And we made it!

Week one is done!  I learned a lot this week - both good and bad! - but overall I'd say the week was a success.  I had a good time, the kids had a good time and I think they just might have learned a thing or two!

Here is our Friday.  Our friends woke up sick, so they didn't get to spend the day with us.  We were bummed, but we plan to see them one afternoon a week for the next couple of months, so the grief was short-lived.  :)

Braxton matched up some ducks.  It's part of a new set of material we're going to be using.  More on that later.

Adeline has a pretty easy Friday.  We do a quick review of the things learned Monday-Thursday, then we work through a reader.  The first two readers are wordless.  Her homework for this weekend is to "read" the book to Daddy and complete one shapes worksheet on her own.

Adeline made some patterns in math.

For the final reading of The Kissing Hand, Adeline "read" the book to her brother.  She did really well!  Isn't that a sweet picture?

So here's what's brewing in my planning process.  I thought it would be easy to pull something together quickly for Braxton's one-on-one time.  And it probably should be.  But the truth is, the rest of our day takes so much of my time and energy that I've slacked on his activities and yank something out of our cupboard as a last minute "plan."  So after downloading some of the freebies from Confessions of a Homeschooler, I decided to pay the $20 and get the Letter of the Week curriculum and K4 curriculum.  I'm going to add it to what we are already doing.  I'm going to implement a workbox strategy to our day.  I think it will make better use of our time.  I have a break for Adeline planned in to the morning, but all week she spent her break sitting with Braxton and me wanting to do what he was doing.  So Braxton's one-on-one time is going to transform into Workbox Time.  I ordered storage carts to use as the workboxes (another Confessions idea!).  Each kid will have one stack of ten boxes.  I probably won't use all ten boxes this year, I'm thinking 5-6 a day.  They will be filled with activities from the Confessions curriculum (and other stuff I have around here) that supplement what we are doing in our curriculum.  The activities will be things that I can help the kids get started on, but they should be able to do on their own.  The picture above of Braxton matching the ducks is an example of a Confessions activity.  I'm looking forward to starting the workboxes.  I think the kids will really like them!  The carts will probably arrive next week, so we'll do workboxes sans boxes until then.  :)

I'm also going to start reading Matilda to Adeline after the other two go down for naps.  A friend has been reading a "big" book with her homeschooled son and they both really enjoy the time.  I haven't decided how long/how much we'll read each day, we'll just see how it goes.

Whew!  And that's a wrap!  Monday is just around the corner and I have much to do.  I have a fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom project in the works, but that's a post for another day!