She's a First Grader!

first day of school
out at the garden

We've started homeschool a little early this year.  We have a trip to the Big Island planned in August and well, I didn't want Rachel starting late......so, early was the other option.  Rachel has been excited about first grade ever since I received the curriculum in the mail.  She thought it was neat that there's a giraffe on her math book. 

Rachel's typical first grade school day goes like this - wake up between 6:30/7:00, get ready for school, come downstairs; get chest therapy/breathing treatments done, eat breakfast, and start school between 8:00/8:30....but no later than 9:00 (on days we're dragging!).  Rach has a packed school day - we say a morning prayer, go over the day/date/days of week/months of year, go check/water our garden (a new ongoing project for school year we started - Rach's responsiblity), Bible study, phonics, reading, spelling, math, science, history, art/music, and exercise.  Rach has history 3 days, week, art at least once a week (usually more b/c she LOVES art/crafts), music at least once a week, and science at least 3 days a week (more if I can come up with plenty of extra activities/experiments to do).  We we have lunch around 11:30/12:00 and end the day around 2:00.

Exercise is a very important part of Rachel's day.  If you read this blog often, you know it's not just something we are doing in school.  Exercise is crucial for the health of Rachel's lungs and putting CF in it's place.  So, for exercise, I've tried to be a little creative.  Two days a week, we go to the lagoons at Ko Olina to swim for 45 minutes to 1 hour.  Rachel really loves this.  We are planning on going snorkeling some to this year.  In addition to the swimming, we are still biking, and plan on taking the dogs for walks/jogs, playing kick-ball, kids exercise dvd's, join a homeschool group that has group exercise on Fridays, and Rach is still doing gymnastics for an hour on Wednesdays/Saturdays. 

Rachel's first week of school has went great.  She's liking it and is doing a fantastic job. 

Here's her first week in pictures:

hard at work
first day of school

Daddy brought her roses
on her first day

her beautiful roses

cookie cake I made for her special day

Rach and Daddy planting seeds

planting her wildflower seeds

so proud of the garden

of course.....you should have known there would  be
 wild Rach pic

"hard at work on something"

she somehow managed to get a lizard in her hand

garden after 12 days

garden after 12 days

garden after 12 days -
picked her first 2 strawberries

we even had school outside one day

Ranger and Daisy learning spelling words

Rachel's first week of first grade.