First Day of School

I've been educating my children at home since (gulp) 1986.  No that isn't a typo.  It really has been twenty-seven years!  As it turns out it was excellent training for the task I am currently facing - that of teaching the Little Princesses how to understand and communicate in English. 

Can you imagine attempting to learn a new name for everything in your life?  Food, your possessions, your emotions, the weather - EVERYTHING?  I am exhausted just thinking about it!  These two are doing wonderful though.  They are very smart and learning quickly.  While it may take quite awhile for speech therapy to kick in enough that their verbal skills are understandable, their comprehension just four months after coming home is pretty amazing!

I've been seeing back to school photos all over Facebook, and not to be outdone, here are ours from Tuesday:

Jen is usually smiling!  She is so much fun to work with, and she is a HARD WORKER too.

Oh the wonders of playdough!  Abigail is learning colors while getting  a great fine motor workout too.

 We purchased a new (to us) desk and Tikvah had fun painting the inside with chalkboard paint, green and PURPLE GLITTER paint!  I simply cannot believe that she is in middle school this year.  She is pretty excited about a unit study that we are doing and a new Language Arts curriculum that just came out in August.

The desk closes all up to protect her school computer and books from prying little hands.

Today we went to the first co-op of the year.  Our co-op meets once a week.  Tikvah's classes this year are Musical Theater, Art and Spanish.  The Little Princesses are in the preschool class since they are just learning the alphabet and to count in English.

Abigail and Jen were a little nervous, but very excited about carrying their backpacks and lunch boxes to this new adventure that we called, "school."  I am assisting in their class the entire time so that helped to reassure them.

I'm excited about our new year of learning, and better yet all three girls seem to be also.  I love it that we can spend the day together and I get the great privilege of being there when the proverbial light bulbs click ON and they understand something new.