The First Day Of School

Just like most of you, school started today in our home! This is my first year homeschooling and first day EVER homeschooling so today was slightly scary for both of us! It turned out much better than I expected.

As you can see from the top picture, Benjamin was pretty unamused this morning with the whole gig of a picture but by the end of the day he was much better at understanding what was going on. At 4 years old the whole concept of school let alone homeschool is kind of far off, especially for him. Since we moved to Minnesota February of 2014 he has been home with me as I taught him preschool. We had bad experiences with the public school system back in Michigan and it broke my heart to hear my 3 year old say he wasn't good enough. Not the outlook I EVER want my child to have about himself. 

This year I made the choice to homeschool because he isn't old enough for public school (his birthday being in November and the cutoff is September 1st) and I wanted to know how we both could handle it. Being able to boost his confidence over the last year has made a huge impact on his outlook on life and learning so I am looking forward to what else I can teach him. Today was Day 1 of our homeschool journey.

We started off with our "About Me" page where Benjamin put his name, age, height and weight in his own words. Turns out my kids name is Me, he is Tall and weighs 109 pounds. The person he wanted to compare himself to turned out to be our squirrel friend who visits our balcony every day. The squirrel's name is Friend, is 2 feet high and weighs 70 pounds. Who knew we had a monster pet outside!?

We continued with our writing, alphabet and math, then as he was taking a break, for it was quite stressful, he was playing with his acorn collection in his room and happened to find an acorn moth larvae in one of the acorns. He carefully brought it out to me and said he wanted to keep it. Me, being the half tomboy I am, gladly agreed to this new found friend/science experiment. A great impromptu school project!

We made a list of things the larvae would need to survive and got our small animal container out of storage and cleaned it. Apparently they need dirt, leaves, acorns and sticks. Outside he carried the list around and we checked off the necessities as we collected them in the container. It was very fun and a great learning opportunity for both of us.

Once inside, we transferred the larvae into the container along with the acorns, which are food for it. He is very excited about his new pet and its home. Hopefully, if it survives (4 year olds are quite rough), we will soon see a cocoon and a small moth, which we will set free. He will be able to see the life process of the acorn moth and the death process if we so happen to kill it.

Now that the school day is done, it is fun to see what prospective learning opportunities will come our way. Some days will be harder than others but I will cherish each one. I am very blessed to stay home with him.

To those of you who sent children off to school today or kept them home to teach, I hope the first day for you all was amazing!