Back to School!

Wow! It's already September?! The wonderful season of apples and pleasant days full of sun and breezes and cooler nights.....the season for yellow school buses and new fall clothes? The season for crisp new notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils? I LOVE this season!

This year, we are doing something new and I couldn't be happier.  We're going to try homeschooling.  I have a little nook set up with all the important curriculum and manipulatives.  I'm still not done adding visuals to the walls, but I'm sure as the year progresses, this won't be an issue.

We started our day with the obligatory "back to school" photo session.

 I'm still not sure if I want to label this as "Ryan starts Kindergarten" or "Ryan continues preschool." The math, reading and science curriculum are all kindergarten...but with parental glasses, that seems too far "in the future." Technically, Ryan would be in preschool anywhere else because his birthday is after the cut-off.  So, the jury's still out on this one.  We're doing kindergarten work but right now I'm calling it pre-school part 2.

Here's Dylan at 2 years 3 months.  He will primarily be learning through play and stations and generally watching what Ryan does.  He was such a good boy on this first day of school! He held the flag while we said the pledge of allegience. 

I was really surprised how quickly we breezed through math, bible and science (our reading curriculum hasn't arrived yet. That will start next week). Our science experiment led us outside with home-made boats to experiment with the affects of air (e.g. how can we make this boat go across the water without touching the boat?) 

Once the kids were outside....Dylan couldn't help himself.  He just had to get in that water. So off came the pants and shoes (but not before he got in the water fully dressed).  While they enjoyed some gross motor activities, I cleaned out the sand/water table. 

When I dumped out the old sand, Dylan couldn't resist that either. 

We are all so excited for this school year and enjoyed our first day "back to school."