Starting School

The kids went back to school last month!

Cat was excited for school to start this year.  Who isn't excited to finally be a high schooler?  She's attending the same school she's attended since 7th grade but now there are some major differences: a new, much more sophisticated looking uniform, harder classes (honors biology and precalculus!), Winterim after Christmas break, playing on the high school soccer team, attending seminary, and being allowed to leave campus during lunch.

Photographic evidence to the contrary, Jack was not particularly excited about starting school.  He was glad he'd get to see his good friend again and that he'd be in 6th grade, the oldest grade in elementary school, but that was about it.  Thank goodness he likes his teacher and he'll continue to be pulled out for a special math class with the same teacher who taught him math last year.

Eliza was pretty bummed that only one of her 3rd grade friends would be in her 4th grade class but I was pretty sure she'd make new friends and still be able to see last year's friends during one of the 3 recesses the kids have during the day.  Eliza really likes her teacher, but she left the second week of school to go have a baby.  Can you believe that?  Life with a long-term substitute is going pretty well though and it will only be a couple more months before Mrs. O is back.  Eliza is also still upset with me for making her to go to this school when she misses her friends and the more laid back atmosphere and less rigorous curriculum of the school she attended for K-2nd.  I hope she'll come around some time this year.

Luke wasn't particularly excited about going back to school but he wasn't upset about it either.  He's done great transitioning to full-day school as a 1st grader this year.  He loves his teacher and he has a good friend in his class, but... he does NOT like homework.  Which could make this a very long year.

All smiles after the first day:

Then we jumped right in with our routine and drove straight to piano lessons.

Cat, on the other hand, was not happy.  She wasn't expecting to have homework in almost every single class, plus lots of big books to carry home along with her soccer gear on the first day of.

Welcome to high school, kid.

It's kind of heavy and really big." - Luke

She found solace in her favorite place: the freezer.

And then got mad that everyone else wanted ice cream too.

"Quit eating my ice cream!" - Cat

Having all the kids in school all day has allowed me more time to volunteer at the elementary school.  I've committed to help with math in Eliza's class and to help the librarian each week.  I'm also the room mom for Eliza's class and I'll probably help with Luke's class soon too.  I volunteered for lunch/recess duty during the third week of school, which was a good opportunity to see the kids - mine and the others - at their most relaxed.  It was fun to see kids who knew me from helping with PE last year and to greet the kids' friends and to even see some other parent volunteers I'm familiar with.

I took a minute to snap a picture of each kid with his/her current best friend.  Eliza, who had been really upset that she only had one friend in her 4th grade class who was carrying over from her 3rd grade class, was surrounded by girls she was NOT in class with last year and wanted them all to be in the picture.  (And the blue/green pattern was not planned, believe it or not.)

(I wanted to have a pic of Cat to include as well so she took this one with her
best-good friend right after soccer practice.)