Let's Start at the very beginning, a very good place to start!

Kezia proudly displaying her Aa card and teeth!

This morning "Jack" went to work to set up his classroom. He had been there all last week too, so we have all adjusted to life as it usually is. Today, being Labour Day, I was actually thinking of taking it easy with the kids. Last week, had been gradually trying to reintroduce them to paper and pencils in anticipation of school starting up again. Anyways, I thought we'd start the day off with some exercise; a little walk along the Dyke. Theo was not yet dressed (surprise, surprise) and the girls were both ready to go, so I gave them a little worksheet to do at the table, while we waited for Theo to get ready. The worksheet was very basic, a picture of Adam and Eva, and then a few letter Aa's to trace, a bible verse and a sentence to trace. I only printed two because I didn't think Theo would be interested. Well I was wrong. As soon as he saw the girls doing it, he wanted to do it too! (This may work very well to my advantage this year!) So I told Theo I'd print one out for him and he could do it after he was dressed. Well he was dressed before I had even printed the sheet out! So much for the walk! Like a mother never wakes a sleeping baby...a mother never interrupts kids who are inadvertently learning! Since they were all working so well together on their colouring and printing, I decided to do the dishes that had been sitting there since Friday (shame I know- but both "Jack" and I have cuts on our hands!) While doing the dishes, I came up with the idea, to just go with the flow and see how far we can take this letter A. thing! I suggested casually, that they all go and see how many things they can find that start with the letter A. Boy was a that a hit! They tore upstairs, and were eagerly showing each other things, and talking about letter A things. The following is what they came up with...

Eva wearing her apron.

Eva displaying the apple that she then proceeded to eat. I love edible learning!

They came up with the word airplane, but couldn't find one, so we decided to make some out of Lego!

Theo the smarty pants with his Abacus!

All of this of course is a bit below Theo's challenge level, so I decided to make him put the cards in alphabetical order. He did so with ease.

We took the pictures because, I thought that we could use these pictures to create our own, Alphabet book.  And don't worry, I won't bore you with new letters each week. After this, I asked Theo to write as many words as he could that started with the letter A. I was quite surprised at some like "artichoke" who knew he knew that artichokes existed? Not me! Anyways, he was VERY into thinking of words, and exclaimed how inspiring it was to think of A words. He dude whatever turns your crank!  = )
It was a lovely, peaceful, spontaneous morning of working together as team, learning together, playing together and enjoying each others company. I hope that today is a picture of what is to come in this, our first official full year of homeschooling!