First Day of [Home] School!

Apparently this is what you do if you're an American!  Except I didn't post them on Facebook, and these are also almost 2 days old...

They each have accordian folders that we let them decorate with stickers (birds for Ellie and race cars for Reni, of course).

Nathan and I have divvied up the subjects.  I take Reading, handwriting, and Specials, and he takes Math and Science and a lot of stuff in between.  The kids split for reading and math, but share Bible, Science, Specials, and History/Geography.

We are using "My Father's World" curriculum for the second year.  This year's theme is Nations and Cultures.  Needless to say, we love it.  We're reading the YWAM series of Christian hero biographies each night before bed.  We started with George Mueller.  For Bible we're using a variety of resources, but my favorite is the Operation World Kids workbook.  Great photographs to engage kids in praying for different countries of the world. Ellie in particular is eating it up.  She's really engaged as we have already studied the evolution of maps and the difference between maps and a globe.  Reni is technically a year younger than the curriculum is geared towards (though he's age appropriate for the math and reading), which means he could be repeating the theme come middle school years, assuming we're still using MFW then, but for our schedule and lifestyle, being able to overlap some subjects between the two of them may be all the difference for us staying on track!

   Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart!  We believe the key to success will be staying on a disciplined schedule of starting early (we're starting an hour earlier than last year) and finishing each subject in the alotted time, to finish before lunch.  But so far, so good, and we all are happy!