School Supplies Have Arrived!

I'm actually a little late on this; our school supplies arrived last week! A new school year is just a mere month away, and the excitement in our home is similar to that which precedes a major holiday. "It feels like waiting for Santa!" Reezle announced as I dragged the huge boxes of school supplies in the front door. Little G literally jumped up and down, yelling, "Yay!"

We unpacked our boxes and looked over this year's materials. Much of it was very similar; K12's K-2 science, music, and art materials don't vary much, and Little G is a grade level ahead of himself so we're doing our second year in a row of 2nd grade math and language arts. He is so excited to have the same Math Orange materials as he envied all of last year. Of course, now that Reezle has Math Purple, I'm sure he will want that as soon as the novelty of Orange wears off.

We have far fewer books this year, which is, admittedly, disappointing. However, we read plenty on our own and this just means I'll be hitting the library and bookstores more often. No complaints there.

Reezle and I got her personal learning space set up. Little G will share it for now, since we only have one functioning laptop despite buying two brand new Dell N5110s not very long ago. There should be a second one in G's learning space, but thanks to Dell, there is not. The one we purchased specifically for homeschooling, in November 2011, failed just weeks out of the box. It currently functions as a paperweight and nothing more. Despite numerous calls to Dell to rectify this, I've gotten nowhere. That was actually our third Dell to experience some catastrophic failure, so I'm now a Mac user. Forever. My personal advice to you, regardless of whether you are a PC or Mac user, would be never to buy from Dell. I digress.

Our living room book shelf is now home to some of our new school materials, while the kids elected to keep their favorite, and likely to be most frequently-used workbooks on the bookshelves in their own rooms. Little G is so jazzed about school starting that he says he wishes summer was over. (For the record, I don't wish summer was over...but I am excited about school, too.)

Our art, math, and science cabinet looks basically the same as it did last year, with a few minor additions. Seeds, paints, chalks, a graduated cylinder, math manipulatives, goggles, and various extras occupy this cabinet. I try to keep things near where we typically use them for quick access.

Reezle (and G, by default) will be taking Spanish this year. I've already begun getting them familiarized with it by asking each day, "¿Que día es hoy?" and having them reply with, "Hoy es jueves," or whichever day it happens to be. It's good practice, I think. I took Spanish in college, and it's coming back quickly for me, which is kinda cool. They already know their primary colors and numbers 1-20, so that's also a benefit. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.