Back to School!

Well...technically we are never "out" of school, since homeschooling is just our lifestyle...but we've got some new fun classes for the kids that we started this month!

1. Swimming at the YMCA for the boy....they bumped him up to Swim Academy since he was getting bored with regular swimming lessons. He's quite the little fish. This picture was them playing through the glass during the 10 min before her class started...no matter where he is he's always interested in entertaining his little sister.

2. Gymnastics at they YMCA for the girl...when we got her 6 months ago she had very little muscle or coordination, and now that we've helped her build muscle with riding a bike, running, and stairs all over the place she's ready to work on coordination. We watched a bunch of gymnastics videos online to show her what it was, and she was just amazed at what the girls could do. She's had her first 4 lessons and has really taken to the beam, even though she can hardly walk across it. We work with her stretching every day, and daddy even brought in a 4x4 board into the living room so we have our very own "beam" for her to practice on. Gracefulness is quite a ways off...but at least she's having fun doing something physical!

3. Co-op classes. Our city has a homeschool co-op group that gets together every Monday for a high school style class schedule, taught by mostly parents. The boy has P.E., Chemical Analysis, Public Speaking, and Chess.  The girl has Public Speaking (mostly like show and tell and stories), and Hands On Geometry. I pack up their lunch and book bags every Monday and take them to their classes, and eat lunch with them....then daddy comes for the afternoon classes while I go back to work.

4. Computer Programming for the boy. This kid loves anything electronic, and keeps a healthy hunger for it since we only allow a limited amount of 'screen time' each day, for tv or any type of video or computer game. I introduced him to the www.khanacademy.org classes for computer programming (sneakily just telling him that we're just going to look at something really cool, and that we can even learn how to make our own video game someday!) and we watched the intro together. He's hooked, and can watch a new video every day as a reward for finishing his schoolwork now. Yes, he can do additional school as a reward for finishing his school. That's how we roll :)

5. Scotch tape for the girl. Not really school...but apparently she's never seen or touched tape before. I just discovered this today as I asked her to tape something together for me, and she just looked at me holding the dispenser like it was some sort of spaceship part and laughed because she didn't know what it was. So we had a little lesson on tape. Hey, valuable life lessons here!

6. Fixing hair. Wait...this one's for daddy. I forgot to fix her hair one day, and daddy went a little crazy with the barretts and rubber bands...using EVERY single one all at once. The boy was impressed, as you can see. At least it held up in our windy weather!

7. We have regular school in addition to all this...book work at home with mom and dad...and a handful of other cool websites that teach kindergarten topics, or typing, or multiplication, or health topics.  In 6 months we've started from preschool level with Gianna to completing her Kindergarten curriculum and being able to read 2 and 3 letter words, and spell them just as well, and adding and subtracting. It's as if we started completely from scratch with her academically, and fast forwarded her to first grade in 1/2 a year. Although progress has been slow and frustrating at times, looking back and seeing this progress is encouraging! We are so proud of her, and she is so proud of herself which is even better. :)