It Begins

Pretending he's experiencing 0 gravity
at Infinity Science Center

After months of thinking and searching and preparing, our first day of homeschool arrived. O was very excited, and we had a great day playing games, opening our new books, and researching cool topics. We classified with legos, watched a video on sharks (combining science with shark week!), and tossed around a globe ball for geography.

It was a lot of fun for both of us…and then I realized we needed to actually write some things down! So, the next day I over-compensated a bit and was a little heavy on traditional exercises/writing…. And somewhere in between is our perfect balance.

After completing a full week, I feel pretty good about our curriculum (pulling mostly from the internet) but I'm mainly concerned about a healthy balance of academics and "fun." How do we stay active and balance actual school work? What are the really important things I need to make sure he not only understand verbally, but is also able to read about and write about? The examples of third grade assessments I've seen on-line are really heavy on reading and that is truly what we need to work on. I never figured it would be easy, but I just hope I figure it out a little before the school year is up…

The other huge piece that is stressing me out a bit is the peer interaction. O has a few friends from last year and we're going to try and stay in touch and continue play dates, but those hours of the day between when we finish our school work and everyone else is in school are somehow the hardest to fill (essentially 2-3 hrs a day). We've gone to the park, attended a homeschool outing at a science center, arranged a play dates (before friends started school), and visited the library…but it doesn't seem like enough! Essentially I'd to find homeschool friends for him that we can meet up with on a regular basis and will help fill that social interaction that school so naturally provides. We signed up for an afternoon of Lego League and a few other activities with a homeschool group that start in September. There is hope for the future, but we're just not quite there yet. He's actually having a ball, but I'm the one more concerned about him having peers. We did decide to continue with his gymnastics team, and it was so great to see how excited he was to see his buddies again. I don't think he realized he missed them! Fingers crossed our positive vibes continue and we find some fun homeschooling families to hang without a few times throughout the week!

 Some pics from our first week of school….

trying his hand at flying (Infinity Science Center)

3-D wonders of the universe! (Infinity)

His first test labeling the continents and oceans on our kitchen map (100%!)

Oscar's unique classification system was based on the likelihood that an animal will attack you…

and then he grouped them by vertebrate class

The Gaboon viper has been a favorite of Oscar's since we moved here.

He was smitten by the new baby Gaboon viper! You can barely see the stripe on her head in the mulch.