Monday, September 26, 2011

School is in Session

If you had asked me a month ago if I thought I'd be spending my days waking up at 6:30am, packing lunch, waiting in the carpool lane twice a day and missing Katelyn terribly, I would have said "No way! We are homeschooling and loving the freedom to learn at our own pace on our own schedule." Well, life threw me a curve ball. Two weeks ago, we received a phone from our local charter school saying that they had a spot open up for Katelyn and that they needed to know if she would like to attend. If not, they would move to the next family on the waiting list. Katelyn started out 25th on the waiting list. In the back of my mind, I never really thought they would make it that far down the list before the end of the school year. So you can imagine my surprise when one day I was sitting in the school room doing an All About Spelling lesson and the next day I was visiting the school trying to to decide if we should let Katelyn attend the charter school. After a lot of discussion we decided that we would let her try it. If in the future we felt like Katelyn was doing better being taught at home then we could always pull her out. On the other hand, if later on down the line we felt like Katelyn would benefit from attending school, we couldn't just start her at the charter school, and it was highly unlikely that she would ever get a spot in the future because of the growing size of the lottery. So... we plunged. We visited the school on Friday, spent Saturday buying her school uniform and supplies, and Monday we walked her to her first day of Kindergarten.


Her first week of school went well. Like any other attending school for the first time, the days were really long and she wasn't always excited about getting up and going. But once she is there, I think she is having lots of neat experiences. Recess is by far her favorite. I love that she gets to have music and art class. She was in need of more discipline than I think I was giving her, so I think that the schedule and rules will only help her in the end even though she has a hard time with them right now.


Truth be told, I miss her a lot and I am sad that the afternoons reading on the couch or working together in a math workbook are gone, at least for now. But hopefully, we are doing what is best for Kate and it will only make me treasure the moments I have with her when she is home...