Book Binders

I have been busy the last couple of days preparing to homeschool Ethan and Jacob.  I have a lot of materials, but since Ethan will be in kindergarten, there are some things that I need to get organized.  I downloaded our state's kindergarten standards to make sure that I get everything covered, and started reorganizing our supplies in the basement.  I also switched out the little table that was in the school area for a larger one.  I figured that I will be spending a lot more time at the table this year, so it needed to be a little bit bigger.  Ethan and Jacob have been so excited about getting back into the swing of things after having so much time off over the summer.  They want to have school every day, but I am going to stick to our county's school calendar.  I explained to them that every time Megan and Carter go to school, we will have school too.  Since this year will be more structured, I am going to give myself the weekends off.  Saturdays is when I can plan and prepare lessons for the following week.

I got started today on the boys' book binders.  I am lacking emergent readers right now, so I will be making little books with them each week.  They will focus on sight words and have pictures to help them read them independently.  Once I have a few "books" in their binders, I can have one child read their stories quietly while I work on something with the other one.

The binders were a big hit!  Here are the pages from Ethan's.  They're printed on cardstock and also laminated so that they will last.

I have to admit that I am really excited about school this year.  Ethan is eager to learn to read and write, while Jacob is happy to be doing anything school related.  I will adapt lessons for Jacob, since he is only 3, but he will probably be able to keep up with most of what we do since I have been homeschooling them for preschool together.

We are looking forward to a great school year!