And we're off... kind of.

We have been waiting all summer for this week. Our astronomy class from last year was going on a field trip to JPL in Pasadena on Wednesday. Unfortunately by Sunday afternoon it was pretty apparent that all three of my kids and my hubby had come down with a bug. To make a long story short, the field trip was cancelled before I had to make the 'mommy decision' to not let my kids go because they were sick. Anyway, I had decided to put off starting school until the following week so we wouldn't have a field trip interrupting our first week. God had other plans. So Tuesday I decided to have a 'soft' start to school. Emma has been working on writing all summer and Zachary has kept up with math and they both have done a ton of reading. I decided that I would have Zachary start his new IEW writing program and have Emma start her new Singapore math program, while continuing what they've been working on through the summer. What a great day it was. We didn't feel rushed or overloaded. I had plenty of time to explain the new programs. Emma did great with Singapore. I'm doing the same thing I did in 2nd grade with Zach with her. Starting at the very beginning, which is super easy, mainly to build confidence in math. Zachary did awesome with the IEW program. He did a lot of brainstorming with me and is ready to write the rough draft of a poem tomorrow. He was also very diligent in his math lesson today which took him more time than he is used to. Emma did great with her summary and writing, even after writing all her thank you notes for her birthday. And I even got some one on one time with Lukey doing a sticker page, lacing cards, color matching, and reading. He loved it, and so did I.

I plan on 'officially' starting school next week. Going full bore with My Fathers World, Creation to the Greeks. I'm very excited about it, but I think this start to school was exactly what we needed this year.

Zachary's brainstorming activity for IEW.

Lukey hard at work lacing an airplane between snuggles.