The Official First Day of School

We had the whole family get up early on this past Monday in order to have a First-Day-of-School-Talk. Amazingly enough, AdventureQueen woke Mr. Potts and I up at 7am and we stumbled into the living room to find 6 children already awake and waiting for us. A recent homeschooling conference hosted by our state organization, Home School Legal Defense Association and Generation Joshua inspired us to make sure our children realized the importance of their education and that was the purpose of our morning pep talk. This conference served as a good reminder of what our goals and expectations were when we began homeschooling, something we talked about many times when our older children were growing up but seem to have taken for granted too often with our younger set. Mr. Potts was especially valuable in giving his encouragement to our sons to appreciate their education and to work hard.

We introduced Beethoven's (our term's composer) Symphany #5 while getting our breakfast. Then we dove into our new schedules. Tom is using Ambleside's Year 7, BLOCHhead is using Year 6, and SmokeyBear and Tigger are finishing up some of Year 2 and then planning on using Year 3. We had a great day and I believe everyone had stimulating reading. As someone recently quoted, "The test of a good children's book is if it can be read without pain by an adult!" I confirm that my children have a feast of good books waiting for them when I gaze at their school shelves and find myself wanting to read every one of the titles! Thanks Ambleside Advisory for all of your great work!!

Our afternoon activities consisted of an unexpected hand-on science lab: the birth of five new kittens! We'll be posting pictures soon. Then the three younger children and I enjoyed P.E. in the pool. Afterwards they picked tomatoes and made a homemade waterslide out of an old pool wall.

How can anyone think homemaking and homeschooling isn't the most rewarding job on earth! Life doesn't get much better than this!