First Day of School

Today started our first day of school for the 2012-2013 school year.  Ella started second grade and Leah started kindergarten.  My desire is to blog in a little bit of detail about our homeschool experience in order to help others who may choose that as well.  I will probably not be able to as much as I desire to as there are only so many hours in a day and I have to priorititize :)

Either way, we use My Father's World ( www.mfwbooks.com ) curriculum and absolutely love it!!!  I have used it since Ella was in kindergarten and grow to love it more each year.  They have great forums to gather ideas from and I have found many other homeschool blogs devoted specifically to MFW so I'm not sure I will offer anything new, but you never know!

Today was a great day!  One of my favorite days of homeschool that I remember over the last two years.  Ella started Adventures which will focus on American History.  Bible focus will be on the different names of God.  Of course there is science, spelling, english, math, etc but those two things (bible and history) make the foundation.  (BTW, we started using Alpha Omega's Horizons for math and I LOVE it!)  One thing not included in the instructor manual is vocabulary so I selected 10 words from her history and science lessons this week as well as her reading book.  I plan to do this weekly as we go along.  One of the things in the package this year include a new Bible.  She was sooo excited and to watch her sit down and read it on her own was precious.

The pictures below are from snack time.  It recommended a patriotic red, white, and blue snack.  We had some strawberries, white almond bark, and blue sprinkles on hand so that's what we did and the kids loved it.

One thing I'm excited about is something probably most homeschool mom's do every year, but I'm just now doing....making spiritual objectives for each child for the year.  I've read about it and heard others talk about it, but never determined it for myself.  Well, I have now.  And, I'm super excited about it and am praying that God would grow my children more toward Him over this coming year.  

So, nothing new and earth shattering today, just excitement over what this school year will bring!  I am so grateful that God has allowed me the opportunity to teach my kids at home and though we've said we will take it year by year, I pray He would allow us to continue just like this year after year :)