First Week Back at School

It's our first week back at school after a nice holiday break, and things couldn't be going any better. I sort of adjusted our school schedule to better reflect our lifestyle.  I'm not stressing out about "getting it all done" in any sort of boxed amount of time, rather we are being a lot more flexible and throughout the day we're fitting in "school" as we go about our daily routine.  This approach makes it so much more enjoyable, and learning about all sorts of interesting things is coming quite naturally.  I do have set goals for each day that we try to accomplish in the mornings, then the other school lessons are completed soon after lunch.  There is plenty of room for grace though, and I think that is what is making it so fun!  

This week the boys have been so much better behaved, which I attribute to our newly written down board of family rules/values (more on that later!), spending more quality/quantity time with them, less TV time for them and lots of new fun things that they are learning.  It felt pretty good this morning when I told Eli to go play and he asked to do school instead...so sweet!  And listen to this, most of you know that our little Eli is a fireball...well he actually will sit down at our kitchen table for an hour or more while we're beginning our school day...that in itself speaks volumes about the behavior of our little busy-body!  

Some fun things we've done this week:

-Had our playgroup over to our house Monday so the boys could spend some time with their friends. 

-Enjoyed a snow-day on Tuesday morning, the boys made lots of snowballs...all of which they threw at me, lol, and Johnathan made a cute snow angel.  

-We made pretzel cookies together and had fun counting out the pretzels. 

-Used measuring spoons to measure out raisins, pistachios and other various snacks...hands-on learning is so much fun and we learned addition/subtraction and fractions that way this week!

-Learned about fire and fire safety...we have a lot of fires in our fireplace so we decided to learn a little extra on how to stay safe in the event of a house fire...the internet had a lot of fun games and safety tips for children.  

-Shelled lots of pecans...and enjoyed the messiness of it!

 Every day presents so many learning opportunities, and I'm happy to be back in the mindset of taking advantage of each moment to teach my little boys!

*Grace*

P.S. Eli got his first "big boy" short hair cut this week...waahhhhhh, my baby is gone! ;-)