Well, you'll never believe what we did today...

 

Homeschooling!  That's right - today was our first day as homeschoolers.  Meet the best and brightest at JFA (Jones Family Academy) - Brack and Jewell!  Gerald and I made the decision back in late December to give it a go.  Eight months, countless hours of planning and about a million prayers later, we are up and running!

 

Day 1 was a great success, if I do say so myself.  So what if I changed Bible curriculum last night at 10:00, and I ended up dropping our art appreciation lesson about two minutes before it started this afternoon?  We made it through with smiles on our faces!  In fact, the kids were close to giddy all day long.

 

 

We began at 8:00 am with pictures, just like any other first day of school.  Well - almost!  No more uniforms to iron and overloaded backpacks for us!

 

 

 

 

In fact, we've decided to go the casual and comfortable route.  Slippers optional!

 

 

They absolutely loved digging through their supply boxes.  (Who knew there were so many kinds of crayons and markers!)  I even had to slap a few hands to keep them from pulling out stuff we don't have scheduled to do until later this week!

 

 

They took time to familiarize themselves with their binders.  All kinds of fun surprises there, too!

 

 

 

To top it all off, today was pizza day in the caf.  They totally dug it!  (No hair net for this lunch lady!)  And yes, Jewell has already made costume change #1 for the day.  Apparently the other t-shirt wasn't comfortable enough...

 

We actually finished about 15 minutes sooner than planned.  (Yes, I am a PLANNER and always will be!)  We called Gerald at work to fill him in on our first day.  After they settled down and passed me the phone, he asked me how it went.  I admitted it was different than I thought it would be and my throat was sore from reading and talking all day, but that I thought we might just do it again tomorrow.

 

Jewell has said this was the best day ever, which tells me I'm on the right track.  But you want to know what was the clincher?  As Brack and I were working on math, without talking he went from sitting in his chair to standing to sitting in my lap.  (Sigh.)  As I snuggled the back of his neck, I knew we had made the right choice.

 

Several people have suggested that I blog about our new journey.  I know there are a bazillion great homeschooling blogs out there.  Trust me - I follow them all!  But I wanted to take this opportunity to chronicle our adventures for my kids.  Yep, me the mom with empty baby books.  The one who bought the nice camera, took the photography classes and then still leaves the Nikon at home or forgets to charge the battery.  I promise to try to do better.  For me and for them.