A fresh, new start!

Today was Wits' End Academy's opening day! And as no one is dead or in tears (anymore-we had one incident) I am considering it a success!

Man-Cub is enamored with the idea of our school being like Hogwarts. All I can say is he's got a good imagination. Anyway, in that spirit, I let him put together a Hogwarts "uniform" complete with black pants, white-and-grey-plaid button-down shirt and Redheaded Snippet's robe from her old Hermione Halloween costume. At his request, I wore a black skirt, white shirt and a black robe from my old Hermione Halloween costume. It sounds mad, I know, but you know what? It worked. We both felt more serious about it, somehow.

I made us a pot of tea using the silver tea service (the silver-plated tea set someone gave us) and carried it up on a tray to keep nearby in the classroom. I must admit it was nice to be able to sip a cuppa while going over our lessons.

We began with Psalm 1 and prayer, then the salute to the flag, then we were off to Science!

Don't worry, I am not going to do this every day, but we learned about benthic and sessile creatures, zooplankton and phytoplankton and I was never more glad for Man-Cub's Spongebob obsession! Never did I imagine I would ask the questions, "So, what type of animal is Mr. Krabs, benthic or sessile?" or, "Would you say Plankton is a zooplankton or phytoplankton?" in a classroom setting! Man-Cub was thrilled that he got to use his colored pencils to draw pictures of both characters in his notebooking journal!

Grammar was a bit of a chore as it was all about setting our goals for the year and the difference between short-term and long-term goals! YAWN!

But then! Then, we did Math, which is a subject I've kind of been dreading. I have a long and bloody history with Math and I just know all of my old math teachers would feel somewhat avenged by the knowledge that I am now having to teach the stuff to a squirrelly, little boy who is a lot like me. I can handle addition, subtraction, multiplication and division just fine, but I still have issues with fractions and don't even get me started on measurements!

Surprisingly, Math was the best subject today! He got straight 100s on all his assignments and on his pre-test. His memory astounded me; I think he might have a photographic one! He would complain and complain about having to read from his book, but then when he had to give oral answers to my questions, he would answer almost word for word! What a stinker he's going to be!

History was, sadly, a bust. I was very excited when I first got the curriculum. It came very highly recommended and it's one of the subjects I'm most looking forward to teaching (and learning). Well, they say it's unavoidable for homeschoolers to wind up wasting time and money on curricula that simply don't work or are a lot more stupid or annoying than you could have known and it's already happened. I was actually apologizing to Man-Cub through his lesson today. And I have to find a new curriculum! There is no way he is going to like history if we stay with this one!

My Latin stuff hasn't arrived yet (I keep checking the front porch every 15 minutes to see if the mail's come) so I don't know what that will be like. Man-Cub was very much opposed to the idea of learning Latin at first, but once he realized that most of the spells in Harry Potter are based on Latin, he warmed up to it (he and The Viking are reading through the series at bedtime right now--hence the fascination with all things HP).

Right now, Man-Cub is in his play clothes, lolling on the couch, watching Tom and Jerry. I don't think he can believe that he's doing that at 1:55 on a school day and he's not sick. I'm not sure what to do with myself either, but I've got a few unmade beds that are calling my name.

So far, so good!