First Day of School

We finally are here at our first day of school! Both kids are on a break right now and in rest time, so I decided to borrow my daughter's new chrom.ebook we got from school yesterday and test it out. It sure is nice to type on a keyboard again. It makes me realize I just need to get me a new laptop and stop over-researching.

Up until today I've had a lot of mixed feelings about school starting up again--a bit anxious, dreading the early mornings again, not overly fond of a stricter schedule, not sure how the kids will respond/act since the spring home school was awful....but on the otherhand, getting them learning again, seeing friends/new friends will help them immensely.

I have to say I am pretty impressed with how the school district has prepared for the start of the year. A lot of communication, timelines, milestones, drive up grab/go with supplies, etc.. Reminded me a lot of a corporate america project plan. And knock on wood the technology on my girl's device and our i.pad we are using for my son are working pretty well. We are able to log into their learning management tool and of course the multiple zoom calls a day. The only thing I'm struggling with is simple ole email....I didn't get the welcome email from my son's teacher which I thought was odd because my girl's teacher sent  welcome email, a slide show introducing herself, and several other info emails. I thought it was odd his teacher wasn't sending, but come to find out, I just wasn't getting. AGH! I think as long as the attachments are too big, I'll get them from now on. I hope.

Schedule:

Kinder/My Boy: For the first 3 days my son has a zoom call at 8:30-8:45, 10:30-10:45, and 1:45-2:00pm and that is it!  I am SO thankful someone in charge recognized that long zooms for 5 year olds just wasn't a good idea. Unfortunately we had a technology glitch or something and we waited and waited for his first zoom to start and we never got pulled into the meeting. Afterwards I emailed w/ teacher and the meeting did happen, so something was goofy. I'm kind of bummed we didn't get to attend the very first one, but it's fine. He had a picture to draw today of himself. Yesterday we got to meet his teacher via a 1:1 zoom and first impressions were good. She normally teaches 1st grade, so this is her first year teaching kinder. I actually noticed the teacher my daughter originally had is no longer listed on the school directory so she must have retired. Yes. My son seems to be doing okay so far and I'm noticing his attention span is much better now than it was this past Spring. He even said he liked zoom. He was a bit shy meeting his teacher over zoom, but I'm realizing that that is where he needs the most growth--social skills. He has a hard time working through frustration, feeling left out, worrying about doing well, etc.. I'm a bit concerned, though, that academically he will be so bored. They sent sight words and reading books and math with the take home folder and oh wow, he did that about a year ago. This is the downside I suppose of him being on the older end of the class as well as he's been trying to keep up w/ his sister. I'll have to monitor to see how it goes.

3rd/My Girl: First off, I'll say my girl hasn't wanted much to do w/ school at all. I've been telling her about the emails I've gotten, etc. to start prepping her and she just is not interested. We got the intro video from her teacher and she didn't even want to sit there and watch the whole thing. Oy.  It probably has to do w/ the fact that spring at home school was miserable for her. If she thinks back to that, and then thinks that we will be doing that again....well, I can see why she's not thrilled. It was a lot of push/pull arguments about assignments, etc.. that made for some long days.  But I do think now that the school had time to prepare, it will go so much better.  So far, one of the funniest thing is when I was going through the list of kids in her class who signed up for the teacher meeting we came across the name Titus. She started screaming and getting so excited. She says finally he is in her class. Apparently this is the boy that the girls at school think is so cute. OMG. Of all the things to get excited about, this is the only thing that made her seem truly excited. I don't remember boys being a big deal in 3rd grade, but it's been awhile.

My girl’s new, still unused backpack lying on the floor.

Her schedule is a bit lengthier as she has 4 zooms a day: 8:15-9:00 zoom, 9:30-10 zoom, 10-10:45 specials, 11:45-12:15 optional zoom Q&A, 12:30-1:15 zoom, 2:30-3:00 zoom. This is for the first 3 days then next week they will start a new schedule. Same with my son, I think.

I'm really impressed with her teacher, she seems very one top of things, she loves math which should be a good fit with my girl since that's her least favorite subject, and she just has a very kind demeanor. She also has 3 dogs which my girl got excited about-somewhat. I'm really hopeful that this will be a better year than last for her. I think it will.

Unfortunately their schedules don't mix well with times, so it feels a bit back and forth for me....but it's only day one. We'll get used to it. It will be like this until labor day, then supposedly back to school in person. Time will tell what will happen for sure, and how that will go. The strange thing for me is that it just feels like the summer didn't happen somehow....like we left off with zoom calls, and now that we've picked them back up it's like the break wasn't even there. School starting again seemed so far away and how could we manage all day every day......and guess what? We did. We had some bumps here and there, but for the most part, I feel like we were able to get in some summer fun like biking, lots of swimming, lots of cards and games, they got to go to old nanny's for a week. 

More to come.