Back to School

The last week in August (yes, I am a bit late, but we’ve had illnesses around here and my picture guy has been totally under the weather!) was “back to school” week, and part of the fun was that because each of our three children returned to school on a different day, we had the pleasure of focusing on that particular child on their special day. (It should be noted that Jonathan refused to pose on his own on his first day so his only pic is with his brother on Nicolas’ first day of school!)

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Jonathan returned to Rainbow Connection Preschool on Monday morning, to attend the Pre-K class. He was very excited to get back to school. His teacher visited us at home the previous week to introduce herself to us and Jonathan and to help him feel more at ease on his big first day. They are doing so many fun things this year in Pre K and his particular teacher does a lot of music along with other activities in her classroom, so this appeals very much to Jonathan. Perhaps his greatest excitement is the fact that he will get to enjoy lunch at school this year for the first time.

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Nicolas’ first day at the same preschool was on Tuesday, where he entered the “2 1/2’s” class which meets two days a week. This class is somewhere between the 2’s and 3’s, and designed for “older 2’s and younger 3’s”: they stay with the smaller class size but utilize much of the 3’s curriculum to teach the class. Nicolas’ teacher has won his heart already, and he is thrilled with his little class. Like his big brother, he too is very excited to get to take his new Bob the Builder lunchbox to school and eat with his classmates this year.

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Abigail returned to The Covenant School this year as a big 1st grader. Wednesday morning was opening Chapel for the entire school and our whole family trooped down for the big event. We are delighted with her new teacher, a dear lady who put Abigail (and several of her other nervous classmates!) at ease immediately and whom I am really looking forward to working with this year. Here is a great pic we got of Mrs. Beller and Abigail:

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The transition from Kindergarden to 1st at Covenant feels like a big deal. Abigail now attends school 5 days a week for the first time (their K program meets M/W/F or T/TR depending on the option you choose), she and her classmates are in desks instead of seated around tables, and there is even homework, in very tiny amounts. But in addition, she will enjoy Choir, Music class, Art class, Nature Study class and a few other activities which she will enjoy having as part of her school week. She (and I!) still get to enjoy early dismissal on Mondays and Fridays and we take advantage of the 12:30pm end time on Mondays to allow her to attend ballet in the early afternoon instead of the late afternoon/early evening, which is a lovely fit for our schedule.

I’ve never said much about Covenant, but after a year there, we are truly in love with it. It’s a classically-based Christian school, with a lot of Charlotte Mason influence thrown in. The balance between outstanding academics and a nurturing environment where these little hearts and minds are cultivated to love learning and all that it entails is wonderful. The faculty is loving and caring, and because the classes are so small (at 13, there is technically one more student than there “should be” in Abigail’s 1st grade classroom!), the teachers get to know their students and their families extremely well, and can work individually with children as needed. The families, which make up the heart of the school, are wonderful, and the whole place feels more like a close-knit community than an educational institution. We learned firsthand last spring after our accident about the amazing compassion the folks at Covenant have for one another as people brought meals to us for weeks and weeks, and Abigail was transported to school and back by different moms and dads for the remainder of the year. We feel very thankful that Abigail has such a school to go to.

It has been a huge blessing to get everyone settled into their school year before our 4th little Horne makes his appearance. Carpool is up and running at both schools, and I have some wonderful help this year which I am so grateful for, esp as we look forward to the birth of our baby and me not driving perhaps so much in the first few weeks after that great event!

I hope everyone else is enjoying their “back to school”, whether your school is far away, right inside your home, or somewhere in between!

2 Replies to “Back to School”

  1. Great pictures! Obviously Nicolas is not camera-shy like Jonathan. He manages to show up in 3 out of 4 pics both in this post and at the top of your page — pretty sneaky, but also irresistibly cute.

  2. yeah, i realized how many shots little Blueberry Eyes shows up in as we were putting the post up! he just loves to pose, and in general, is rather photogenic (IMHO!). for her part, Abigail also showed up in several of the preschool pics, looking quite lovely, but they were photos that were not so, um, flattering of the boys, so we chunked ’em!

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