Here we go, again! Year 5!!!

"When you can't do what you have always done, 

then you only do what matters most." 

- Robert D. Hales

My health has been pretty bad this year, so as I planned for the upcoming school year I had to take that into account as possible road bumps.  I got some good advice to figure out what our pillars are, and then make habits out of those pillars, so that on bad days those habits would be in place to make sure we at least got the most important things done.  So, this week, for our first week of school, we worked on making habits out of our pillars.

Each day we worked on the following "pillars":

• Pillar 1; Personal Scriptures. 
• After eating and feeding the animals, we started out our day with personal scripture study.  Those who can read, read, and those who can't, watched scripture videos. 
• Pillar 2; Devotional.  
• We then met together and shared what we learned from our studies.
• Pillar 3; Memorization. 
• When we were done sharing, we read from our memorization for the week.  This week I chose D&C 130:18 "Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection."  We read it, wrote it (or colored on it), and had it memorized by Friday.  
• Pillar 4; Family Read Aloud. 
• After our devotional, the kids did things in the classroom (colored, did word searches, played with blocks, etc.) while I read from Little Britches. 
• Pillar 5; Personal Reading
• At some point in the day, between jobs and piano practice, each kid set aside time for reading.

Those will be our basics; our pillars.  Our foundation to build upon.  Besides those things, we also did our usual jobs, piano practice, and piano lessons.  Next week, we'll add on more subjects! 

Something special we did this week to bring on a new school year, was outings with Mom.  Each day I took one kid out for a one-on-one dates.  

     

First up, was Keira!  On Monday she and I went out to lunch at The Crepery, and brought along her planner to plan out what she wants to study this year.  She made me proud with her plans.  She has a whole list of things she wants to study, and made plans for how often she would need to study them to progress adequately.  Without prompting from me she plans to study math, violin, piano, sewing, history, the human body, Portuguese, and Sign Language. 
After lunch we went shopping for some new clothes.

Next up was Garrett!  We went out on Tuesday and he insisted that I not call it a "date", because that "would make him feel weird".  haha  We talked about what he's looking forward to learning this year, went shopping for clothes, he made me laugh repeatedly, and then we got burgers and a shake for lunch.  

Wednesday was Libby's day!  She was so excited, because she knew we were going to be getting a haircut!  So, first thing we did was head to the salon and get her haircut.  While we were there I decided to get mine done, too, spur of the moment.  Afterwards we went to Jamba Juice and Einstein Bagels.  That is so Libby.  She loves smoothies and bagels!  During our date we talked about what she's excited for, and what she wants to learn this year in school.  She's very excited for the photography class she'll be taking.  We got to pick out a camera online, which was very exciting.

 

William got a little spoiled on his turn.  Daddy took the day off of work (coincidentally) so he joined us for our date.  William chose breakfast foods for his lunch.  I made mention that he couldn't eat all of that food, so I guess he took that as a challenge and did!  We also talked about what makes him happy and what makes him sad while we were together.  He's taking an Engineering class this year using Legos that we get to pick out, so we spent some time on the computer when we got home picking out which sets he wants to use. 

That was the gist of our first week back.  Here we go again!  Year 5 has begun!!!!