The Journey Begins....

And, we're off!  Today was officially the first day of First Grade at "Norton Academy".  ;)  Audrey was so excited!  I have to giggle a bit because one of the perks of HS that Audrey has been so excited about is wearing pajamas to school.  lol  So, we went "Back to School clothes shopping" yesterday and she got 5 new sets of pajamas.  She put a new pair on to sleep in last night - and then changed into a new pair for school today.  LOL

I'd say the first day went really well.  Adjustments will need to be made along the way, as expected.  It was nice to have the whole day to ourselves without any distractions.  Tomorrow we'll be adding Maddie to the mix.  Should be interesting.  LOL 

Our day went like this:  Audrey started with her "Busy Bees":  Bathroom, Brush (hair & teeth), Bed (make it up), and Breakfast.  Then we headed downstairs about 8:30 and started our lessons.  We went over expectations, how the workboxes work, reward system, etc.  Then we started with prayer (guess what - we can do that every day at our school!!).  ;)  We did a Bible lesson (Apologia).   We talked about the importance of building strong foundations like that of building a house on solid ground rather than sand.  And, that the Bible is our instruction manual as compared to an architect's blueprints.  Audrey did awesome with all her comprehension questions, made her own blueprints, and wrote & drew in her journal.  Then we went on to history.  Funny thing here - the one thing she said she did NOT want to learn about in school was dinosaurs.  However, the very first page in her Usborne Children's Encyclopedia assigned for today was about dinosaurs.  lol  She enjoyed it though.  I gave her a pre-spelling test for her vocabulary today - she got them all right.  We're working on 'at' words.  She read her assigned story, aced all the comprehension questions, and kept on reading.  She did her copy work a bit.  Then we did our Read Aloud time which is The Boxcar Children.  She was really enjoying it, so we read an extra chapter.  Looking forward to some of the activities with this one!  We'll be reading it throughout the week and some of next.  After that we worked on Math.  She was a little bored with the DVD itself.  (Note to self: watch the DVD myself and just teach her.)  She was pretty resistant to it at first, but once he started explaining the actual blocks (we're learning place values by using manipulatives) she started getting into it.  Again, she aced all the quizzes, activities, and worksheets.  I'm going to review tomorrow because I want to make sure that she understands the concept, not just the "doing".  If I think she's mastered the concept, we may just move on.  I think she was starting to get bored, so I pulled out something just for fun.  We checked out a few computer games from the library, so we put in the I Spy Treasure Map CD and worked on it through lunch.  Man, I love those games!  After lunch I had her do one more math sheet - just to make sure!  Then we went through her Science.  She really didn't seem to care for it, but she did retain the information.  (We're doing a whole year of Astronomy.)  I asked her about some of the things we learned tonight like: What is Astronomy? What is a constellation?  How do the birds use the stars during migration?  At least she got it - even if she didn't like it.  lol  That's ok - we have some hands on activities coming up that I think she'll enjoy.  We also worked on Handwriting Without Tears.  This one I really need to work on.  I think I'm a little confused about the layout of the lessons.  But, we did do some fun exercises with the music.  We're just going to have to take some serious time working on her letters.  She wasn't really taught how to write correctly, so she's all over the place with writing.  Baby steps!

Anyway, that was our day!  She did ask me repeatedly when it was time for recess.  She didn't seem to get that when we were done with everything by 1:30 today, the rest of the day was recess.  LOL  Here are a few pictures from our very first day!

So excited to be a first grader!

Just a little something for the new school girl.

Math time!

Lunch and computer time.