LifeTrain

Back to School

As always, we're busy around here. More so than normal, I believe, because it is school preparation time. "Back to School" doesn't apply to this family; this will be the first time. This is so big I can't really wrap my head around it yet: Grant is starting kindergarten in September. My first born. My little boy. My five year old. Oh. My. Goodness.

In many ways, I'm getting extremely excited. We've done quite well lately with setting aside "lesson time" to work on reading and writing and learning activities. Mostly, it is to foster a love of learning and to establish the routine of Mommy as teacher. But, even without much pushing, he is latching onto the skills for reading and surprising me with a word here and a word there. "You're reading Grant! Good job!", I say to keep him fueled and encouraged.

Since we decided to enroll him in the Academy rather than public school, I will be homeschooling Language Arts and Math while he attends New Song on Wednesdays and Fridays for all the extras: Spanish, Chapel, History, Art, and Science. I've been busy doing my curriculum research for Language Arts and Math (...if anyone can research its me!). Making decisions has been a fine balance between obsessing over reviews and catalogs, and reminding myself that "it is just kindergarten". This isn't a matter of life and death, but it isn't to be taken lightly either. And I must remind myself to pray. Because I know that God led us to this path and gave us peace about this choice, I know that He will add grace to the details.

Yesterday, we received Grant's school calendar in the mail along with the text and book list. Eeeek! So exciting! This year's History involves a great deal of US History, so some of the biographies on the list were for Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. Soon we'll be getting a supply list in the mail for the things to bring to class. I'm sure this won't be the case next year, but this year I can hardly hold myslef back from wanting to purchase it all RIGHT NOW. Staplers, pens, pencils, wide rule paper. And he needs a backpack. And a lunch sack. I started thinking about all of the options out there and wondered what the other kids are buying. While I don't want to teach my kids to worry endlessly about having "what all the other kids have", I don't want them to have the really odd, strange lunch box. LIKE I DID AS A KID.

In elementary school (20 years ago!), while normal kids were bringing a brown paper sack or a rectangular lunch box (with the matching thermos) for their lunches, I was carrying a little cooler. The style has changed very little, and it was red with the top handle- just as it is now. I stuck glitter heart stickers on mine. Boy, that thing was big for a first grader! And I was so embarrased but never had the heart to say anything to my mom. She thought it was perfectly reasonable because it had room for a "blue ice" block at the bottom to keep my food cold. In high school, my friend Vera Ranola even recalled that monster of a lunch box and brought it up once. But I guess my mom was just ahead of her time, because in a quick browse, I noticed that a lot of the lunch sacks these days are equipped with a compartment for blue ice.

And backpacks. Do I get him one of the regular ol' backpacks or the new ones with the pop up handle and wheels like luggage? Hmmmm.

This is crazy, is this really happening?! (Wasn't it yesterday that he was born? And wasn't the day before yesterday when I was "playing school" and I was the little kid?)