Back to School!

I remember this adorable little fellow the morning of his first day of preschool....THREE years ago!

 He's a little taller this year.  His cheeks are a little less pinchable, but that hair,he's still got that hair.

 Three years ago he was so excited to start preschool with all his daycare friends.

 This year, he's *technically* starting first grade.  Where does the time go? 

 Oh, and let's not forget this little imp.   Three years ago he was still enjoying nap time and learning how to talk. 

 But this year....my big boy starts preschool.   Goals for him this year include learning to sit in his seat for short periods of time, how to take instruction from a teacher (or rather teacher-like instruction from me), and identifying letters/sounds and numbers and one-one correspondance.  Of course, there will also be lots of fun games for this active little guy.

 But I have a feeling he will add a special, more active dynamic to our school year this year.

 I spent some time cleaning out the school room and getting it ready for a new year a few weeks ago.  For science we will be doing Apologia's Zoology 2--Oceans/Ocean Animals.  So I changed our bulletin from outer space to an ocean theme.   I hung a world map because we will continue to do world history and geography this year. 

 I'm particularly excited about the geography curriculum which I found here.   The kids will be issued passports which will be stamped with the flag of each country we "travel to" as we learn our way around the world.  It is full of projects and hands on crafts (we get to build the great wall of china next week, how awesome is that?) and it very nicely introduces cultural awareness as the kids will learn how to say "hello" and a few other common phrases in the language of each country and it comes with recipies to eat various foods from that country also. 

 This is our calendar corner.  This is mainly for Dylan's math. We are doing Saxon Kindergarten math and supplementing as needed with MathUSee Primary.

 This is our area for displaying the best papers and art projects.  Also, where we can hang important phonics rules and general teaching area.

 The bookshelf is all organized by subject.   I found a nice little chalk-board box, which for now, holds our read-aloud books for the year.

 Each kid gets a basket to put their books and papers. 

As a final touch for our school room, we arranged glow-in the dark stars in the shape of some common constellations on the ceiling.  It's nearly invisible during the day, but at night whenever we walk through that room when the light is out, just look up and we can pretend we are having our own personal star party!