Back to School!

The Ruwe clan headed back to school yesterday. It was great getting back!  I have an excuse to pull myself out of bed in the morning and I am determined to stick to a better morning schedule this semester. 

Here is my plan:
My alarm goes off at 7:15. Take 15 minutes to wake up. :)
Pull myself out of bed at 7:30 and wake the three children up.
Go back to my room, check email, facebook, and wait for Christian to join me in my room.
Courtney usually jumps out of bed and runs to find dad and it takes Megan awhile to wake up too and she usually joins me in my room too, so about 7:45 Christian, Megan, and I head downstairs for breakfast. I then have to holler to the basement to get Courtney to come back upstairs to eat!

Breakfast 7:45-8:15

Girls do dishes at 8:15 (Courtney unloads the dishwasher and Megan loads the dishwasher)  Here is where we got into trouble sometimes last semester.  Courtney often cannot figure out what she wants for breakfast, so she takes forever and once she does, it's usually eggs or something that takes awhile to make.  When this would happen, we would wait for her to get done with breakfast and THEN she would unload the dishwasher. This would put us behind for the morning because Megan needs to load it and she usually needs some help from me. This puts us behind in getting ready, which makes us start school late.

My new rule: If Courtney is not done eating by 8:15, she has to do the dishes OR while she is trying to figure out breakfast, she can start putting dishes away!

8:30 Everybody goes gets dressed, brushes teeth, takes showers, whatever needs to be done.

9:00 In the kitchen and ready to start school!

Yesterday, we were right on time! I was so proud of everyone!!

After we got school started, we went right into Bible class and I tried to pick up where we left off in November.  We did a Christmas devotional for December, but we had just started a new unit in our curriculum, so it was easy to recap. We did a quick craft on a Bible verse and we were done.

Once Bible class was over, I always do language arts and history with Megan and then Courtney and Christian get to play awhile. Well, Megan likes to say history and THEN language arts.  We had some reading for history, so we all got comfortable in the living room.  The kids playing legos and I was in the recliner, but apparently, Christian forgot how to be quiet during reading time! It was constant interruptions from him and he was in timeout quite a few times. I just wanted to read!! (Because of the constant interruptions, it took longer than usual!)

After we got done with history, we did Megan's language arts, which went smoothly.  When that was done, I let her go upstairs to work on homework and it was then Courtney's turn.  Here is where we ran into some trouble again with Christian!! He did not want to go play on his own and I had constant interruptions and again, he was in timeout! UGH! Courtney was also not cooperating very well! She said, "I don't want to go to school. I would rather go to public school!" No, she doesn't. :)  She was a wiggle worm through and through and could not wait to get done with her work! She completely forgot what suffixes and prefixes were in phonics and was almost in tears over it. I did give her some slack because it had been two weeks, but really, it's not so bad!

By that time it was lunch and I was ready to pull my hair out!

After lunch, we had science. We learned about the Congo Rainforest in Africa and learned about goliath beetles.  Even though I had it planned out, it took longer than expected and the girls were getting restless, again. Ok, plan didn't work so well. :(

Next up was Megan's math. We picked up where we left off before Christmas and things went smooth. Once we were done, she headed back upstairs to do her homework and it was Courtney's turn. Things went much better with math! We went through her flashcards and she remembered more than I expected! I was happy with it!

By about 3:30 we were done for the day! Not so bad! We have some routines we need to get back into, somebody has to remember how to entertain himself, and we need to get our brains focused back on school, but other than that, things went well!