Friday, June 29, 2007

T minus 10 days

A week from Monday, we start first grade. I have the school room 75% organized (lol, several boxes of stuff still need to find a home). I have our attendance planner prepped for July with general goals for the month, specific things I want to do the first week, and things I need to remember to do next week. I have requested 15 different books and/or videos on archaeology from our county library. (Sorry G, hope you weren't planning on starting yet!) I have reviewed (most of) the hands on projects that will accompany our history studies. I am pretty much ready.

I should still make my list of "courses offered" and "faculty qualifications" for the state (which never have to be turned in, we just have to have) and I would like to preread the SOTW, Usborne, and Kingfisher entries for the first unit/week too. But I really feel ready. I don't think I've mentioned it to Cameron yet, lol. It will be fun that the first day of school will coincide with the first day of gymnastics move ups. Quite serendipitous actually. :)

Another happy coincidence is that the kids have been playing a lot of board games recently... chess, backgammon, and one we got at the 4-H silent auction called Knights and Castles. The game has all sorts of cards with trivia questions on them and one of them asked what game featuring knights was played by the pages and squires. The answer, of course, was chess and Cameron was quite impressed that the game of chess was so old. He said something about it being the oldest game *ever* and that led me to bring out our game of Senet. They LOVE it and have been playing it all the time. They have also been asking all sorts of questions about Egypt and pyramids and mummies, etc., etc., etc. Cassia seems to think that I found the game, personally, in a pyramid and really wants to go to Egypt with me to see, lol. I promised them though that we could go to an Egyptian Museum in a month or two when we are formally studying Egypt. They are pretty psyched about that. But first we need to study prehistory, so maybe a trip to the La Brea Tar Pits is in order?

3 comments:

G said...

No, don't worry, we're not starting until September, and I still haven't decided for absolute certain which route I will take with history/social studies. Aaaargh!

It's cool that you're so excited about starting your new school year! Even though our strat is a little ways away, I am still totally looking forward to it, even with loads of planning left to do.

You would pick my mom's birthday for you two C's birthday party! ;) Are you planning a mid-day celebration? She's only doing an evening dinner thing, and my two C's would LOVE to come (I'll request the day off from evil grocery world on Monday).

~Mary~ 4boys4me said...

Sounds like you're ready to go! We'll be doing ancient Egypt this year too. :)

Sandy said...

So glad you're enjoying the "Knights & Castles" game! That was ours prior to being yours. It's been well loved as you can tell; in fact we got it second-hand. But it's so great for homeschooling that I decided it didn't need to qualify as "gently" used like the other auction items did. By the way, a little museum putty works great for attaching those shields to the knights' hands where the little pegs have broken off. In fact I should have included a little ball of the stuff in the box now that I think about it.
:-) Sandy