First Day of School!

Today was the day!  I've been preparing materials, organizing shelves, and talking up "school time" with E for the last couple of weeks, and we finally started school today.  She was so excited to start!

E did great work today.  I am AMAZED at the change in just two months.  She is truely ready for these materials.  When we were working with our friend K, there was a lot of whining and "You [I] can't do that."  Today, E eagerly chose materials off the shelves and would have worked much longer than the hour and a half I had allotted, if we didn't have other places to be this morning!

We started our day with our Morning Song.  Really, we start every day with this song, singing as we get dressed. 

Morning has come, rise with the sun.

Come, now, and sing, everyone.

Morning has come, rise with the sun.

Give good cheer.

After our morning song, we talked about the weather using our chart from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

The first work E chose was her shape stacker.  She just played with it for a little while, and eventually we worked on fitting together the square shapes, and sorting the shapes into their correct piles.  We didn't work on biggest to smallest so much today.

After that, E chose to work with a new material - some CVC Laurie puzzles.  I have "cat" and "dog" out on the shelf so far.  We worked with one puzzle at a time and talked about beginning and ending sounds.  She's good with beginning sounds, but I don't think she really understands what I'm talking about when I ask about the ending sounds.

Then we did some geometry work - both the geometric cabinet and the geometric solids.  She chose the rectangle drawer and just did it like a puzzle.  We reviewed the names of the geometric solids, and I showed her the cards I made with pictures of other objects that match the solids.  Right now I have out rectangular prisms and spheres.  Together, we sorted the cards to fit with the correct solid.  Rectangular prisms were things like a tissue box and a train car.  Spheres were things like an orange and a soccer ball.

Some more sensory work followed, as we built a tower with the green knobless cylinders.  This required a lot of help from me, constantly reminding her what she was looking for (the largest cylinder).

Her best work of the morning was pouring lentils.  She must have poured for 15 minutes!  We also got to have a lesson (or three) with the broom and dustpan.  She was so proud of herself that she cleaned up her own mess!

While E was pouring, I pulled out a tweezing work - apple buttons into a flower ice cube tray.  Of course, she had to do the work after me.

To end our morning, we put together our giant Alphabet Train floor puzzle.  I helped with alphabetical order, but she found all the pieces and put them together.  And then had great fun pushing it along the carpet!

What a morning!  After all THAT, we went for craft time at church, and then out to lunch to celebrate our first day of school.  Now I think I need a nap.  :)

Linking up to Toddler Tuesday at One Hook Wonder