Monday, August 06, 2012

First Day of School

Following our local public school corporation’s calendar, we started our home school today.  They recently adopted a balanced calendar which means a little shorter summers but longer breaks.  My favorite part is that there will be a two week fall break instead of two days. 

It is easier for us to just follow their calendar most of the time since many of our activities are scheduled around the school calendar.

School went well.  We got off to a rough start with Sierra having major sleep issues last night.  Part of it was that I made her take a nap yesterday afternoon and she was not sleepy at all.  Also, we some pizza buffet and I think something bothered her tummy.  We’ve been eating very limited dairy so I don’t know if it was the cheese or possibly pepperoni.  Anyway, wide awake with a stomach ache and unable to sleep until the wee hours.  And then, when things were settling down.. in comes the oldest one complaining of her elbow hurting.  She fell on the stairs and hit her elbow on the top one on the linoleum strip.   She did that around 10:30 and didn’t have any near passing out symptoms but was complaining about it around 3:00 a.m.   It is nice a blue today and a little swollen.  She has good mobility  so far so we are going to just keep an eye on it and see if it bruises any worse or if the swelling and pain get worse.   We’ve done this before.  Jeff is an expert on broken elbows

I am trying out a new tracking software that I like very much so far.  After I have some time with it, I will give more details.  It seems to be a relational database which is how my brain thinks and it is FREE.  My favorite 4-letter word . 

The one thing I am going to try to do different is to keep track of grades.  Since grades are mostly an indicator to the parents and teachers about how a student is doing, I haven’t felt the need to give grades.  But when it comes time for high school, if we home school through high school, grades become more important as does record keeping.  I thought I better get started early on that so I won’t be trying to figure it out at the same time I am trying to figure out high school credits and dual college credits. 

Just as we did last year, we are taking a field trip on our second day of school.  We are going to visit the State Fair which is a lot of fun and this will be our third year in a row. There is plenty to do and see.  One day is really not enough but I do not know if we will try to go a second time or not.   We just try to prioritize what we really want to see and do and work from that.  We do not do the midway or eat fair food.  We pack our lunch and snacks and go to the van when we are hungry.  Then we come home and collapse from all the walking. 

It if fun to look back at last year’s post about the State Fair and see how much the kids have changed.   I hope to get some pictures again tomorrow.   This post is after a long day of school on a short night of sleep and I am not going to proofread it, so I apologize in advance if it does not make much sense when you read it. 

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