So far our first morning back is going really well. I let us sleep a little late, because we'd both had some trouble getting to sleep, last night, after our wonderfully busy Birthday Weekend. I'm still working on getting in my morning routine when I first get up, but I worked out and started breakfast cooking, and then we played school.

Mondays are history/maps/world culture, spanish, and nature study.

We're using Mosaic as a gentle guide for our history work, and we're also finishing up the bits of the Oak Meadow 3rd grade Social Studies that we found appealing. This morning we read the intro to SOTW, and lesson 11 from Oak Meadow, which involved reading the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors, examining the map of where the story would have taken place, then finding that area on a map of Africa, and then on a map of the world.

For spanish we're using Coffee Break Spanish, and today we did lesson 1. (I've used it for myself before, getting through a few weeks of lessons, and I like the easy 15 minute segments)

For nature study, we're inspired by the Outdoor Hour Challenge at Handbook of Nature Study. Today we wandered around our yard for a bit, talking about some of the things we'd like to plant this year, and observing the birds and bugs and clouds. We decided we'd like to learn more about clouds and about moths vs. butterflies. After we got back inside, Sarah mentioned she'd like to learn more about weather in general. And, hey, look at that -- we were gonna be starting our Weather Unit study tomorrow, anyway! :)

Usually we'll do some independent work after playing school together, but between our late start today and my looming dental appointment this afternoon, today we just shifted straight into making lunch.

This afternoon we'll be getting out all her awesome science kits and books, and picking out 10 experiments we'd like to do over the next 15 Monday afternoons -- which I'm hoping leaves plenty of time for us to choose to take the afternoon off to go play with friends or do a field trip.