Back to School 2015

School is back in session - woohoo!!! Mothers all over America are celebrating as they send the little ones off on the bus and enjoy a quiet house, but for this mama, things are a little different! I'm still super excited that school has started, but all of my little ones are happily learning here at home with me. :) I would never want it any other way! Our second home school year is off to a great start.

We took a summer break from mid-May to mid-August and I was more than ready to jump back in. So were the girls! I reworked the schedule a bit for our second year, scheduling 5-6 weeks of school and then a break for a week (or two weeks at Christmas). This schedule will take us from mid-August to early June. I am thinking I may also implement a little round of "summer school" in July next year. We will see! Too much free time around here leads to too much fighting between the girls and tends to make me feel like I'm losing my mind.

We will have four school days each week this year; Thursday we will not do school as we will be at church all morning for MOPS (for mom), Cubbies (Savannah), and Puggles (Hailey). Savannah will also have one extra-curricular, ballet class, and this year Hailey will also take a dance class (she is signed up for a tap, jazz, and tumbling combo). This year the girls' dance classes are on Saturday, so we don't have to work our school schedule around that.

Last year Savannah was my only little student, but this year both girls are learning! Savannah is doing pre-K and Hailey is doing "tot school." She is basically focusing on colors, shapes, an introduction to letter recognition, beginning number recognition and number concepts, and Bible. This is all stuff that I could teach her without a curriculum, but since I'm already doing ABC Jesus Loves Me with Savannah, I am using the 2-year program for Hailey.

Savannah is doing the 5-year ABC Jesus Loves Me program for all subjects except reading; for reading we are doing the Ready 2 Read program from The Moffatt Girls. (We started this at the end of last year. We are on Level 1, Unit 3 and Savannah LOVES it.) The girls were so excited to get started! (I was, too!)

When did she get so tall and big looking!!

She's really starting to look like a little school girl.

This cutie patootie is just too much!

I wrote a message for them to find on the first day of school

This girl loves animals so much! 

Hailey doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up yet,
but these are some of her favorite things!

We are in our third week of school now and we seem to have found a rhythm. The first day was pretty crazy, but by the second week we were doing much, much better. Hailey doesn't have much interest in the "busy bins" that I so painstakingly put together for her, so that's a bummer, but oh well! She loves to jump in and do what Savannah is doing as much as possible. She will occasionally wander off to play with toys in between activities, but for the most part she really wants to be involved in school. I'll update on our schooling again in a little while and hopefully I'll have more pictures to share then!