I am happy to say that today went much better than yesterday. I got up at 8am as planned, and even though the boys got up a bit later than I wanted, we still got started by 9:30.

We started with a devotional in 1 Corinthians 10:30-32 with the focus being on verse 31 “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”  I thought this was a great lesson to start our school year, especially after yesterday’s meltdown with Nboy. I told them that it means that whatever we do, whether it be playing or doing school work or eating, we should do it for the Lord. So we should have a good attitude and always try our best even if we don’t like what we are doing, because we are doing it for the Lord and that should make us happy because it makes Him happy!

I had to remind them of that a few times this morning, but it seemed to work. I also reminded them that if they did not do their work well and with a good attitude, then they would not be playing games on the Xbox 360 or the computer later……..That may have helped too…..

Next was Math, going over flashcards with Nboy, reviewing telling time and review place value.  I was going to have Ekid do some first grade math in one of his workbooks, but then realized that he really needs to work on writing his numbers since he kept writing some of them backwards. So instead I broke out the writing tablet and taped it down to his desk at an angle for left handers, and wrote the numbers for him to trace and write correctly. This has always proven to be difficult for him and I’m wondering if most left handers have a harder time learning to write correctly. But I am looking at the handwriting book that comes with the A2 (Accelerated Achievement) curriculum and thinking I will begin working with both of them using that book. I’m determined to have my boys have much better handwriting than I do :)

Then after Math, I had Nboy read the whole story that he didn’t finish yesterday out of his McGuffy’s 3rd Ecclectic reader, and he did so much better. I had to make sure he paused properly at periods and commas, but he was able to read most of the bigger words and only had a little trouble on a couple of them. I like that these readers have the spelling and vocab list after each lesson. So I wrote the word list on paper for him to write each word one time, as long as he wrote it nicely.

Then while he was working on that, I sat Ekid down and we did the next lesson in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. He did wonderfully, and I am confident that by the end of the book, he will be reading quite well! It really is a great book and I love the way it teaches reading. It also has a writing time at the end of each lesson. Any parent really could easily teach their child to read well with this book!

So then we took a break about eleven until after I fixed my man lunch (he comes home for lunch), and the we continued on to history and started where we left off with Leif Ericson traveling down to Massachusetts and coming on land. He and his men apparently built huts there and gathered grape vines and timber, stayed for a little while and then sailed home and told noone about it. So noone else heard about this new land until Christopher Columbus. I am enjoying doing the history lessons and just reading through the book and looking up pictures and maps on the internet, and I think Nboy is staying interested too as long as we don’t go too long. Ekid gets a bit bored, but I’ll try and find some videos that will be interesting for him to watch. I’m not too concerned with history for kindergarten yet anyway. I figure he’ll pick up some things listening in here and there for now.

So that’s it. We stopped at that for today and I let them play games for awhile while I took a little nap with Cman after lunch.

Onward to tomorrow!