The First Day!

Well, the first day is officially behind us!  Overall it went very well, though some of the worries I've had all summer turned out to be legitimate.  Colban finished half the work I'd planned for the whole week before lunchtime, and spent the afternoon making messes, noise, and demanding to know when Hunter would be done so he'd have someone to play with.  Hunter's auditory processing problems make it next to impossible for him to filter out background noise, so he had a tough time focusing under these conditions.  I alternated between redirecting Colban to a quiet activity in another room and getting Hunter refocused on his work, only to turn around and find Colby had already gotten bored and returned to make mischief!  We got all of our scheduled work done, but it was still a lot more stressful than it should have been.  Mommy has a headache!

Here are a few of the pics I took of our first day's work:

This is the first page of Hunter's Interactive Geography Notebook.  This is just the example page I made in a spiral notebook; Hunter was self-conscious about his work and didn't want it photographed.  I thought he did a great job!  Hunter's interactive notebooks (for science and geography) are bigger and much nicer than my example books.  We used these, but a composition notebook or even a spiral will work. 

This is a really fun "silent e" sort that I chose for an easy review activity.  It's one of many AWESOME activities included in Puppy Love Common Core Literacy Centers and Printables.  This packet has been worth every dime I spent on it and then some!  (I do occasionally re-size pdf's before printing to save ink; some of these pieces may be smaller than originally intended!)

This is a page from our handwriting practice packet.  (Oh man, that handwriting.  It is an enormous frustration for both of us.)  Check out "Writing Through the Verses" here.  

Colby did several pages of kinder math in this workbook.  I've used the Math Made Easy series with Hunter for three years now, and we love it.  The progress charts (gold star stickers included!) are one of the best things; for each page completed, the child gets to add a star to the chart.  Colban added THREE today!  Whoop whoop!

This great little counting puzzle is from the very cool, very FREE Batman-themed preschool pack from 1+1+1=1.  Colby was thrilled with it.

This is just a small fraction of what we accomplished today.  I'll try to cover what we're doing in math, science, history, reading, and grammar later in the week!  I didn't get pics of any of Colban's alphabet activities, either, but the ones we used today and many more (all free downloads) can be found on my Alphabet Pinterest board.

Ready to do it all over again tomorrow!  Hopefully I can start working out some of the kinks!

TpT products featured in this blog post are from the following shops:

Kristen Smith

Reagan Tunstall