The First Day of School

We survived the first day of school-barely! We did manage to get quite a bit done today. Brittany will be doing independent work this year. Tyler will be doing independent work except for the second half of the year he will be doing history with Timothy and the little girls, and all year he will be doing science with them. So, my main focus this year will be on Timothy, Bethany, Brooke, and Tristan when he wants to be a part of it. They will be working on Bible, math, spelling, language arts, writing, history and science on Mondays through Thursdays, with Fridays reserved for all the kids to work together on Bible recitations, and art, music and poetry which we'll do on a three week rotation. Park day is Friday afternoons. However, since I don't have my spelling books yet, or Tyler's math book, and I have a few more small details to work out, because I didn't get everything done, I decided to do one of the five week long unit studies this week. We did the government/election unit I had planned. The other four units which I will disperse throughout the rest of the year will be: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover, and Economics.
Today was challenging. School is just flat out challenging with a toddler, which we seem to have had every other year for the past 7 years or so. Preschoolers are easy compared to a toddler, who has no concept of "don't crinkle that paper", don't eat that glue stick", "don't write all over yourself with the marker your sister left out". Sigh.
I have to be constantly right on Timothy (3rd grade) or he will not finish what he's doing. He gets so very distracted-constantly. I feel like part of it is that he is an 8 year old boy, and I take that into consideration, but he gets distracted on the way to brush his teeth thirty seconds after I've told him to go do it. If he were in public school he'd probably be on ritalin by now. He's very bright, and he's also very giggly, and silly. Hopefully we can work on the attention span and the silliness this year.
The only extra activity we are committed to right now is a book club, which only meets once a month. Our Spanish class sort of dissolved and we are on indefinate leave from Tae Kwon Do at this point. But, it certainly is nice to not have to run out, and that means lots of extra time to get plenty of stuff done at home. It is definately not a bad thing.