Our First Week of "Official" Homeschooling

We survived!  More than that we had a great week!

Day one was probably the hardest, and mostly because of my two year old.  I knew going in that keeping her happy was going to affect my son's and my ability to focus and enjoy the learning process.  I did have a variety of ideas on how to keep her busy each day, but day one was still the adjustment day of all days.

Day two we finished the parts of day one that we did not get to and we finished much earlier in the day.  And then my son wanted to keep doing his Reading Eggs which I thought was great. Somewhat predictably, he transitioned into official homeschooling seamlessly since I had already been doing pieces of it leading up to this - his Reading Eggs, Mathseeds and LaLaLogic.

Here is a quick rundown of the order of our/his day:
Wake - Make Bed - Get Dressed - Feed Cat - Eat - Play
Begin with prayer and Scripture song (Sonlight curriculum) by 9am
Check the weather and talk about it; use this great weather book as a reference: https://a6273.myubam.com/p/5534/lift-the-flap-first-questions-and-answers-what-makes-it-rain
Reading time: all listed Sonlight books for the day, any Bible reading and any other books from library pertinent to current subjects.
Reading Eggs - online
Play
Lunch
Play
Mathseeds - online
LaLaLogic - online and printed worksheets/activities
Play/Quiet Time (sister naps)
Abeka (science)
Easypeasy (AllInOneHomeschool.com) to focus on one letter of the alphabet at a time - online and printed worksheets/activities

One reason I chose Sonlight is for the reading focus, both because I love books and my son does as well.  However, Sonlight breaks books up by chapter, reading one chapter (or section) a day until the book is done.  As expected, I knew my son would want to keep reading.  Making my son wait is basically a lesson in delayed gratification for him.  We are currently in the middle of The Boxcar Children.  I told him that once we finish it we will go back and read it straight through without stopping. He was thrilled.

Also, ironically is how much of what we are currently doing is online.  He enjoys it and so does his sister.  In fact it's easier to do the online portion of homeschooling than the Sonlight portion because my daughter will sit through it happily instead of try and distract to get attention. 

I worked in a trip to the library on Thursday - music story time - that I plan to do each week and we also had a trip to the store one day of the week which we'll have to do each week as well.  I like the flexibility of pushing the morning lessons into the afternoon or vice versa depending on if we plan to go out of the house.

All in all the week went as expected.  My son said more than once that he likes homeschool and I am looking forward to starting week 2 tomorrow!

Singing off...1-2-3-4-5 once I caught a fish alive
Gina

For those who homeschool with younger children (not yet school age) how do you keep them happy so you can focus with your homeschooling child(ren)?