First Day of Homeschool Fun!

It's been a month since our first day of school, but I still wanted to share our fun day.  

***Disclaimer***  I am NOT creative!  When I texted Lynn pictures of our Back to School Table, she commented that it looked like something she had recently seen on Pinterest.  Really?  Ha!  Of course you saw it on Pinterest!  I can't think of these things by myself.  I copied it all from Pinterest!

I stayed up until 2 AM the night before we began school.  I wanted everything to be all ready for the big day.  I set my alarm for 5:30, and I woke up the kids at 7:00.  We started our schoolwork sharply at 5:00 AM.  If you remember, a while back I wrote about making 7 different school day schedules, each schedule depending on what outside the house activities we had for that day.  Since our extra activities had not begun yet, we followed our Friday schedule each school day until we left to take Olivia to college.

The day began with our annual Back to School Treasure Hunt. I created 10 clues, 2 for each child to read, and the last clue directed them to this year's treasure---a bag of school supplies and school related items.

 the finished bags, waiting to be found

New to this year was the Back to School Table. I decided that having a cute, school-themed table might make our breakfast fun!  Here's where Pinterest helped out.

 The place setting.

Our breakfast was homemade granola, yogurt, and fruit.

The placemat is a small piece of poster board for the children to draw on.

 The entire table

 The drinking glass is a canning jar with a black napkin inside and tied with a cute piece of ribbon.

 Just a table decoration

 Little jars of crayons for the children to use to color their placemats.

I kept these jars of crayons on the table even after the first day of school.

 Table decoration

 Another table decoration

 Each child had a box of jolly ranchers at his place.

Time for the treasure hunt!  It gets harder and harder each year to think of new clues and new places to hide the clues!

 We went oldest to youngest, so I gave Olivia the first clue.

 Pausing for a picture while pondering a clue and drinking coffee.

 Here is Sam, reading his clue.

 The girls found a clue on the front porch.

 Hooray!  

We found the treasure!

 Some of the clues

 Leah, looking at her treasure.

 Eating and coloring

I left the placemats on the table for a couple of days.  The pictures below were taken some time during the first day of school.  After they had colored on them much more than these pictures show, I hung the final products in our schoolroom bathroom.  So cute!

This first day of school was one of my favorites!  The day flowed smoothly, and everyone seemed to like their treasure and the kitchen table too!
Making memories is so much fun and worth every second of the work.