Another School Year Begins.....

First day of school, August 7.

 

 

Bring on second grade!!

Visiting her teacher and seeing her classroom the day before school started.

Well, we are off and running on yet another school year, and there are exciting things in store for all 4 of us.  Laura started second grade last week, and so far, things are going great.  She loves her teacher, Mrs. Pruett, and she has made a new little friend in her class.  She seems calm and comfortable now that she is starting her second year at the same school.  The big, new thing for Laura is that she just started Operation Explore, the gifted program at her school.  OE meets once per week, and from the looks of what she did this week, she will learn a ton and have a blast.  Her first OE project is to write a letter about herself to present to the class, along with a visual presentation of pictures to accompany it (including at least 2 pictures found and downloaded from the Internet).  Then, they will work in the OE class to turn that project into a Power Point presentation.  My 6-year-old is learning Power Point; how cool!

Cliff kicked off his second year at Georgia College this week.  He has already had a very successful first day in his Intro to Conducting class (playing with bouncy balls to Stevie Wonder music as a conducting exercise DOES sound really fun!), and his ensembles are starting to take shape for the year.  Cliff's exciting thing this year is that he has been accepted to present at the annual Georgia Music Educators Association conference in Savannah in January.  Also, his jazz band will be traveling to Pensacola, FL in the spring.  Should be a great year!

The big news for me......I'm a French teacher again!  Over the summer, I was offered and accepted a class at Georgia College.  So, for 2 afternoons per week, I am teaching FREN 2001, Elementary French III.  My first class went well yesterday.  They seem like a fun group who is willing to learn.  The class falls just right so that Cliff can spend a couple of hours with Nathan on those days, and I can still be finished in time to pick Laura up from school.  It will be a new adventure balancing the class with my mommy duties, but so far, it has gone well.

As for Nathan.....after great deliberation last spring, Cliff and I decided to pass on the all-day pre-K offered by the state of Georgia.  It was an unorthodox move for this area, but it felt right to us.  We will never get these precious early years back, and we felt strongly that it was best for all of us that Cliff and I continue to be our son's teachers for one more year, and that Nathan have one more year to "be a kid" before being in school all day.  We do plan to walk him through the portion of the GA state pre-K standards that he hasn't already met, but we're not starting anything formal until after Labor Day.  Fortunately, I have another friend who does not do the pre-K thing, and she and I are already in talks about little "field trips" we can take this fall with Nathan and Caleb (and some other friends too). Nathan is a very, very bright, creative, funny, little boy, and I already find great joy in reading books to him and doing activities with him that unleash all of this.  I am excited to get one more special year to do this with him.  It should be fun!!

So, we are all re-adjusting to life with the 6am alarm clock, but so far, it's been a great school year.  I can't wait to see what's to come in the months ahead!

Gina