Thursday, August 1, 2013

School Days

Today was the first day of the school year in our local public schools. I guess that means Gavin is now technically a kindergartener. If he had gone to public school and ridden the bus he would have gotten on the bus at 7:50 and gotten off the bus at home at 4:30. This is what we did instead:

8:30am: Woke up after a full night sleep, with no fussing to go to bed last night because he was able to stay up till he was actually tired at 9pm. I'm recovering from a sinus infection and still not feeling great, so Gavin happily ate cheerios on the couch and watched "Wild Kratts" on tv (it's educational!)


Then he got to hang out with Jake until it was time to meet our friends at McDonalds for lunch and play time from 11am till about 2pm. When we got home he took a shower to wash off the McDonalds playplace cooties, then had some watermelon and built a castle on minecraft. Then we watched a phonics rap on youtube and a video with a song about the 7 continents. We then played with this map, learning the continents using super heroes and star wars guys:

(notice the map is not colored. Gavin rarely enjoys coloring, so I don't make him do it - why force a kid to do school stuff he hates if it's not important?)
 and looked at animal flashcards talking about which continent each animal lives on:
He's taking another snack and play break right now. Later we'll read some books and play a math game. Also this week we've been learning about money, biomes, and clouds. Per Gavin's request we've also learned about biplanes and tornados. Gavin's favorite subject is science, so we spend a lot of time on that. We made a tornado in a bottle yesterday. As we drive around town Gavin enjoys pointing out different types of clouds and we talk about what they are called and which ones rain comes from. We also talk about which biome would have the different types of trees we see. I am really enjoying homeschooling. It's not easy, but so worth it.