Day 5 of Public School.

Yesterday we had a bad case of the Mondays: our first major 5th grade homework and impossible project list was received, one damaged lunchbox was brought home, one concussion was narrowly avoided (i hope!) after a nasty collision on the playground, and one kid came home sick.

I'm hoping today is better. But we have already missed the bus, so i'm not too sure.  Willow is staying home to rest and hopefully get over the headache she's had since yesterday and the minor fever she woke up with.

First Day of School!

Dale and i stayed out of the house and ran errands most of the day. It was too weird being home without the kids.

The kids' day went without major incident. Ryvre just failed to hear me when i told him to ride the bus home, so i had to go get him. *sigh*

Back to School Crafts

For those of us that ARE sending kids to school, here are a couple of ideas:

First off, nametags for backpacks (because let's be honest, some of us live in places where all of the kids probably have to shop at the same wal-mart)

All we did was trace around cookie cutters and cut out the shape, then decorate with colored sharpies and glitter glue.

Then i punched a hole, and attached it to the zipper of the backpack with a mini ziptie.

The next project was my attempt at providing a place for the kids to keep notes to and from their teachers, so that my life is a bit easier.  Again, we used foam sheets, markers, and glitter glue.  I insisted they put their names on them somewhere; it's a habit they're going to have to develop!

Then i hot-glued the sheets to empty, cleaned (and goo-goned) Lays Stax cans

Ta-dah!  Easy.  And they fit nicely into the side pockets meant for bottled water.

Changes

I've thought a lot about what to do with this blog now that the kids will be attending public school.  Shut it down?  Stop posting and let it fade away into memory?  Change it?  But really, sending the kids to school won't change much at home.  We'll still be learning together.  So the title is still relevant.  I've simply added a description: "Learning at home, school, and the world."  Because that's what we do here.

Ready for School?

I keep telling myself i'm ready to send the kids to school, but let's be honest: this is going to be a huge change! I've been home with them, full time, for almost a decade now. Can I really let go and trust the bulk of their daily education time to a stranger? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Of course, most of my anxiety is no different from the anxiety of every parent when it comes to sending a child (or three) out into the world, but I really am doing it the hard way by sending them all off at once instead of staggering them by age like most people do! It's going to take awhile to adjust.

Visiting the School

Today we visited the local public school and spoke to the elementary principal. I kept asking questions and expecting him to say something we wouldn't agree with, but that never happened. Instead, it seems that we have a lot of the same philosophies about education that he does, and we've decided as a family that the kids probably would benefit by being there. There are of course a few technicalities we need to deal with to get them enrolled, but unless something really outrageous happens between now and August 17, I think it's a done deal.

There are pros and cons to attending a small, rural school, and most of them were things we anticipated, but maybe not quite to the degree that we're going to face them (both for better and worse).

First is perhaps the one that will effect us the most directly: class size. There are 180 kids between the elementary and middle schools (the buildings are connected). Each grade is divided into two classrooms, with about 15 kids in each. During the course of the year, between 60 and 80 students will probably move out of the district (most of which will return the following year) due to their transient status (the parents are migrant workers, there are complicated custody arrangements, etc.)! That was something I expected to see a little of, but certainly not up to 44%!

With numbers like that, I wasn't at all surprised with the next figure: 65% of the students receive free or reduced-rate lunches. Obviously the district is poor; that's evident by the mis-matched construction of the buildings and the 40-year-old linoleum and fixtures within. But everything appears to be clean and in good repair, so I can recognize and appreciate frugality at work. The school I went to routinely wasted money on prettying the place up in ways that even as a kid I thought were completely unnecessary. It looks like every dime here is being spent on the kids.

Electives are few and far-between. There are only three: art, music, and PE. There are even fewer extracurriculars (baseball and softball are offered in 7^th grade. That's it.), and the principal admitted that field trips are rare and unlikely. This is, of course, a huge disadvantage to other districts, but that's life. And due to the rural nature of the school's location, it's unlikely that many parents would be able to afford to attend any sports or other events anyway—and that's assuming they could find enough participants in the first place. So,all things considered, they're not very practical anyway!