Today is Day 7 of our school year, which is moving right along. We are busy walking through the calendar each day, reviewing letter sounds, learning the hymns “This is My Father’s World” and “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” and keeping track of what God created each day of creation week. Linnea is putting together a book and a poster about the seven days of creation. We started Kindergarten already half-way through our reading lesson book (we started it last spring as an experiement), so Linnea is reading pretty well. She is learning more sound blends and words with the long vowel sounds now.

We took our first field trip last Thursday when we studied Day 3 of Creation, when God created the trees and plants and flowers. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum was the perfect place to take in all the growing things, and the girls loved it! You just can’t imagine how many fairy homes we found — some among the flowers and others deep in the woods! They also enjoyed the maze and the enormous goldfish in the Japanese gardens.

Our second field trip was today; we went to Como Zoo to observe the animals God created on Day 6. We took special note of the birds, zebras, turtles, goats and penguins because we will be studying those and other animals more closely later in the year.

This week we will wrap up the introduction part of the curriculum and move into Lesson 1 on the Sun. The Biblical concept is that Jesus is the Light of the world. We’ll be exploring space, making raisins, talking about shadows and reading the book Bear Shadow by Frank Asch.

For the most part, homeschooling is going well. We are still experimenting, of course. Last week we kicked things off right after breakfast each morning. Linnea loved it, but it seemed to cause some understandable resistence from Laurel. News flash: 3-year-olds don’t go to Kindergarten! Duh! I had been worrying all summer about how to ensure she felt included, and I guess I overcompensated and overlooked that whole short attention span factor. This week we’ve been doing school in the afternoons while Laurel naps, and it has been much easier!

Laurel does enjoy playing in the “classroom” with her bag of school supplies. She doesn’t care much for coloring, but she’s a big fan of Post-It notes, scissors and glue, and she loves to draw stick people and pretend to write her name! She also loved the painting projects we did last week.

Tomorrow is Day 7 of Creation when God rested. I think we will all take a nap!