The First Week: '24-'25 School Year Begins

 It wasn't as "regular" as I'd hoped, but it was a good start.

On Monday, we celebrated our last day with The Munchkin, and we had a wi-fi outage that messed up all of my final getting-ready-for-school plans.

Thank goodness for all of the middle-of-July printing projects I completed!

I did put the following schedule/routine on the whiteboard:

Chores/Dressed

Morning Meeting

FlyLady Home Care

High School w/Teens  (kids do math)

Snack

Academy--Group (reading and activities)

Lunch

Academy--Individual (narrations, copywork, art projects)

Free Time--after you show Mom your work

So far, it is working well.

Our FlyLady Home Care is a timed 10 minutes of doing housework from the FlyLadyPlus app.

With 9 of us doing simple jobs, we are doing a combined 90 minutes of home care each day beyond our basic routines!

We started high school with MacBeth; we read 4 acts this week and will finish it on Monday.  (Shakespeare never disappoints!)  We also began reading The Last of the Mohicans for American Lit.  It's going to take us a very long time to get through it because it is so dense, but we like it very much!!

During Academy, we dove into both Playful Pioneers 2 and our magnet study.

Our very first day included watercolor painting.

We have lots of magnet toys, and my kids have had no shortage of experience experimenting with magnets, but they were still an absolute hit when I pulled out the magnet box that I assembled according to the directions in our study guide.

Brother's left hand is near the teeny, tiny stack of magnets that he got to roll across the table with just the force of the bar magnet sitting on the table.

Again with the teeny, tiny magnets that are so strong!

Ladybug recording her findings

There's a bar magnet under all of those push pins!
The kids loved how it looked like an ice crystal.

Our current school-day reading list includes:

*The Landing of the Pilgrims

*The 50 States

*Sarah Whitcher's Story

*Seabird

*Junior Science Book of Magnets

In addition to the photographed projects above, we also made primitive clay oil lamps.  They've been drying for several days, and we hope to use some olive oil and cotton wicking to light them soon!

Thursday was an off-day for American Rhythm, and I scheduled a trip to the temple for all of the eligible kids.

With the middle of the day full of temple worship, I planned our nature outing for the afternoon.

It started quite well.

There's a teeny, tiny frog on one of the rocks.

My little chicks!

Then Brother got a little wound up, and though his behaviors were mostly harmless, I grew increasingly tense, trying to process them.  Eventually, he was challenging Beowulf to a "fight" on a log bridge, and my assessment of the scene was that he was just a hair too threatening for it to end well, so I interceded.

And the outing fell apart.

In my mind, his reaction to me telling him to stand down, shows just how ready he was to tip into irrationality.  In his mind, I was mean and interfering, and if I'd just kept my mouth shut, the day would have been just fine.

We did our best to reach a point of understanding, but he got angrier and angrier, so we went home.

After a few hours of calming time, he came to me, and we were able to talk it out. 

Church activities were canceled in honor of the first week of school for the public schools.  But Little Princess went to her CAP meeting and had to lead logic games.  She was quite stressed at first, but it turns out the games went well.  She's also at the top of the list for a particular leadership assignment because of her skills.

I took the kids to the park on Friday morning because the weather was beautiful, and I am so tired of how much time they're spending indoors. 

The teens and I settled at a picnic table to do their reading, and the other kids scootered, played catch, skated, played tag games, explored the pond shoreline, and held a little bit of batting practice.

Nature Angel sketched while I read aloud from The Last of the Mohicans.

Suddenly, there was a sickening thud--it was without question the sound of a body hitting the ground.

We three screamed as we simultaneously jumped to our feet.

Mister Man was lying on the ground.

He'd had the wind knocked out of him, and his lips were blue, but I was able to talk him through his terror, calming him until he caught his breath again.

As he pinked up, I assessed how serious his injuries might be.

We headed home once I determined that he was going to be stiff and sore for several days, but there was no reason to seek emergency care.

Ladybug finished the jellyfish she'd spent the week crocheting.  
She gave it to Sugar Bear.

The geography book we're using is full of interesting facts and tidbits of information.  I told the kids that it would be really fun to look at it in their free time because it was harder to share the good details during read-aloud time.  I am so grateful to see the kids taking that suggestion to heart!

Grandma and Grandpa came over on Friday, bearing pizza, and we had a loud, happy lunch talking about favorite books and movies together.

That evening, Rose Red, Nature Angel, Little Princess, and Ladybug went over to Super Star's house for a Sisters' Movie Night.  They ate junk food and laughed until they cried.  (They did wish Pixie and Belle were there.)

We got up early on Saturday for our turn to clean the church building.  We mopped, scrubbed, polished, shined, vacuumed, and took out trash.  Then Lola and Baymax got to stay for a Primary activity during which they ran around the gym to their hearts' content.

In the evening, Nature Angel went to work, but the other 5 kids eligible for Youth activities went back to the church for a game night.  There were board games, a bounce house, active games, and loads of snacks.

Before they left, they all got to make their own French toast for dinner, which I think helps the kids believe me when I call our cleaning time part of a Home Ec. course. :)

It feels like we didn't have much time for bedtime reading together, but when I look back at the actual calendar, I can see that we did more reading than I thought.  We're at least 75% of the way through, and we are so, so, so invested!  (Yes, I know how it turns out, but the kids' excitement is contagious.)

So, the first week is under our belts; routines are proving doable; we survived a few rough moments; the materials we're using are engaging.

We're ready for week two!