Our first week of the 2010-11 school year went quite well. I’m trying to be more relaxed with our schedule this year. Last year I wanted to sit down in the morning and get everything I had planned finished before we moved on to anything else. That wasn’t a terrible thing, but here’s what we’re doing this year: A little work, a break, a little work, a break, etc. and so on until bedtime. It’s easier on Poppy, who is a wiggly, energetic girl with the attention span of, well, a kindergartner. It’s easier on Pete, who only has to keep quiet(ish) for short pockets throughout the day. And it’s easier on Mommy, who always has an easier day when the children aren’t irritable. And being frustrated with or about schoolwork? That makes for irritable children.

The only real complication we had this week was yesterday. I watch a friend’s 2-year-old on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. She was here Monday through Friday until last week, but we adjusted the schedule because Poppy has mid-day activities on Wednesdays and Thursdays now. Anyway, Monday and Tuesday went fine with her here, but I think Fridays might be difficult. The kids were both really excited to see Addy after she wasn’t here for a few days, and Poppy had a hard time concentrating while Addy and Pete were playing without her. So I’m going to need to figure that out.

Anywho: Our roundup. Since Monday was our First Day of School, I gave it its own post. Here’s what we did for the rest of the week:

Tuesday

After reading “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” Poppy worked on illustrating her own progressive story in a little book I stapled together for her. The title of her story was “Poppy and the Blue Crayon,” and there were a lot of empty refrigerators involved. Maybe I need to give her more breakfast in the mornings.

Poppy’s handwriting practice thus far just consists of tracing horizontal or vertical lines. She’s gotten very squirrelly about sitting still, so I’m going to take this rather slow so she doesn’t get fed up with the sitting.

I was supposed to make a pair of sock puppets for our Health lessons, but Poppy and I made paper bag puppets instead. I suspect I would have felt just as goofy using a sock puppet. Anyway, one of our paper bag puppets talked about being unique, and Poppy drew a self-portrait.

We’re using Rosetta Stone for Spanish, and I wasn’t sure how it would go with a rudimentary reader. She had no problem with it, though, beyond trying to click the right answer quickly after she missed a question. The screen changes after you’ve missed one, so she missed the next question a couple of times, too, by trying to correct her mistakes.

Wednesday

Poppy had a doctor’s appointment Wednesday morning. She got a series of shots, which threw her off her game mightily. She laid on the couch and watched “Curious George” when we got home, then had lunch and played for awhile. It wasn’t a school-heavy day, but she did do her handwriting exercises (backwards circles!) and a few pages of her addition workbook. We read another chapter of “Doctor Dolittle” before bed. I’m tempted to read more than one chapter a day, but I’m trying to ease into doing some narration so I don’t want to overwhelm her with material.

Thursday

Our morning got off to a rather slow start, what with a small girl sleeping in and waking up “Soooo hungry” and a small boy seeming to have forgotten everything he’d learned about potty training. Once we were all finally up and dressed and fed and dry-panted, though, we read “Harold and the Purple Crayon” to kick off the schoolin’.

Today was handwriting, health, science and Spanish, for which we did worksheets, talked to puppets, started a natural journal and used the computer. We went into the front yard and sat a bit for the nature journal, and when we came back inside Poppy drew a picture of my blueberry bush. She’s not doing quite as well with the Spanish as I’d hoped, but I think that might be attributed to her brother’s interference. I need to find a way to keep him occupied and away from the computer while she’s working.

Friday

We got a late start again on Friday, because I overslept by about 20 minutes. And the kids woke up half and hour earlier than usual. There was a major yogurt spill and an attempt to clean it up. We read “Harold and the Purple Crayon” upstairs and talked about perspective and foreshortening before I discovered the mess. An hour and a half later, we were finally back on track.

Poppy asked if she could do an extra Spanish lesson this morning, which I take to mean that she’s enjoying it. I had to sit next to her to get her to finish the test, which was pretty long, but she ended up doing really well on it. She also asked for her handwriting worksheets and did three pages of them.

We did a little art lesson today focusing on perspective. Poppy painted a picture loosely using Georgia O’Keefe’s “Pelvis with the Distance” for inspiration. Rather than painting the background and the foreground on one piece of paper, though, I had her draw her background scene on one sheet and the foreground item on another.

I also have a list of chapter books we’re going to be reading throughout the year. We started on Monday with “The Story of Doctor Dolittle,” which I had to download to my Nook because I mistakenly grabbed “The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle” from the library. And obviously that would not do. Poppy loves reading from Nook, so I may have to search Project Gutenberg for more of the titles on our to-read list.

Poppy did get a kick out of the paper bag puppets, but they were kind of difficult to manipulate. I think I’m going to have to break down and manufacture some sock puppets. Unless one of you would like to do it for me. I fear my hot-glue gun skills are lacking. Oh! Or Einstein could join us for health class!