Beginning of school

Unfortunately I am a big slacker and don't have "first day" pictures of the kids... But they all had a great time! Since we are back in the states the girls are attending the same school that they attended a few years ago before we moved to North Africa. They were delighted to find old friends who recognized them, and got the chance to make some new friends too.

Steven is homeschooling with Mom and part of that includes one day a week at the local, state sponsored, parent partnership program. Steven gets to take PE, which includes swimming, rock climbing, and general PE events. He also is trying out a language course (sad to say that his pronunciation of French is definitely better than the teacher's) and next week will check out a music class. He finishes his day with an hour and a half of swimming... and goes to bed early without complaints! (He was one tired puppy by the end of the day yesterday.) Today we are doing some fun academic stuff including base ten math concepts with a cool interactive computer manipulative program. Then we moved on to reading and Steven 'earned' 20 sight-read cards. (Meaning he can easily and quickly identify and read the words on both sides of the card without help or hesitation.) Then I challenged him to use the cards he earned to make the longest sentence possible. (He had a teeny bit of help coming up with ideas to make it longer, but in the end he really demonstrated great reading and sentence making skills.)