A new year...

It's a new year and we started it off with a bang....well, not really a bang. Bijou's winter wonderland party went off without a hitch (pictures forthcoming). Unfortunately half of her friends were sick this weekend (she and her sisters were all sick last week) so there were only half of the expected guests, but it was fun all the same.

Today marks the first day of our 2011 school year. Technically the older girls started 3rd and 4th grade work a couple of months ago, but we still like to treat January like a fresh start to a new school year. Today was Bijou's first day of kindergarten though. She's been eager to become a part of our school day. I will figure out to how to handle three different grades as I go I guess (but if anyone has suggestions I'm open!!!). This year we are going to tackle some long term projects. This is what we have planned:

1. A monthly newsletter/newspaper - The girls will each write an article on a topic that they will research, an article on a current event, a creative writing piece (story, poem, joke, etc) and include any artwork or photos that they may have created over that month. We'll print our one for them to keep and maybe email it to family.

2. A quarterly biography - They will have three months to study and learn about a significant person of their choice. This person can be living, historical, a family member or whoever they want. Each quarter they will create a trifold display for their person of choice.

3. A monthly book report - We started having a book of the month to encourage the girls to read more books from our own personal library (which has hundreds of kids books). They read a lot from the library, but our personal library was being neglected. So they have to choose one of our books each month to read and write a very simple book report about.

4. A short animated movie - Jena has been very interested in making an animated movie, so we decided that she and Ashni should write a story and create some characters and we will work with my cousin to create a short animated movie. They are excited about this one.

So the rest of the school day is pretty much the same. I will juggle a few things to make time to work on the additional projects, but I think it will be good for the girls. I also think we will spend a little more time with science this year. The kids LOVE science but it always gets put on the back burner for math and reading and writing. So this year, MORE SCIENCE - more experiments, more machines, more nature and animals and biology and habitats. More of it all. We'll see how it goes, but right now, our schooling future looks bright! (Oh, yeah and my friend from Senegal who is a fabulous musician and fluent in several languages has offered to teach the girls french AND give them guitar lesson! YAY!)