We made it! Day ONE of the Rumley Family Homeschool 2012-13 is complete!

It went really smoothly, and if I can pry my tired body out of bed at 6:45 every morning, the smoothness might continue. Might.

Behind the smoothness of it all was this slightly panicky feeling that I was doing a juggling act and about to drop something.

But, you know. That’s motherhood and homeschooling for you.

I’m loving our new school room. It’s all set up, except for a pad I need to make for a bench…Which I’ll try to post about later, if I remember. We have more space, especially in the hugamongous closet, which is great for this mama who has tons of crafting supplies besides the actual school supplies!

Here are a couple of pictures of the school room…

Looking into the school room from the door

The view from the other end of the room…The door on the left is the big closet.

Our big ol’ whiteboard (Steelcase employee sales, I love you.)

Alrighty then, would you like to see pictures of all the kids on their first day of school? No? Well, it’s my blog, so I’m posting them anyway.

Our sweet third grader just keeps growing and growing…Where’d my little baby go?

Our silly first grader…Sorry for the blurry picture. I just couldn’t resist his mischievous smile in this one.

Our pretty little kindergarten girl…so excited to begin school!

And the 3-year-old who was only a little bit distracting today

Did you notice that the girls wore pretty dresses? They came down this morning with those on. I thought it was awfully sweet of them to dress up for our first day.

So.

I’ll admit, it was a little tricky to juggle three kids’ educations. We do history, science, and read-alouds all together. But each of the kids needs separate math and spelling lessons, and Grace also does English lessons. It’s a little crazy!

But it’s also more convenient in a way to have Ava in school, because she stays in the school room the whole time, which means that Jaden sticks around the school room, too. In previous years, Ava and Jaden have played in another room while I did lessons with Grace and Caleb…and that translated into a lot of naughtiness.

So, more juggling and less naughtiness. I think I can handle that.

A fun dynamic of having three in school is “Buddy Time.” Today, while I was teaching Grace’s spelling lesson, Caleb helped Ava practice her phonograms…

And then while I was teaching Caleb’s spelling lesson, Grace helped Jaden learn some phonograms…

The older kids were so kind to the younger kids when they were “teaching” them. I think this is going to be a really good thing for the kids. The teaching role will help solidify concepts that the big kids have already learned, and, well, it’s always good for the littles to learn new things! Not to mention that it’s a huge help to me!

I was especially excited this afternoon to find that Grace’s handwriting has improved as she’s gotten older. She has beautiful cursive, don’t you think?

Grace’s diagnostic test for spelling…She’s spelling at a 3rd grade, 9th month level (i.e. almost 4th grade)…Not too bad.

And I was also happy that Ava FINALLY got to open her new math books and start learning. She’s been asking for so long…but we just didn’t have time with the move this summer. So, her happy day is finally here!

I know that we will have difficult school days where one or all of us feel like quitting…but today was a good day, and I’m praising God for that! Homeschooling is such a gift to our family!