First day of school

Today was the official start of our 2008 - 2009 school year and we began the day with photos, of course!

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to start the year with a study of the Olympics. Today. we talked about the history of the Olympics and some of the symbols and traditions of the games. We learned that the Olympic motto is "Citius - Altius - Fortius" which means "Faster, higher, stronger" and is intended to focus on trying your best - not just winning first place. So we talked about how there are only a little over 300 gold medals to be won and that most of the athletes will come home losers, but that's OK because they will try their best and many will do better than they have ever done before. "Winning isn't everything" seems like a good way to start the school year.

Aside from our Olympic study, Sadey became an official preschooler today and is learning all about the letter A. Delaney and I read some books together and spent a great deal of time looking over the books she'll be using this year. She is most excited about the science books and can't wait to start her nature journal. Sydney did a little bit of math and language arts review and was happy when I told her we'd put her first spelling pre-test off until tomorrow.

All in all, it was a very good day.

2008 Beijing Olympics

I decided to delay the start of our regular curriculum to capitalize on the girls' current interest - the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I found an awesome (and free) Olympics lapbook at Homeschool Share that will cover most of the subjects. We'll also be using the official site of the 2008 Olympics and Enchanted Learning (we have a free membership from our homeschool group because I teach a co op class).

Here's what we'll be doing:

Bible ~ 1Cor 9:24 "Do you know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize."

Geography/History

• mapping the route of the torch relay
• learning some Chinese history
• learning about the flags of China and the US
• studying the history of the Olympics
• discovering the meaning of some of the Olympic symbols

Math ~ The girls each picked a team and we'll be tracking their medal count each day. We'll make a bar graph and use subtraction to see how many medals have been won since we last checked the count

Language Arts ~ They'll learn lots of new vocabulary as we talk about the sports, the Olympics and the countries. They will also get lots of handwriting practice :)

Science ~ We'll be talking about the food pyramid, the differences between an athlete's diet and our diets, and the importance of a healthy diet in everyday life

Fun ~ We'll have our own family olympics. The girls will choose the activities, determine the rules and run the event

Now don't get the idea that I'm a genius for coming up with this. Most of what we'll be doing comes straight from the lapbook at Homeschool Share. The only thing I did was search for the official Olympics site and find maps and flags. The internet is such a great tool for homeschoolers.