Hi friends! Wow, I can’t believe we’re starting out 10th year of homeschooling today. It’s been quite a ride thus far, and I’m looking forward to a brand new year full of possibilities! We’ve got our new curriculum all sorted in our work drawers, and the school room has been cleaned out, de-cluttered, and sanitized. Even the birds got a fresh new cage cleaning!
The kids are all sad to see summer go, but they’re also excited for a new year and they’ve even said they’re excited to start school, so I take that as a bonus!
As a side note, I let the kids make their first day of school grade cards (see above) this year, and I thought it was funny how well they reflected their personalities! Some are straight forward and to the point, and others have a little more…shall we say flare? Love them all!
For our first day we usually…
- Eat a good breakfast!
- Take first day of school photos
- Take a quick tour of the classroom, and their workboxes so they can get a feel of what the day will look like.
- We usually keep our curriculum load light for the first day. Except this year, they started with a half day last Friday for options, so today is a full day of work for them!
- Go over their basic schedule so everyone knows what’s ahead.
- Then we dive in!
This year I have an 8th, 7th, 5th, and 2nd grader starting school so I think it will be a fun and challenging year. I’m changing up our curriculum a little bit this year as well as my kids are getting older. I’ll be sharing our 2016-2017 homeschool curriculum picks starting tomorrow for you all as well! I know I’m a bit late this year, but it took me longer to choose and order curriculum than it normally does. As a matter of fact 4 of my teacher’s manuals just showed up this past week! There’s nothing like cutting it close eh? But the good news is that I managed to get all of the lessons done and we’re ready to go!
So here’s to a great first day of homeschool at the Arndt Academy of Excellence, and we wish your family a wonderful homeschool year as well!
Click here to see my tips for a successful and fun first day of homeschooling!
I talk about some fun things we do to make the day a little more exciting as well as a sample schedule to help you get an idea of what a typical day looks like as well 
Hope it helps you out!
Happy Homeschooling!
Have a first day of school tip to share? Make sure to leave a comment below!
You are such an encouragement. Bless you. Do you have to teach each child for each of there classes? Do you know any one that uses Christian Light for there curriculum? I would love to talk with someone who does. Do you follow your schedule pretty closely? Do you post blank schedules that we could print out and use for ourselves??
Thanks for much. I like your article better then the video post. Thanks Again.
Siobhan
We usually do a mix of group subjects and individual subjects. This year I’m changing it up a bit and doing mostly independent subjects for them, so I’m teaching a little bit more but so far so good 🙂
Could you answer my other questions as well? Thanks
Siobhan
I don’t know anyone who uses Christian Light, sorry. I follow my schedule mostly, but also have to be flexible for daily things that come up as well, so it’s mostly a guideline. I do have a blank schedule you can download if you visit the link above in the HS 101 picture.
Have a great school year! We too are in our 10th year of homeschooling, and have a 5th, 7th, and 8th grader! Funny!
Which program do you use to make your daily schedule?
I believe I made that image in MS Word, if you click the image or the HS101 image you’ll get to the post with a printable schedule you can edit.
I run a home business myself. I am a single mom so I don’t have to schedule in mom/dad time. I started homeschooling before homeschooling was cool, my children range in ages from 12-34 and I have always homeschooled (and I now have grandchildren who are being homsechooled.) However, now, as a single mom running a business, too, I am wondering a few things. 1) When do you exercise, is that a group thing part of your lesson time? 2) How do you take care of email in only 30 minutes? 3) how do you take care of your blog/brainstorming, etc in only an hour a day? And 4) Things like shopping, meal planning (which I know you do), laundry, etc, when do you do those? Are those weekend things? I have juggled my schedule every which way I know how, Confessions of an Organized Housewife (first printing) was always my go-to manual, I have an older daughter helping me with some business tasks, but I still can’t figure out how to do everything without cutting in on sleep time. As you can tell, I’m older, I need the 7 – 8 hours of sleep especially to deal with the youngest child who has some learning disabilities and requires a lot of hands on time.
We do go year round so they get Friday’s off (which gives me an extra day to work, but I try to save that day for work only so I still have to work all the other stuff in) and we take breaks around holidays and a brief one in late spring. I got the idea from a private school around here and my kid with the learning disabilities really needs the year round school.
PS. would also love to know what scheduling program you use. I do use your dayplanner, thanks!
Hi Diana,
The schedule I put up here is just a guide line, some days emails take longer, or some days less it really depends. I have an VA so that helps with a lot of my email load. And I also tend to work at night depending on what I have going on. I also work during the kids activities, so I’ll often bring my laptop to swimming and work while they’re practicing etc.
The schedules I put up are created with a mix of software, Publisher, PhotoShop etc.
Thanks!
I simply loved the first day of school picture! I love seeing how differing homeschooling families celebrate their uniqueness! Isn’t that what brought each of us to homeschool in the first place? 🙂
We are still in summer mode; however, I will be tapering and transitioning our family into more structured academic study time to cover our 3R’s very soon…. Thank you for your awesome website! I look forward to more inspiration from you and the balancing of homeschooling, marriage, and blogging (as I will be blogging soon for our website “hs.fitness” soon. (We are building a homeschool online PE program). That said-I am so grateful for your exemplary example of what a fine website and blog can look like! Keep up the great work!