Six Under Seven For Eight Hours....

That's right, two six year olds, two fours, one three, one eighteen months, and two mamas. We had our first meeting with the other homeschool family today and it was perfect! I cannot believe we were there for eight hours! There weren't even any serious meltdowns! There was a broken window....... but everyone got along wonderfully! (My kids are NOT the ones that broke the window by the way and it was a total accident. It was so cute to watch the look of shock cross his face. I told my friend, "There's your physics lesson for the day!")

Yes, they spent most of the day playing, but that's why you have get togethers, socialization, right? She did show me a neat way to teach sight words and even got Lemur ("That's not my name!" - What she says every time I try to teach her how to write it.) to write her name! Amazing! I'll detail that a little further down the page.

We read this book

And then attempted to make mason jar butter...... twenty minutes of shakin' and we resorted to blender butter. Yes, we cheated, but it was the end of the day and the kids weren't interested in shaking anymore. We talked a little bit about how cows were a good source of food back then, you got milk, cream, butter, cheese, and buttermilk from them. That part was more of a passing mention than a lesson, but we did school stuff at the very end of the day and I think EVERYONE was tired.

I didn't realize till about 15 minutes before we left just how tired I was. My two youngest were asleep before we were 10 minutes down the road and my oldest fell asleep about 20 minutes into the trip home. They played hard today!

I'm not sure I have ever left a playdate/get together and felt as normal as I do right now. I hope it wasn't my imagination, we seemed to be on the same page. She has a more conventional school style than I do which I hope will rub off a bit on me. I could use some of that. I hope I could be of some help to her, though I have no idea in what area that might be yet!

Sight word teaching method:
Draw word on chalk board
Get kid to trace/erase the word with their finger
Dip their finger into water and they "write" over the erased letters
Then they write the word with chalk over the water letters.

Never would have thought of that!! I'm going to see if she'll do it again tomorrow, wish me luck!