Today starts the 2009-2010 school year for us. The kids decided that they wanted to attend their public school's Olympics Day. The school was very accommodating, and the kids should enjoy the games and time with their old friends. It was definitely an odd feeling to take them back there, and I certainly don't miss doing that every day!
I'm set to hit the ground running tomorrow with a new math curriculum, the Spanish program loaded onto the computer, spelling lists already entered into spellingcity.com, a year's worth of lesson plans finished, and all kinds of ideas of fun things to do. Since we're doing some work through the summer, we only have to spend 3 hours a day on school things, and can spend the rest of the afternoon at the pool. I've also started a new system where they can earn a reading day and pizza party (thanks to Heather for the great idea!) Hopefully, this will curb some of the antsy behavior and stop them from immediately answering "I don't know" to a question all with the added bonus of being excited to spend the day reading. Of course it's not that I expect them to know the answers every time, but I do expect them to learn to communicate what things they understand, and what route their thinking is going. I'm going to spend some time in the morning talking about this with them and helping them find better answers than "I don't know".
It's looking to be a really fun school year. I'm very excited to see how far they progress.
Good luck with Reading Day! What a great idea to get rid of the "I Don't knows!" BTW. . I still want to check out your Spanish program some day.
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