School is now in session!

Today was a very special day in the Jung house. Elijah and I started preschool! We don't have any extra rooms in our apartment, so Elijah's bedroom is also his "classroom". The plan, right now, is to do 3 days a week for about 1 hour and 15 minutes in the morning. Elijah is an early bird (getting up around 6:15 or 6:30), and his little brother Nathan is far from an early bir (getting up around 8:30 or 9), so I thought the best time to do preschool would be from about 7:30-8:45am, since that is about the only alone time I have with Elijah each day.

I've had a blast planning thematic units, lessons, projects, etc. It feels good to use my college degree again! I didn't realize how much I've missed teaching until I started preparing this stuff. And I feel so blessed that I get to teach my son.

So, here are some pictures from our first day of preschool!

Each week we will have a "letter of the week", plus a different thematic unit. This week our letter is "A" (naturally) and our thematic unit is Animals. This thematic unit (animals) will last 3 weeks. So this week we are studying "farm animals".
This is Elijah's "I Can!" chart. It is a sort of behavior chart. The two things I am focusing on behavior-wise for him right now are listening (hence the picture of the ear) and obedience (the picture of the check mark). If he gets a "thumbs up" in each box each day, then at the end of the week he gets a treat!

Below the "I Can!" chart is our weather chart that we will do each day.

Here is my big boy, on his first day of school!! (I covered his bookshelf with the red material so that he wouldn't be tempted to play with his toys during school)

Above is the weather chart after Elijah looked outside and decided what kind of day it was. He was right!

Above: Elijah working on his "A" worksheet. I am using Horizon's Preschool Curriculum (put out by Alpha Omega Publications) which is a Christian preschool curriculum.

Below: Mommy's example of making an "A" with craft sticks.

And here is Elijah's "A"! Hey, I'm just thankful that all the craft sticks made it onto the paper! :)

Elijah working with his Farm Animal set. (has a fence, trees, and all sorts of farm animals. purchased at Wal-Mart for like $3)

And here is the "I Can!" chart at the end of our first day! He did great!

**I think that I'm probably going to be blogging alot about our homeschooling. Mostly for grandparents to see, but also for anyone else who is interested. But, I know that some of you who read our blog may not really be interested in the day-to-day homeschooling stuff, so I'm considering starting a different blog just for our school pictures/experiences. I'll let you know when I get that started and will have the link over to the side, so it will be easy to find!