School Time!!!

It's that time of year again! School time! A bittersweet time. The easy, fun days of summer fading into the past. New, fresh routines and learning adventures before us.

Ellie is only 1 so she's not doing "schoolwork" but she is learning plenty! The biggest thing she is working on mastering right now is walking! It is the cutest thing to see our tiny, petite Ellie wobbling around the house. For her, crawling is still a faster way to get around, but she is well on her way to chasing after her big sister. She is becoming much more interested in books and we love to read everyday. Ellie especially enjoys books with animal pictures and we are working on learning animal sounds. Oh, the wonderful world of a one year old!

My Hannah girl is 3 1/2 and loves doing her "school". We are not doing any structured bookwork since she is still quite young, but I definitely want to make sure her days are filled with lots of learning opportunities and fun. That is one of the most wonderful things about homeschooling. The freedom to plan around how your child learns best. And right now, lots of hands on activities are where it's at. Of course there is reading too. We started reading my FAVORITE book series...Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. I am so excited to be able to share these stories with my girls. We have been reading a chapter everyday from the first book, Little House in the Big Woods and Hannah seems to really be enjoying it. She is also enjoying working on Scripture memory and has already memorized our verse for this month!

James is a big 5th grader this year. He says his teacher is really nice and he thinks it should be a good year with her. And so far he is happy that he only has 30 minutes of reading each day for homework. I think as parents we've had more homework from the school than he has! James is also doing football for the first time this year and has been having a blast. He's so excited for practice each night, and works really hard to get better. We all got to go to the first game last weekend and his team won 26-6! It has been good for him in a lot of different ways to be involved in football. Now if only he could be as passionate about cleaning his room....

Calender and Bible verse memory chart...We've got stuff posted on almost every square inch of wall space in our small house!

Some of the books we're using. Hannah really loves hearing Bible stories!

Hannah's drawing of herself that she did for our devotion on Monday. The first time she's drawn something other than scribbles and swirlies. Sooo proud!

We will miss the warm days, the long daylight hours for endless play, but we are excited for what lies ahead in this new season!