Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Time to settle into the routine once again...

Summer is coming to a close.  The Goobers start school in one week from today.  We FINALLY got their teacher assignments and bus numbers today.  I really love our school, but hate that the district waits until the last minute every year.

Spawn is heading to the middle school for the first time.  And he's starting it off with a pretty heavy course load for a 5th grader.  They can chose what they want to do for music; just a regular class, chorus, band, orchestra or a combination of the 3.  He's chosen orchestra (playing the viola) and chorus.  Not to mention all the regular classes, plus his extra reading class.  And to top it off, he gets pulled from a regular class once a week for his orchestra session, so he's got to take it upon himself to go and check into class and get the assignments and make up the work.  He's determined to put the work in and make it work, so I'm behind him the whole way.  He's also thinking about signing up for sports and clubs as well. The only shock so far is that he's getting the bus an hour and a half earlier than usual.  We live just down the road from the elementary school, so our bus stop is the last one in the morning, and the first one in the afternoon...so being on the bus for awhile will be interesting.  It looks like we're one of the last stops on his morning run since they pick up about 15 minutes before the first bell, and we live about that far away.

Sweet Nut is headed into 3rd grade and is excited, at times.  He reminds me a lot of myself at his age, where the concepts being taught were easy to get, the work can be knocked out in no time, but just doesn't want to do it.  We had a talk the other night about not talking too much in class, so we'll see what happens.  I was told numerous times by his teacher last year that he's very easily one of the smartest in the class, but it just takes him forever because he talks or tries to get out of doing the work.  Reading-wise he's chomping at Spawn's heels...which frustrates Spawn to no end.  Spawn will read something and then Sweet Nut will read the same thing and remember more.  Just shows how different kids are.  I know towards the end of the year last year, Sweet Nut was already on a mid-3rd grade level for reading and Spawn was early/mid-4th grade level (slightly behind, but A LOT better than he had been).

Cute Boy just finished his summer reading class at school and is excited to be a 1st grader.  He had 2 teachers on his list that he wanted and he got second choice.  He is also behind in reading and received some help during the year last year, so I'm excited for him to be full day this year and have access to more help and services.  I'm not sure what he's looking forward to most, eating in the cafeteria every day, moving up to the bigger playground, or spending the day at school.  My once shy little guy can not wait for school to start.

Chunk finished up his first year at daycare and loves it!  We found an in home daycare that does a prek program when Cute Boy was heading to prek, and when Cute Boy graduated out, Chunk took his spot.  He is thriving there, and has graduated up to a big boy chair at mealtime and a big boy mat at naptime.  This year he'll start participating in more of the learning activities.  They incorporate learning into everything, but the toddlers, they know have a short attention span.  I do know that he'll be learning to recognize his name and the letters in it, in addition to the letter of the week program they do.  By the time he heads to K in a few years, he'll have his letters under his belt!

As for me, I'm looking forward to getting back into a routine.  Summer, while fun, throws me off in all kinds of ways.  I'm looking forward to getting back to the working 3 days a week, homework at night, meal plans each week, etc...wait, did I just admit that I enjoy that?  LOL.