And so it begins...

At lunch time today, I asked the kids how they thought the first day of school was going. Our kindergartner said, "Great! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!" One of my sixth graders said, "It's ten times - no, a hundred times - better than last year!"

I'll take those comments to mean that God is blessing our new venture. Throughout the day, tiny little nuggets of wisdom were learned. We began by talking about Charlotte Mason - who she was, and what her methods were. Then we talked about how we were incorporating Miss Mason's methods into our own school. We learned the new motto...

The older kids began with a review of printing and cursive, a math drill in addition and some fun worksheets, while I worked with the two younger children on My Father's World from A to Z. When the younger ones were done with their lessons, I worked with the older three on Bible, English, Geography and Science. We read the introduction to "Window on the World" and talked about people groups around the world. Then they did their first lessons in Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons from reprints of the 1914 texts. Next we learned about the history of maps and filled out their passport applications, wrote a "pretend" check to pay for them, addressed the envelope and "mailed" them. In a few weeks, they will receive their passports to allow them to travel around the world and Explore Countries and Cultures.
Finally, they learned about Ecosystems and biospheres and to wrap it all up, they took a prestest to show how many countries they could identify on a blank map. We will do it again on the last day of school and compare the two copies to see how much they've learned.

From there, we took some traditional "First Day of School Pictures" and then they cleaned their rooms while I made homemade pizza for lunch.

The verses we read in our Kindergarten lesson today were from Genesis 1:1-5. The first day passed, and God saw that it was good. That's how I feel about our first day of school this year.