Accidental Service Project mixed in with Our First Day

Today we officially started our homeschooling education. Though it was very basic.
I am waiting to meet with Kara's Advising Teacher at her school to see where we need to go.
Since I don't have access to her testing and scores, I'm not at 100% where her reading level is and her math skills.
This morning we just did some basics, and will do basics pretty much all week until I can figure out a routine.

We worked on
1) Penmanship: She has crazy handwriting. One of the reasons we were unhappy with her previous school. The way they were approaching penmanship in her class was OUTRAGEOUS!!! So I decided to it the RIGHT way! Yes there is a wrong way and a write way to teach proper penmanship. Two black lines drawn on a white piece of paper for a first grader is a WRONG way. How else do they learn to control the size of their letters? Or prevent their "s" from slithering away!?
2) Rhyme Time Phonics: We did some basic Rhyme Time Phonics, which also included some spelling. Though, Kara can read some pretty tough chapter books, and summarize, she has a bit of a problem writing words correctly. This triggers my knowledge of understanding Phonics. So we're working on that part.
3) Math: She did some basic math. Pretty darn close to what they were doing at school. At least, as far as I could tell based on the work she was bringing home.

Field Trip: We went to the Palmer Fire Dept for a tour of the trucks.

Accidental Service Project: After the fire dept tour, I took the kids to the park. NO RAIN!! YAY!! As we were playing, Kara had pointed out how much garbage was on the ground. There wasn't a garbage can around .. seriously!!?! A park with no garbage can??  Anyway, I had a grocery sack in the car, grabbed it and Kara and all the little ones ran around the park picking up the garbage. Service project without a production! :)

Look, I'm so new at this, I have NO IDEA where we are going with this homeschooling business. If you handed me a classroom with 24 first graders, I could probably whip together a lesson plan with future planning in no time at all. That's what I was trained to do. Why? Because in a situation like that, you teach to the middle with some variances to below and above average performance.

Now, I'm working with one child. Which means I am catering my ENTIRE lesson planning to her abilities. It's a little bit more challenging because this means there is no "middle." There is Kara!

As our days go on, I know there will be more structure, and we'll eventually find our flow. At least, I hope we will!

Extra reading for you.... I am still trying, occasionally, to talk myself out of this decision. And believe me, I have come up with a good amount of reasons to not home school. But also a good amount of reasons to home school.

This blog post has 50 reasons to home school .. and I think I've said about 37 to myself. Anyway, enjoy!

Edit: We also decided that we are going to keep garbage bags in the car now, for those times we come across a littered area. :)