Clay Academy: First Day Jitters and Successes!

After months and months of anticipation, planning, and lots of stress as well as excitement the day has finally arrived!!!!!! I've been trying to put aside my nerves all weekend. Our friends spent last Thursday and Friday finding out who their teachers were and meeting them, getting school supplies, packing backpacks, and picking out first day outfits. I felt a little bit lost to tell the truth. It seemed like I was cheating somehow... breaking some sort of rule. And to be totally honest, I was a teeny bit jealous and sad that we weren't meeting some sweet new teachers. (Especially one for Maryella! You know who you are!!) But at some point over the weekend, Maryella looked at me and said, "Mama, you know what is great? I already know my teacher! It's you!" And Kaylin said, "It's really cool that we met our teacher the day we were born!" Seeing their excitement for homeschooling helped me find mine again. But then last night, I really started feeling the pressure! This is real! There's no turning back! Ahh! As I was taking deep breaths and getting things layed out for the morning, I told Jeff that I kinda wished I could just send them off to school this morning and be done with it. Talk about first day jitters! I was having some serious cold feet! But I got everything as ready as I could and had a few pep talks from Jeff (I love you, hon!) and decided to try and get a good night's sleep. This morning I woke up ready to go. Jeff got the girls started on breakfast while I spent my shower time in some heavy prayers for the day. I came into the kitchen and greeted my sweet students with a smile on face, even though I was feeling like a bowl of jello on the inside. They ate, got dressed, and then we took our own first day pictures.

1st Grade!

3rd Grade!

5th Grade!

Sweet 3 year preschooler!

Jeff started the day off with our Bible lesson. The girls will be memorizing John 3:16 this week as well as starting to get an idea of what it means to have a Biblical world view.

We moved into our Language Arts time and things went very smoothly. I started Kaylin and Annlee on some independent work while I worked with Maryella on phonics and reading. Then it was Kaylin's turn. That's where we hit our only slight bump. Kaylin loves English, but the curriculum we chose is pretty advanced compared to what she's been doing in school the last few years. She's got a good bit of catching up to do and it was sort of discouraging to her. But we can work it out. We finished up with Annlee's turn with me.

Then it was time for Math. All 3 girls really enjoyed watching the dvd and playing with the blocks that come with Math U See. Maryella especially had a good time learning about decimal street and place value.

I had laid out lots of fun things for Elianna to play with and she had a ball doing her school! She'll actually be going to our church preschool starting next week, but she was very excited to be a part of our fun today.

We finished all of that by 11 or so and then the girls got some playtime while I did puppy duty and got lunch ready. We ate, Elianna went down for her nap, then we started our Geography and Science. We all sat together at the dining room table and it was lots of fun! We filled out passport applications to get ready for our upcoming trip around the world, we learned about maps (even read a map to find a little snack), learned about ecosystems, and just had a great time together.