Our first day!

This is officially our first real homeschool day. I figure that, as a mom, I'm pretty much my child's first teacher and, therefore, homeschooling all the time, but this is our first "real" day since she started Kindergarten. Lola is part of a great new charter school that offers a hybrid program where she goes to class 3 days a week and I homeschool her the other 2 days.
What I love about this so far is that I'm way more attentive than I used to be. There are tons of opportunity for learning and I've become far more aware. I definitely feel more accountable and that's good. Keeps me from being Lazy Mom. And the bonus? Elise gets to learn right along with Lola. Elise loves to do everything that Lola does, so it's very nice to have her home part-time.

For our first day, I thought we'd do something fun so we went to the zoo with some friends. My friend lead us to areas of the zoo that I don't usually go to. I get stuck in ruts a lot because I'll develop a routine and never really stray from the routine. This was fun because we saw exhibits we never saw before and Lola loved it all. We went to the insectarium where there was a butterfly garden. We got to see catapillars in various stages of metamorphosis. One, in particular, was only partially hidden in the chryssalis. It was awesome to observe the process that closely.
We also to see a snake's recently shed skin in the tank. Lola was so excited to point it out!
Morphing seemed to be the theme of the day, which was pretty appropriate, I thought!