First Grade

Update: In the pick-up line after Nathan's first full day, Nathan's teacher Mrs. N stuck her head in the car to tell me "I love that guy!  He's intelligent, friendly, on task, happy, (insert additional very complimentary adjectives that I can't remember).  There is NOTHING I don't love about Nathan."  Wow!!  What an amazing first impression Nathan has made on his teacher.  I'm so proud of him!
 
For a little while in the middle of summer, I wasn't sure that the kids and I were going to make it through until this next school year.  Andrew was being crazy fussy ALL. THE. TIME. and the big kids were at each others' throats.  So I waved my white flag and texted both the kids' schools: PLEASE let there still be some openings in your summer programs for my kids!!  Thankfully there were.  Sarah got to go to preschool camp for 1.5 weeks, and Nathan got to head back to Paideia for Explorer Tuesdays (there was space for Sarah got to tag along twice, which she was over the moon about!).

But finally we made it here, to the first day of school!

 Nathan wanted to write his whole sign this year and I think he has pretty great handwriting.  He and his friends also taught themselves to write their names in cursive last year (our school still teaches cursive later on), so he likes to show off that skill too.

One of the funny things "behind the scenes" is that Nathan had a half day of school on Friday, but wouldn't let me take his first day of school picture that morning.  He said it wasn't is real first day of school because it wasn't a full day.  So today was is real whole first day of school and therefore it was allowed to be documented.  

This year parents were asked to only walk pre-k or kinder kids into their classes, unless there's a specific reason or its the first day of school.  Sarah desperately wanted to see Nathan's new classroom and be a part of some of the first-day excitement, so I mentioned to Nathan that we were planning on walking him in on his first day.  Well, he did NOT want that at all!  He knew where to go and  he could do it by himself.  He finally compromised by allowing us to walk behind him into school so Sarah could peek in at his classroom.

At school pickup after his half-day, Nathan was just so happy!  He loves his new teacher, he loves his class, he loves being in first grade, he loves life!  And later he told me how glad his was that he was back at school "because I was so tired of staying at home all the time and being bored, I'm so glad that I'll be at school 5 days a week and not at home where I never get to go anywhere!"  So while I'm definitely going to do some things different next year (like pre-scheduing some camp weeks to break up the summer), I think overall summer vacation was pretty successful when Nathan expresses sentiments like that!

Last year: First Day of Kindergarten.