America, poetry--we read a poem and talked about it and the Bible verse this week is Psalm 4:6 so we are working on memorizing that as well.

It was a wonderful first day of school and at lunch we talked a little bit about what she learned, what she had fun doing and what was a challenge for her....loving spending this focused time with my girl. :)

Oh, and little sister Evelyn went down for her morning nap about 15 minutes after we started school and slept until 11am, which worked out perfectly. I'm sure naps won't always go that smoothly, but I'm thankful on our first day we had lots of time to work together uninterrupted.

Thank you Lord for the opportunity to teach Mara Kate and watch her discover and learn many new things this year!