Official First Day of 3rd and 8th Grade

"Officially" we started our new school year today. We got our animal chores done a bit earlier so we could all sit down together by 9am. A tradition that worked well last year was that every morning we have a 'family meeting' of sorts to chat about what everyone's interests are, goals are, for the week, for the year, talk about what's working, what's not, talk about any help anyone needs, guidance, support- just to talk. We started the day in a prayer then our family talk. The kids made lists of their weekly goals and our daughter made a list of her goals for the year.

After we chatted our daughter went to work on her cavy website that she hasn't updated in a few months and poked around with the website builder and did some research on formatting websites and mapped out what new information she wanted on the site. After she completed some updates, added pictures and descriptions and brainstormed she came outside to read and study her cavy and rabbit book.

Our son's top priority was 'exploding' something! Why not start the year off with a traditional volcano!

 We opted for this to be an outdoor project! :) We watched a science video even though we've done this experiment before then headed to the yard...

 He wanted to use the hole and the actual volcano.

 As he experimented he told me exactly what was happening with the chemicals. Neat to hear him explain in his own words what was going on.

 He decided the volcano had a better effect than the bubbling hole!

After a bit of backyard science, our son headed to do some refresher math problems from last year as our daughter and I looked at a few websites I had previously found for math for her as well as talked about her goals in math for this year.

Another Science experiment while Sister baked everyone chocolate chip muffins....

 An 'underwater' volcano/lava flow...water, oil, food coloring, added some salt to check out the bubbling! He made hypothesis before experimenting then got excited when he learned that the oil stayed on the top!

A muffin snack along with two rounds of UNO card game and our daughter was back online researching tennis court dimensions and going outside to map out where our 'home' court would be. She also looked at famous tennis players and the 'rules' for tennis.  Both kids documented what they did for the morning then it was a quick lunch before I had to do a work training online.

The afternoon brings a few errands to the grocery store and the feed store for animal food....then a quiet dinner at home with 'dad'. 

Everyone was tired today but the day still went well. Beauty of homeschooling is that you can go with the flow. We had a short morning for our first day as we ease into the year. Feeling so blessed to be at home with my children.