Wednesday, August 24, 2011

First Day of School

I am actually going to try again with the blogging thing!!  Well, the boys started their first day of private Christian school today.  Christian is in 10th grade and Cullen is in 6th grade.  Cullen has never been to school other than a bit of preschool early on.  Christian I pulled out of school when he was in 3rd grade.  They started soccer with the school about 3 weeks ago so they knew a lot if not most of the boys around the age.   This helped a lot.  I was so nervous for them.  I want this to be a positive move for our family.  We feel led in this direction and that this is what the boys need at this stage in the game.  They said their day went great.  I had such butterflies in my stomach when I was in line to pick them up.   Christian’s favorite part of the day was an explosion the teacher set up in Chemistry.  Cullen’s favorite part was history.  It sounds as though his teacher has a love for history and will really pass it on to him.  YEAH!!  We will see what this school year has to hold.  I pray that this experience will grow them closer to the Lord and will really start a fire to build a strong relationship with their Savior!

So….what about Clara.  She had a tough time with the boys gone but not as tough as I expected.  She said she wanted them home a couple of times but we kept today busy with things I had put off.  We did some laundry, worked on the printer since I had not printed off our letter “U” stuff for the week (figures it would mess up and then the computer it was saved on).  After this was fixed we had lunch.  I am trying to focus on different lunches again and offering more options.  Today consisted of whole-grain crackers with walnut pate, pickled asparagus (she loves the stuff!  She had eaten 2-3 of them before the pic was taken), bowtie pasta with peas to dip in the hemp nacho cheeze sauce, and carrots.  Sorry about the quality of the photo….cell phone pic.   You can find the recipes at this link http://veganandsoforth.blogspot.com/2010/05/muffin-tin-monday-dips.html  She has great vegan options for lunches…especially school lunches.

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After lunch we got the dogs all bathed and groomed.  She also had time to get her Letter Factory DVD watched.  We then had to leave to pick up the boys from school.  On Wednesdays they get out at 2.  The other days of the week 3.  Clara and I will be able to focus on her learning and one-on-one time together. Thursdays we are planning to start up park days regularly which we had not gone to b/c the bigger kids got bored since there were not a lot of kids their ages.  Clara is excited.  Tomorrow we are meeting at the splash park.  We will be starting gymnastics back up Sept. 12th and she is looking forward to this also.  I am going to try and focus on a Charlotte Mason approach to teaching.  We are going to try and focus a LOT on nature study with a  bit of “schoolwork” mixed in as she enjoys “doing” some school too like letter study/worksheets.  Along with reading a lot more with a focus on living books.  I am excited for what this school year holds for our entire family!  Again…I am going to try and start posting more frequently!!  I stink at blogging but I love looking back at it like a scrapbook……so I guess I need to keep at it!