Back to (home)school!!!

We were all very excited to start back to school today.  We've been 'playing school' with Evan for well over a year now and he has loved it!  We were excited to get Alan more into it and include him in more of the activities that we do.  He's always been along for the ride but it is so fun now that he is really able to participate in the fun with us! 

The boys knew that today we starting back to school and that we were going to celebrate by making special pancakes for breakfast.  They were so excited and couldn't wait to get downstairs this morning for breakfast. 

Evan was so excited about his E-v-a-n pancakes!

Alan - "Do my letter!  Do my letter!"

Evan - "Make Mom and Dad pancakes too!"

YUMMY!  Evan LOVED his pancakes!

And so did Alan!!!

After breakfast, the boys couldn't wait to start 'playing school'!  I figured on a special day like this, that the dishes could just wait, so we headed straight for the school room!

Posing with their backpacks on and ready to start school!

We did our 'normal' start routine by changing the day magnets, singing the days of the week song, reciting the pledge of allegiance and all of their memory verses (which Alan now recites, "Jesus wept."  So cute!), singing 'Around the circle we will go', giving airplane rides, and of course, getting dinosaur stamps!  They didn't miss a beat!

Changing the day magnets.

I asked Evan last night what his favorite thing to do in school was, and he said, "Getting dinosaur stamps!"  HA!

We started with our Bible Lesson talking about how God made the whole wide world for us!  I figured if we were going to start school over with both the boys, that we would just start again at the very beginning!  We talked about how Daddy does special things for us all the time, and that our Heavenly Father also does very special things for us.  The first thing He did was create the world for us!  The world is a very special gift from God.  And as a matter of fact, there was something very special from God...and it was outside in the mailbox!  They couldn't wait, they grabbed their shoes and we all ran outside! 

The boys couldn't wait to see what special gift was waiting for them!

It was a letter from God!

The letter told each of them that God had made the whole wide world for them because He loved them so much!  Inside was a picture of the world for them to color and enjoy!

After coloring the world picture, they cut it out and glued a craft stick between the 2 images so that they could carry their world that God gave them.

We talked about all the wonderful things that God created for us - the sun, moon, stars, grass, trees, flowers, clouds, etc.  Then we played with our 'weather' puppets and sang songs about how all these things show us God's love. 

"The rain is falling pit, pat, pit...showing us God's love!"
"The rainbow is so beautiful...reminding us of God's promises!"

We talked about different ways that Daddy shows us that he loves us.  Evan said that he knew Daddy loved him because Daddy gave him presents, and helped him clean up his toys, and plays with him.  Both the boys drew a picture of Daddy.  Then we looked through magazines and found pictures of other Daddy's.  Evan cut them all out and then glued them onto a piece of paper - he insisted on using pink paper!

Evan drawing a picture of him and Daddy.

Alan drawing a picture of him and Daddy!

Evan cutting out other Daddy's from the magazine.

And then gluing them all onto his pink paper!

The boys watched a Character Building video on Love and then Alan went down for a nap.  While Alan was sleeping, I took Evan outside to play with the neighbor girls.  We went on an acorn hunt and they glued them all down to spell out the word 'acorn'.  They had a blast! 

Going on an acorn hunt!

Gluing down the acorns to spell it out.

Proud of their finished project!

Since we had been talking about God's wonderful creation, it seemed fitting to go on a nature hunt.  We pretended that we were astronauts who had landed on a new planet and were on a search to see what we could find.  The 1 bucket that I had to collect our findings wasn't big enough, so conveniently, our 'helmets' doubled as buckets too!  They had so much fun!  We found all sorts of things!  After a good hour or so of nature hunting, we dumped our new treasures out onto the driveway and created art masterpieces with them!  They thought this was the coolest thing ever!  The girls kept asking if we could do this every week! 

My little nature explorers - Megan, Evan, and Haley.

Proud of all their nature treasures!

A couple more neighbor girls came to see what all the fun was about and helped create the art masterpieces!

Evan wanted to write his name on his - so we did our best!  I didn't get a picture yet of the finished project.  He added several more flowers to it. 

Back inside, we reviewed the letter Aa.  We talked about several Aa words and he practiced writing it.  His penmenship is getting much better.  He doesn't know it yet, but we are going to talk about Aa is for art this week.

Review of the Letter Aa.

Even though Evan doesn't really need a backpack, he wanted one so badly.  So we told him it would be perfect to take his library books back and forth.  He was so excited about this and couldn't wait to go to the library with his new backpack.  So after Alan woke up, we went to the library and they found lots of books they wanted - mostly Thomas and Curious George books!  But they also found a video they wanted called 'Baby Van Gogh'.  Perfect!  This will go great with my plans for the rest of the week! 

We had such a fun first day back to school!  Tonight, I asked Evan if he had a fun day.  He said, "Yes!  Can we make number pancakes again tomorrow?!!!"