Tomorrow is the first day of school and I'm so scared! Our two kids who love to sleep in are actually going back to school and going to have to wake up a couple hours earlier than they have been most of the mornings since we moved here. I'm going to have to pack lunches, make tired kids get dressed, and get out the door way too early for the next 9.5 months.
Bean, our first little baby, starts high school, and is going to her first regular public school--where there are 2300 kids, and she knows almost none of them. It's going to be a bit of a change from the charter with only 100 kids in each grade, and an even bigger change from the last 1.5 years of homeschooling. But she's mostly excited about all the change and looking forward to all the potential she sees in going to school. She started water polo this week, so has already been spending 3 hours a day at the school, and has a few more faces that she will recognize if she runs into them on campus. I'm nervous for her, but at the same time, I know she will do great. She's friendly and good at meeting new people.
Peanut, is going to second grade at the local public school, and I'm honestly scared for him, too. I don't really have any fears about him making friends because he's younger and friends are more simple at age 7. He's always been the kid that goes to the park and ends up playing with someone new every time, even when we are there with friends. But I just have no idea where he'll be compared to the other students academically. He does things at his own pace, and has always had some very mild developmental delays, and rather than try to drill things into him before he was ready, I've just worked on fostering a love of learning. It worked great for homeschooling, but now that he's going to be in a classroom with a bunch of other kids, and with a teacher I know nothing about, I'm worried that he may feel "behind". He hasn't had anyone to compare himself against before--the other two kids are so much older, he doesn't even try to keep up with them, and I just don't know how he'll feel. I just hope that however it turns out, we can keep him excited about school and learning.
All this going back to school is weird for me, too, because these schools are so different from our experience with our charter in NC. Out here, we don't have a parent/teacher conference before school starts, there was no welcome letter from the teacher, no drop in visit. Peanut got lucky that when we picked up his teacher assignment on Wednesday, his teacher was in her room when we peeked in through the window and she let us come in for a minute to say hi. But I'm realizing that it may be a lot more work to feel connected to the school out here. And, of course, with Bean, they don't particularly want the parents involved. They expect the kids to take charge, which I both welcome, and feel a little sad about.
At least I still have Bug. It will be a very different experience this year just homeschooling him, but I think it will be good for all of us. I'm looking forward to being able to focus on middle school stuff with him, without having to meet the needs of three kids at three different levels. We're both looking forward to working in a quieter house, and to digging deep into some topics that he's specifically interested in. I'm also hoping to carve out some time for my things each day. I know that juggling 2 kids in school and 1 at home isn't going to be easy and will probably take up just as much time as what I did before, but at least they won't all be home all the time. Just having a quiet house will allow me to concentrate and be more efficient (so I'm telling myself.)
No matter what, we're in for big changes. I can't wait to hear tomorrow afternoon about what they each think of their first day of school.
