First week of school

Well, I didn't plan on our first week of school having this. Add in that Lamb 2 is potty training, I was trying to can and freeze some veggies, and I was working on sending in our photos to Snapfish while they had a sale. So we didn't accomplish as much as I thought we would. Our schedule ended up being Monday-Labor Day-no school; Tuesday-1/2 day school-babysitter came; Wednesday-1/2 day school-teacher ill; Thursday-no school-teacher at doctor; Friday and Saturday both 1/2 days of school while teacher took it easy.
Here's what we did accomplish:
Morning Prayer/Pledge of Allegiance/Calendar (weather and daily activities)-every day
Math: Lamb 1 did a little workbook practicing writing the numbers from 1-7 and some basic counting; All the Lambs played with the Math U See blocks every day and Lamb 1 counted them as he played with them
Read Aloud: The Story About Ping every day, Several My Book House Stories, some poetry
Handwriting: Lamb 1 wrote numbers 1-7 and their written words (one-seven)
Phonics: Did Aa and Ee from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading
Religion: Began to memorize the hymn Jesus Lead Thou On, read the creation story and began drawing what happened on each day of creation
Latin: Listened to week one on the Prima Latina CD once
Art: painted with watercolors with our babysitter twice
Science: Read a book about eyes/ears

I tried to have the Lambs memorize Happy Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson. They seemed to not be paying attention and I gave up. You can imagine my surprise when they were in the shower last night and I heard them yelling, "The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." Even when I think they aren't getting it, they are!

Lamb 1 complained the most about singing the hymn. It was obvious to me that I'm going to have to schedule the hymn at a better time to motivate him. When our babysitter came he had to tell her all about how "mean" Mama was to make him sing the hymn a few times or he wouldn't have been allowed to go along to pick her up. Thankfully Lamb 2 seems to go along with whatever I ask them to do/sing/recite.

A few random thoughts about this week:
* I know if they were in school, the Lambs wouldn't have even learned this much. The whole first week would have been spent on routines.
* After teaching 1st and 2nd grade, I know there is a big difference between those and kindergarten/preschool. But I think with homeschooling, we will be able to work faster than school and get them closer to the age I'm used to working with.
* I had Lamb 2 do everything with Lamb 1 except handwriting and because math was also handwriting he didn't do that either. Even if he doesn't pick up everything, he will learn much along with Lamb 1. This also solved the problem of Lamb 1 would complain that Lamb 2 got to play while Lamb 1 had to work. Lamb 2 felt grown up because he didn't have to "just play" like Lamb 3. I don't know for how long it will work to continue this, but I'm going to try.
* I think this crazy schedule this week was just what I needed after teaching in a classroom and transferring to homeschooling. I learned that the Lambs will learn something even if we don't get through as many subjects as I plan each day.
* This morning we attended two of our churches. One for Sunday School/church and one for a potluck. At both churches several members asked Lamb 1 how his first week of school went. He's shy, but Lamb 1 and 2 got the message across that school wasn't that bad. In the small talk we didn't tell the whole story about the schedule etc. Some were surprised to hear that we were homeschooling. The Lambs also complained because there was no school today on Sunday!
* Today I learned that the public school here has whole day kindergarten but no school on Friday. So if we don't have 5 day a week kindergarten, I don't feel so bad!