First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for all the children.  Alex was up bright and early as his bus comes right before 7 a.m.  This is great for him as he loves waking up early.  Because he's in Special Ed, the bus comes right to our house.  It's so great.  After getting him off on the bus all the other children are waking up and getting ready for school.  Kate, who is in 6th grade, will be home schooled this year.  She was up bright and early with everyone ready to start school.  Kate starts her home school routine right after breakfast.  She does somethings on her own, but by the time the other children are out the door, mom comes to help with Math and whatever subject we are learning about that day.  I drove Emily, Dane, and Karsten to school for their first day.  Emily and Dane were ready to leave me the moment I parked the car and wondered why I wanted a picture of them.  Really, mom, it's just school!  Not like we haven't been here before!  So I let Emily and Dane go on ahead and head to the gym to meet up with their teachers while I took Karsten to his class.  The teachers were having the Kindergarten students line up in the hall until the bell rang.  Karsten is about the fourth student in his class to arrive, so he lines up behind three other girls and just stands there waiting.  As I stood there watching the other children come in with their parents, it was interesting to see the different ways the children were handling this first day of school.  There were the children who were anxious to get going and happy to be there.  I would include Karsten in this group.  He's wanted to go to Kindergarten for like a year now!  Then there were the "not too sure I want to be here" type.  There were also some who had come by bus or had no parent standing with them, so I put them into the "I can't cry, I'm stuck here and I guess I'll be ok" group.  The final group would be the "what's the big deal, I do this everyday" type, the ones who probably were in preschool and starting Kindergarten isn't such a big deal for them type.  I just wanted to hug them all and tell them they were all going to be great!  But, this is a public school, and I'm a stranger, so that would be really weird.  I'm sure they would have called the police on me and instead of teaching Kate, I'd be sitting in jail.  That would make a very interesting first day of school.

So after waiting for about 10 minutes, I decided I could leave Karsten, as they would be entering their classroom soon.  I asked him if he wanted to give me a hug, he said no.  So I hugged him anyway.  I'm way excited to hear about how his first day went.  By the way, it's full day Kindergarten.  Crazy.  But, he hasn't napped since he was like 3 years old, so I know he'll do fine.

I came home and Kate had finished all her morning assignments.  We moved on to Math and US History.  Kate finished everything up by noon.  Now she's got the afternoon free.

The house is quiet.  I miss the kids.  I'll see them in three hours.