The First Day, Our Second Time Around

We started our 2014-2015 school year today and our first day was so very different from last year.  The kids know what to expect now and so there were no nerves on their part - just excitement to start school.  They've been asking to do work in the new schoolroom for weeks, so they were thrilled to finally get to use it.  They spun around in their new desk chairs and switched their new lamps onandoffandonandoff and Doodle made herself a pest by emptying a few bookshelves of their contents and there was general cheerful chaos as we jumped in.

And there were far fewer nerves on my part, as well.  I know how to manage our homeschool day and how to handle any hiccups that come up, but even more than that, I realize now that a lousy day or a few bad moments does not represent failure, and that the best way to handle it is to laugh, shrug, and move on (hopefully with a strategy to handle it better the next time).  SSHH is also firmly behind our homeschooling enterprise this year, which makes a big difference in my approach.  Last year was very much a trial year for us and SSHH in particular had concerns and questions about how this was going to work, and I felt quite a bit of self-imposed pressure to make every day and moment spectacular - "See!  We are beaming ALL THE TIME and learning ALL THE THINGS and are done by noon EVERY DAY!  Is this not the most perfect thing EVER?!?!"  And so when reality struck and kids and mom were melting down and work wasn't done by bedtime, it felt catastrophic.  This year we are out to have fun and learn as a family, and sometimes it may be wonderful and sometimes it might lead to us all rolling our eyes at each other, but our outlook is much better from the start.

The perennial question when the kids meet new people is "what grade are you in?"  The usual reply is 3rd grade, kindergarten, and pre-k, but that really just covers their ages, and as far as school is concerned it isn't an honest answer.  Sprout is doing 3rd grade work for several subjects, but his reading, writing, science, and grammar is a grade or two ahead.  He's excited to start Latin this year and start learning computer programming.  SweetPea is five, but she's doing 1st grade math and grammar, and is reading longer chapter books now.  She's doing grade-level religion because it will be tied to sacramental preparation in a couple of years and we don't want to muddy the waters there.  And three-and-a-half-year old SweetPotato is working through kindergarten phonics and math books, although her coordination isn't on a kindergarten level yet.

So I have no idea what grade the kids are in.  Last year we made signs on the first day of school that announced that we had a second grader and a preschooler, but this year our signs just say "2014-2015 Henry Homeschool."  The "grades" have become pretty fluid, and each child is working where they're at in each subject and making progress, and as long as that doesn't stall, I'll be happy that we're on a good path.

We had a short first day of academics, and then we celebrated the new school year by heading to the waterpark and getting Happy Meals for dinner.  Tomorrow we buckle down in earnest and work through a full day.  While I'm sure we'll have our ups and downs, we're in a really good place at the start of this school year, and we're committed to being, as the Church instructs us, "the primary educators of our children."  And really, there's nothing else we'd rather be doing.