4th Grader Back to School

My kids get up early anyway, but you would have thought it was Christmas morning at our house. The boys were up at 5 a.m. getting ready for the first day of school. They had their backpack & sling pack stuffed with school supplies divided up from the night before. It's always important to them to wear their BEST shirt for the first day of school. The best shirt this year was a Pokemon t-shirt. The boys donned their matching tees and twinner athletic shoes.

They were totally irritated that I wanted to take a picture before they started walking. James is returning as a 4th Grade student. He's a bit nervous about being an older student and having to work harder - school has come rather easy to him in the past. He was also worried that he's already read all the books there were to read - true of our personal bookshelf, but I promised that his teacher could find more for him :)

Jacob will be continuing as a 3rd grader from home. He'll be working with a teacher from our school for 5 hours a week. But today I was his teacher. We set up my old scrapbook table for his desk and arranged his supplies. We did reading group for 30 minutes (that nearly killed him to be still that long). We reviewed multiplication flashcards & we did computer lab. I let him play Mario Dance Dance for recess.

The biggest problem was that while I was doing all that I also had a daughter in and out of the room wanting to do her preschool workbook. She wanted to dump all of Jayson's toys out of the closet and spread them into every corner of our house. Nobody wanted to put the milk away. I did that about 20 times. Jayson didn't want to sit still during reading group nor did he want to be put on the ground nor did he want to nurse nor did he wan to sleep EVER for longer than 47 minutes. I think he's teething and he's not quite his pleasant self. I'm adjusting too. I didn't do a load of laundry or clean one bathroom or blog anything. I was wondering where the teacher's lounge was so I could take a break.

Even though Jacob won't be attending his elementary school is was VERY important that he walked to school for the first day. He made that perfectly clear. I think he was ready for school before James was. He was hoping to see some of his friends. I got super nervous and paranoid, but the compromise was that he had to wear a mask and we'd just go to the corner. (His blood counts were low last Wednesday so he's at a higher risk of infection).

Jessica came too. You can hear her calling, "boys... wait for me." We bumped into our friend riding his bike to school. I was able to chat with James about the wonderful books he would read as a 4th grader while Jacob RAN to the school.