First Day of School

Can you believe my baby boy is in Kindergarten? It seems like only yesterday he was this long skinny baby who had eyes as big as can be taking in the world around him. Well, now he's still long and skinny and is usually wide-eyed reading any book he can get his hands on.

Since we're homeschooling, we are calling our official "first day of school" the day we started our homeschool co-op. The co-op is at a local church and is a wonderful way for Harbin to meet other homeschool kids and learn in a group setting. The structure is a bit different for the older kids (they have 3 periods, 2 classes and 1 PE). Harbin stays in the same class the whole time, but does have a PE time and unit-style lessons. The girls didn't go this week because they are in Chattanooga, but they will have a class of their own as well. The co-op requires that at least one parent serve in some form each period, so I do nursery for 2 periods and am teaching ELEMENTary Chemistry to 2nd and 3rd graders. It's a really cool curriuculum by Pandia Press that utilizes easy hands on experiments to demonstrate complicated chemical principles. I am also using this at home with Harbin and he loves it so far!

At home we are using a curriculum that uses the Bible as it's center. Each unit is devised around a Biblical story or principle and all subjects work around that. For example, in the first unit we are studying buildings and cities. In the Bible we have looked at The Tower of Babel, the parable of building your house on the rock, and the concept of the city on the hill. In science we've been studying soil, rocks, and electricity (letting your light shine!). In geography we have studied the location of Jerusalem and the location of friends and family in relation to us. The focus in Social Studies is on how a city functions- Harbin has had to write a fictional story of how Suwanee came to be, we've looked at important jobs within the city, and we've studied how each person in the city depends on others to keep it running smoothly. Spelling is going well and Harbin doesn't seem to hate handwriting too much. I have found that he enjoys writing letters to people (especially his best friend, Sam, who recently just moved to Missouri). We wil start Math in the next week or so when the book gets here, and I am sure he will enjoy the workbook style and the ability to do it without "waiting for me."

We are working on "decorating" the basement walls with school related posters and projects. I hope to get pics of that soon and will post them when I can!

The mom.