It's Back to School!

It's done! Despite my original intentions of starting school on August 29th, I finally caved to my children's pleas and agreed to start this week. It's just too disgustingly hot here to do anything anyways. And it occurred to me that maybe if we go ahead and start now, that will give us some playtime when things start to cool down in the fall.

I had decided to start yesterday, but my kids came down with some strange, painful blisters between her toes over the weekend. My husband was convinced that it was the chickenpox (Noooo!), though I thought maybe they had been stung by some blister beetles. A trip to the doctor's office yesterday (and 25 bucks later), my husband's fears were relieved, and I was declared the winner expert on all things health related.

SO finally, today was our official first day of class. The first day of school is sort of special around here. We start by taking pictures (to go in our yearbook at the end of the school year!), and then I pass out un regalito to celebrate the beginning of a new grade and a new year of learning. More about this tomorrow.

To kick things off, we spent time putting together our first weather station. We used a Green Science kit from 4M, which I bought at Michaels on Friday (Yay, tax-free weekend!). I thought this would be a great complement to our lessons, as my kindergartner (son) will be learning about weather during the coming months. And it was the perfect group activity: My daughter read the directions, while I helped my son put it together. (Forgot to take a picture and now it's too dark! I'll put it up tomorrow.)

The rest of the day was spent learning the routine. I had a chance to see right away what was going to work and what wasn't now that I am teaching two children instead of just one. I was so relieved that it is not as difficult as I was worried it might be. In fact, I think once we get past this first week, it will go much more quickly and smoothly, since both children will know what is expected of them and will be able to work independently for small periods of time while I am working with one or the other. I found the small puzzles I bought in the dollar section at Target to be really helpful in keeping my son busy while I worked with my daughter.

What about you? Has your family started school yet? Are you looking forward to it?