First day of school

We had our first day of school today and it went really well. We are using My Father's World, Exploring Countries and Cultures for our main curriculum this year. Adam has always loved geography so he did fairly well on the "pre-test" where the kids named the continents and countries. I am looking forward to having the other children learn more about the world. After all, we really are an international bunch! Besides my two from China and one from Ukraine, I am also tutoring our friend's daughter, who is from Kazakhstan.

We filled out "passport applications" and the kids were really excited, as they just got their real passports in the mail recently. Of course, Yana, wrote "Russia" as her birthplace. Am I ever going to be able to convince this girl that she is from Ukraine?!

Tomorrow will be fun. We will try to flatten a mandarin orange to show how it is difficult to depict a round earth on a flat map. We'll also start learning the continents (I really have taught the continents to all of my kids in the past, but hmmm....they just don't seem to remember all of them!). My friend, Lisa, will be here tomorrow to do science with all of the kids. We will be constructing various environments.

We started spelling and handwriting today and I'm doing math with the young ones. David will be doing math in the evenings with Yana and Adam, but he is at a Randy Clarke conference tonight (can't wait to hear about it when he gets home!). We didn't get our language arts books that I ordered yet, but that was just as well. Our day was pretty full. Yana had piano lessons and Lily and Adam had violin lessons. And, of course, we had our afternoon "quiet time" (an absolute must for mom, even if the kids don't need it!).

I am enjoying the order and structure of school (of course, this is only the first day!). We had a great summer, but I'm glad that we're back into more of a routine now.