A Scrumdiddlyumptious Day!

We are always thankful that we found homeschooling.  It's the perfect fit for my kiddos and our family.  Even though we are always thankful, not every day is easy.  Many days are hard.  We also have days that are great, fun, and even awesome.  Then, you have days like Monday, where homeschool just plain ROCKS.  It was a knock-your-socks-off day that really set the tone for a fantastic year.  I know, you're thinking..."wait, they homeschool, why are they starting the same time as the public school/private school kids?"  And the answer is...my boys LOVE it.  They love the back to school excitement.  They love school supplies.  They love going outside and waiving "good bye" to their friends that ride the bus.  They just love the back to school feeling!  So, we do it up BIG to match their excitement.  We started with pictures:

My 6th and 4th graders!

Being silly!

After obligatory pictures, we headed out to our traditional back to school breakfast.  The very first year we homeschooled, I had a coupon to Denny's.  We never eat at Denny's, but, hey, a coupon.  So, the next year...Denny's!  This year, Denny's again.  It's an unexpected tradition, but we very rarely eat breakfast out, so it's a real treat for the boys, and something very different.  They think it's awesome that they are usually the only school aged kids in the restaurant.  Last year, I had a few dollars, so they got to try their hand at the claw machine.  This year, they got to do the same. Tradition, you know.  And WON!  After Denny's, we had our traditional back to school car wash (something else we did last year, that is now a "tradition"), and I discovered that anything we do on this day will be considered "tradition", so I need to keep that in mind. ;)  After all that, we headed home to start our school day.

Gettin' our grub on at Denny's

Claw machine experts!

Our new mascot--Tiger (the bear)!!

We are starting our year with a chocolate unit study.  I may have gone a bit overboard (who...me?!?), but there are just so many neat things you can do with chocolate.  I found chocolate essential oil, which I placed in our school-room diffuser before we left.  So when the boys walked in after breakfast, they walked into a chocolate scented room.  Mmmmm...I also found chocolate scented pencils and stickers.  Those were waiting for them at their seats.  We started the school day by going over our brand new schedule, and walking through what our day-to-day schooling was going to look like this year.  Andrew was thrilled that I put times on our schedule.  Last year, it was more of a routine, which bothered him a little.  He's much happier with times.  I'll go into our schedule more in another post.  After that, we dove right in to our chocolate study.  We read the first chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  The boys had to decide the genre (both really wanted it to be non-fiction, but knew better...fiction it is), and spent some time discussing the story elements.  Let me tell you, reading about Charlie walking past the chocolate factory while literally smelling chocolate in the air was too cool.  I'm so glad I ordered the oil.  We're going to be doing a fun writing project with the book, I'll post all the links and resources for our chocolate study soon.  After our reading time, we moved on to a QR treasure hunt.  I found this cute resource on Teachers Pay Teachers, which you can check out here.  We're doing 2 QR codes per day.  On our first day, we learned about the cacao bean, what it is, where it's grown, and how it's harvested.  After that, we learned it's early history, and how it traveled from the rain forest to high society.  We also learned a little about modern chocolate.  No study would be complete without samples!  I ordered raw cacao beans off Amazon (I love Amazon), and we spent some time exploring the inside of the beans.  The boys thought they were so cool.  Until they finally took a bite!  Bitter!!!  Andrew kind of liked it, however.  Lucas...not so much.  Then, we sampled some modern chocolates containing 90% cacao, 60% cacao, milk chocolate (34% cacao), and white chocolate.  Did you know that white chocolate is not really chocolate?  It doesn't contain any cacao!  It does contain coco butter, however, and was the boys favorite.  Mine was the 90% chocolate.  That wrapped up our short-but-sweet school day.  It was a fun overview of what's going to be a busy, but awesome year.  The boys are getting older and acquiring so many new skills.  We are changing things up to accommodate their desire to get out and try new things.  This year, we have joined a music co-op, where Andrew will be in the band-playing trombone- and choir, and Lucas will take a general music class.  Both boys are also taking an outside-the-house science class (zoology).  We ended our day with a visit to Menchie's and some froyo with our homeschool group.  It was so good to see our old homeschool friends, and meet some new people in the group as well.  When we arrived back home, there was a box waiting for the boys.  I had ordered them Bop-It's, and they arrived while we were gone.  The boys were overjoyed and I was amazed at the good timing!

Bop-It Smash Time!!

I hope everyone had a great first day back to school, and I look forward to sharing our adventures with you this year!  :)