First Day of School

I know, I should have taken their pictures, huh? I didn't think of that until I just wrote my title. Oh, well. Maybe I'll take them on the second day of school...probably not, though. Just being honest!

Anyway, today was the first day of Gebel Family Homeschool. These first few weeks we're taking it a little easy. I figured we'd feel things out and see who works best when.

Jace, especially, has been very eager to get back to the library and I've wanted to get to know the local book spots for schooling purposes...so that's our first unit: Libraries. Our local library system, Kitsap Regional Library, is doing something this summer to encourage patrons to visit all nine libraries in their system. It's called Tour de KRL. The kids each got a passport type book and we'll be visiting each of the libraries over the next two weeks, getting their passports stamped along the way. Once we've gotten all nine stamps, and in the process learned a lot about our local libraries, we'll get a free green bag and be entered to win other prizes too! Fun, huh?

Along with piggy backing of the libraries summer activities, we're also reading books about libraries, learning about Dewey and his system, comparing libraries, and other fun stuff. Today we made a list things that are the same and different about our old library in GA, Grandma Foote's library in NY and the one in Silverdale, WA we visited today. The kids did a great job thinking of things. We also added a few words to our growing dictionary. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but a growing dictionary can be done in a few ways. Our is made of index cards in a card box. We add new vocab words when we come across them and study them from time to time. We also hole punch the corner and can take a few cards with us easily by putting them on small caribiners.

The other thing we're up to this week is making a care package for Uncle Nick, who's in Afghanistan. Today the kids wrote him letters and colored pictures. Tomorrow, we bake. Hope he's ready for a little lovin' from Jace and Gracie!

And that was our first day! Not too bad. Attitudes during school were great. Now...well, we'll keep working on it!