First Day

There they are! My sweet kiddos :) Summer has come to an end. Today Jonathan and Nathaniel leave for school. I'm trying to not be nervous. I'm trying to think of things Elizabeth and I can do here at home to keep my mind off of them being gone, haha. They are both so excited so that helps :) In fact, Jonathan just tried to leave way too early and without saying goodbye!! He is very anxious to meet up with his friends again. I just can't believe how much Nathaniel has grown (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually) in just the last few months. He is so ready to be off on his own and try things without me or Rob around. He just is so anxious to grow up! I'm not!! It was fun to watch him at the orientation for new students to Mt View last week. He said he was nervous but he hid it so well. He even made the effort to introduce himself to any of his new teachers that we ran into. After watching him there, I realized he's going to be fine and he's going to love being up there. He has an advantage in Humanities. As were talking with his teacher about what to expect this year I was thinking it sounded very familiar and then he looked across at the shelves and saw the exact same book he read last year. So, sucky he has to repeat information but great that he's already read it all!! Just made me laugh. Made me feel better about what we had done at home too :)
Elizabeth is going to be fun! We have decided this year to go at it totally on our own for a few months. She is AMAZING! A friend pointed me to some tests I could give her to see where the gaps were in her knowledge. This would allow me to spend extra time there and not waste time in other areas she already knew. After I got done testing her it was amazing to see what she knew, stuff we hadn't even gotten to yet. She just picks it up, makes me feel like I'm not going to be able to keep up with this kid!! Anyway, I knew for the next few months we needed to be picking and choosing topics to cover what she doesn't know and I knew Connections was in no way going to allow me to hop all over the curriculum the way I want so we withdrew her. I'm very much looking forward to not having to be bound down by a schedule, though nervous about that at the same time. As much as I didn't like it, it kept me accountable :) However, I let myself get too tied to the schedule and I felt like we never had time to go do anything fun like hang out at OMSI just because. Now we can do that and I don't have to worry about someone else's calendar. In a few months we will look at a new program, K12. I've heard a lot of good things about them. I can purchase the books and then pay a monthly fee to utilize the online planner. Basically it will work just like Connections but we would still be homeschoolers and not a part of a charter school. Anyway, I'm looking forward to our year together and getting to spend more time with just her and Seth. I'm interested to see how they do now that both of their older brothers are gone for the day :)