Starting a New School Year!

Josiah says, "This is my best smile!"  I couldn't love it more!

This is the 3rd year in a row Emma has said she wants to be a mom.

Last year, Isaac also said he wanted to be a football player, but being a sea captain is a new addition!

We "officially" started our new school year on Wednesday, August 22 with our first day back at Classical Conversations.  I am tutoring Emma's class, the Abecedarian Class.  There are 8 children in my class, and they are absolutely wonderful!  I am finding that tutoring is really keeping me on top of all our CC memory work at home each week, which is great, especially because we are setting a goal for Isaac to become a Memory Master for the first time this year.  (A Memory Master is a student who can recite every piece of memory work from the entire year for their parent, their tutor, and their director at the end of the school year.)  

We love our CC community and all the wonderful families there so much!  This is my friend Ashley and her youngest son.  

The following week, Emma did her presentation about her favorite book, "Little House Birthday."

One of our science projects from CC was seeing how beans sprout and grow.  The kids and I started beans in ziplock bags with wet paper towels in our laundry room window, and it was so neat to see how they sprouted.  A week later, we transferred them to cups with soil.

Emma's bean sprout has grown the tallest, and she shared it for her presentation a few weeks later.

Isaac is continuing piano lessons with Mrs. Arnett, and Emma also began!  She wanted to wear her flower girl dress for her first lesson, and she also accessorized herself with red shoes and an orange hair flower.  Emma absolutely loved her first lesson, and she barely stopped talking for Mrs. Arnett to talk!  

One day while Isaac was doing math, he looked up and saw a praying mantis sitting on our lawn chair outside!  He caught it and did his presentation on it the following morning.  It was really neat to see!  Since then, Dave has caught another one.

I found Emma doing her theory work for piano here...at least it was getting done?  

Keeping Josiah occupied during homeschool is definitely my biggest challenge right now!  He loves being included in school, so I'm working to have a few more activities for him to do each day.

Since we covered the Egyptians in our history, Isaac and Emma drew and painted King Tut one afternoon while Josiah and RJ were napping.  

I can't imagine our days being more full, but I am so thankful for the gift of homeschooling.  I love seeing Emma becoming a stronger reader!  It is so special to see Isaac get so excited about an animal he sees or finds.  (He saw a woodpecker and a hummingbird in our backyard one school morning recently.)  I love seeing my kids snuggle up on the couch while Isaac reads to all of them.   Moments like these are more than worth the extra work of homeschooling.  I'm praying the Lord will remind me of this throughout our next school year.  I can't wait to see these three learn and grow this year!