Our first day of school

Really today wasn't the best of days for it to be our "first day." I don't have Jane's math curriculum yet. Ean was home from kindergarten and his special brand of chaos makes any day challenging and I had to leave first thing to go to the twins parent teacher conferences.

However recognizing that we won't be perfect and it will take a few months to "get into the groove" I chose the "no stress" option and just let the day be what it was.

Jane had read a chapter out of a new book yesterday. I had talked to her Sunday night about what a summary is and the differences between a summary and a story of her own creation. She needed to write a paragraph summarizing what she read in that chapter.

See Jane's had comprehension problems, the skill of recalling important information from a text is a struggle for her, so I want to work with her on recalling and summarizing and understanding what she reads. I figure the skills she needs can be developed in whatever context, fiction or non-fiction so we'll just work on summarizing everything. Hopefully it will get easier to recognize information that's important and easier to retain and recall that information. She did really well on that paragraph.

We then proof read her work together. I've introduced her to dictionary.com and have a dictionary here at the house she can use. She misspells very basic words, so that's another skill we'll be working heavily on.

We then went to the Library. Ean was with my mom, so it was the two little boys and Jane. Jane had the hardest time picking out what she wanted to read. I hope to go regularly so hopefully she feels more comfortable just taking a chance recognizing that if she doesn't like it, there's always more books to get. Greg however had no problem picking out books. He came running to me regularly with a handful of more books he wanted to take home.

I do believe he has no clue what the Library actually is and that we will have issues when the time comes to return the books.

Jane picked out a series on mammals that we will watch together and I picked out a series on the history of America that focused on slavery. Jane announced that one didn't look like fun, but it's a very important subject that she needs to know and understand. She can't understand why it was wrong if she doesn't realize that slavery happened.

I think I'll go the thrift store this week and see if I can find some textbooks that fit Jane's age/grade so we can have reading material in the house as well. We can get so much off the Internet but it's just not the same as leafing through a book.

Jane's biggest home school question to date was "Do I have to wear shoes when we have school?" *laugh* Ean's big question was when does HE get to have school at home. I had to break it to him, that the answer is not anytime soon. He's to busy and doesn't listen at home. I can't teach him. Not now anyway. Kate's concern was over Jane getting a school tubby with paper and stuff in it. We let her know that she has all that stuff in her desk.

So everyone will adjust.

I should mention that parent teacher conferences this AM went fine. Surprise surprise my boys are adored by their teachers. But who doesn't adore my children? :)