Today marked the first day of us trying "school" at home.  I hate to say homeschool, because it really isn't intended to be rigorous or anything, just a way to better organize our mornings.  I think that structure will be good for the kids and probably for me too.

     We got off to a bit of a late start because we had to get menengitis shots first.  No, it is not a requirement of our school, there is an outbreak here.  Justin was excited to get back and start our day here.

     First we did a morning meeting/calendar sort of thing.  Our calendar board right now is really sad and empty looking.  I want to try a few different things and find what makes the most sense for Justin and allows Ryan to participate in some way if he would like.  Since I am tailoring it for one or two children instead of a classroom, I have a lot more flexibility.  Our featured vocabulary words this week include: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

     We have a significant amount of time alotted for read-alouds.  Today I introduced four new books.  We have kind of an apples/Halloween theme going on.  It is weird being the in the southern hemisphere and things not fitting well since our seasons are reversed.  This afternoon we are going to go out and swim in the pool.  Definitely NOT Fall here.  Justin always LOVES new books, so I think this will be a favorite part of each day.

     We will be going to the fire station tomorrow afternoon, so we did a Firefighter's Tools worksheet.  No, I do not think that 3 year olds need to be doing worksheets, but Justin begs to do them.  He thinks they are great.  He likes to color, but he does not necessarily like to use multiple colors on a single image and is completely uninterested in staying in the lines.  Whatever.  He likes it.  The inside of the booklet has pictures of things a firefighter uses.  THAT was the fun part of the paper.  Justin got to use scissors and a glue stick.

     For math, we got our apples out of the fridge and counted them, sorted them by color, and then made a bar graph.  We had some apples for snack. Luckily that was the plan because Ryan started in on a green apple right away.  He did a pretty good job with it too.  Tomorrow we will make apple crisp. 

     Justin finished off the morning with a little Trudy's Time and Place House on the computer.  Pretty good day.