First Day of Summer School

It's July, 63 degrees and drizzling in the morning.  No, we don't live in the southern hemisphere...it's supposed to be summer!  But just so you know why Natalie is wearing long sleeves, long pants AND a jacket!  The boys ran back inside after we took this picture...too cold!

Today was Natalie's first day of summer school...ever!  Last year we didn't put her in summer school because we were on vacation when summer school started, and she would have come in half way through and only gone for a few days.  This year she's starting at the beginning of summer school, but will only go a few days because we're leaving for our roadtrip to Ohio, the end of next week.

Tom told me to stay at home and not follow the bus (new BIGGER bus, different bus driver) to the school (different school) to make sure the teacher (different teacher) knew all about Natalie's needs.  We're trusting the school district to have everything under control...we've had a good experience with Natalie's 1.5 years of preschool.

Natalie was fine waving to me as she left.  And Lukas and Konrad had fun doing summer school at home (are you going to think I'm a mean Mom because we're continuing to do "light" homeschooling during the summer?) so we don't lose the sitting-in-a-chair-and-raising-your-hand-to-talk skills that we finally have at the end of the year.  Lukas is continuing with cursive writing and a little math, and I'm adding in some fun craft projects.  Of course we do a lot of reading, but I don't count that as school, even though I know I should.  Konrad is still doing scribbling, coloring, play-doh and puzzles.  And we're having a lot of play time too, just so you know it's not all school work!

Every afternoon this week, Lukas will be in a summer school class called "engineering fundamentals" where the kids learn about physics, mechanical engineering, structural engineering and architecture while using Lego, Technic and System components.  Can you tell I just copied that from the ad?  We just told him last night (so we wouldn't have to hear "how many more days until my engineering class?" for days and weeks) and he is SUPER excited.  He's asked me "how many more hours until my engineering class?" several times today already, so you know we made a good decision.

So after a leisurely week last week of "just s w i m lessons," we're back in the grind of driving to get somewhere on time.  I can't tell you how wonderful last week was, just being able to stay home, and only go somewhere at a "fashionably late" time instead of be-there-on-time-or-miss-your-therapy-slot time.

Sigh.