First Day of School 2012

Our official first day of school was today!

After our trial run last week, I knew I was going to have to go for structure.  Last week everyone was talking to me and needed me and had questions all at once.  It was mostly chaos and very stressful for me.

So, I divided up our school time into fifteen minute segments and assigned something for each child to be doing, changing every 15 minutes so that no one gets bored.  Also, everyone has a bit of mommy time.

We started with scripture workbooks. I will have to post about them on another day.  :-) We all do scripture together.  We do this out in the living room, because then we can move into the dining room for 'school' and no one is too antsy yet.

We moved into the dining room and each child had his/ her own stack of books.  Earlier in the morning while the kids were playing, I wrote down in order what each child would be doing.  That way I would know easily what was next.  I like the schedule at the top to make sure no one is doubled up on something, but I can't read it very easily in the midst of school craziness.

Then I set the timer for fifteen minutes, and we went to work.

I have written before about how I am not a big fan of strict schedules.  But I have small children, and none of them can really do things with out my specific and direct instructions.  So, alas, I don't really see a way around it for school time.

This way everything gets done (or if it doesn't I know where we stopped) and there is some semblance of peace in the house.

At the end of the day today, we were all still smiling.  I'll take that as a good start!  :-)