School!

Yup!

We started school on Monday.

To those of you up north, or from another country, this may seem strange.

Our local public school started classes on August 6th!

We let the kids have one more week and started on the 13th.

Aren't we nice?

As much as the kids hate to admit it, our whole family does a lot better when we have structure to our day.....like we do when there is school.

Everything is smoother.  Less fighting.  Less mischief.  The house is cleaner because I actually assign chores instead of waiting for someone to notice the pile of garbage that they have been stepping over for days!

We adjusted quite a bit of our schooling for this year.

We moved school to the basement, so everyone can be together.  In past years, especially in our current house, we have been spread all over the house because there wasn't room for us.

Everyone has their own work station/desk....even me.

All of our books, supplies, reference materials, and art stuff is all downstairs with us.  Everything we need is in one place.

We have switched to harder courses for D-man and A-girl....which means school will take longer than last year.

So far, our first 3 days have gone really well.  Monday was hard though.  The kids aren't used to going to bed early....so nobody fell asleep when they were supposed to Sunday night.  D-man even asked if he could have some of my coffee on Monday because he was having a hard time staying awake!  They were all sort of little zombies on Monday.  And, school took forever to be done.

Everyone has adjusted now though...people are sleeping (mostly) when they are supposed to....no one has fallen asleep at their desk.  Homework assignments are being completed on time.  Since I have an actual desk with an in box....we aren't losing the completed homework assignments either.  Not that it happened before or anything....

So, here is a glimpse of everyone on their first day...take note of how sleepy certain people look....

S-girl started Kindergarten this year.  She has been wanting to be in school forever.  She was so happy to be a student.  She worked so diligently on her writing.

I thought this was really cute.  This is a page from her math book.

She was counting to 5.  So, she said, "One airplane.  Two trains.  Three limos.  Four bicycles. Five skates."

Did you catch it?

Not cars.  Not convertibles. 

Limos.

Three limos.

I hope she marries well.

This one was sooooooo very excited for school and she still has 2 years before she officially starts.

 She really had this sort of crazy look all day long! 

She is one of the things I am "fine tuning" this week in my school plans.  I am going to need an actual plan to keep her busy while the rest of us our doing school....not just the usual coloring pages and Sesame Street.

I just realized that I haven't shown you completed after pictures of the basement....so I will try to get that done sometime soon too.  It really is quite a transformation.