First Day of Kindergarten!

Kylene is officially a Kindergartner! It is hard to believe, but she was definitely ready. She is actually doing Kindergarten at home (yes, I am home schooling!), so here she is on her first day, backpack and all, although admittedly she hasn't much worn her backpack since then:). She still wanted to go buy one and all the school supplies, so Wal-Mart still got our business.

She wanted to start school the same day as all of her friends (although a month earlier she also told me she wanted to start then, so we did school work off and on as she wanted), so her first official day was September 14th. That also happened to be $4 day at the Oregon Zoo, so I figured: here is one of the perks of homeschooling right away: we can do what we want! And off we went to the zoo for the day. She had been begging to go all summer, so she was thrilled. Jana and Daniel were kind enough to join us (and it was a huge help to have another adult), so we had a lot of fun. (Our brand new camera was barely/sporadically working---another story, grrrr--so these are the best ones of the kids I could get. I'm leaving out the pictures of the animals, since you've all seen those before; sorry!)

Deciding to homeschool Kylene has been a long time in coming, and was a hard(er than it should have been) decision. But, all in all, it is going wonderfully well. Other than not having much of a break in my days, I love it and feel very good about our decision. It sure made it easy when we left four days after school started on a 10-day family vacation!

Although Kylene was super excited about being homeschooled at first (she was a very open part of the decision), that first week watching her friends go off to school was hard on her. "I want to go to regular school, mom." But after we left on our trip, and since returning home, she has not said a word about going to public school, and seems to love her Kindergarten experience thus far. She still has her regular play dates with her closest friends and is doing soccer for the first time and loving that. So, plenty of "social" opportunities. And I love the freeness of our days, the unique one-on-one time I get with her, the many "ah ha" moments we've already had together, and knowing exactly what she's learning. I love doing reading time in my bed, on the couch, on the floor, or anywhere else we want to. I love spontaneous "tea parties" for our "school snack" with water and the leftover "paint" from our pudding paint project. Yes, I know the year will have its ups and downs, and its "Why am I doing this again?" moments, but I love being my daughter's teacher as well as her mommy. She is one beautifully smart and intelligent daughter of God and I am so thankful to be her mom! Here's to a learning filled year, for her and me!