Back to school

It was a bad news day yesterday between yet another school shooting and China announcing that they have closed their inter country adoption program. I don't actually have words yet for either, but maybe by tomorrow I'll have something to say about the latter. We'll see. 

Instead, I'll talk about our first day of school. As first days go, this one was pretty smooth. Everyone worked on math. Sometimes being confronted with math after a break is... challenging. This went smoother than I had expected. H. even decided to do some math. I had decided that school for her would be driven by her own choices. Towards the end of last year, we reached something in her math book that she didn't immediately understand, so she announced she was done. I said okay and she put it away. I didn't even mention it to her this morning, but of her own accord, she had her math book and wanted to know what to do. I'm happy to report that the thing which was so upsetting last spring was simple and drama free today. 

I also met with each child to go over what they had chosen to work on this fall. We discussed resources, what and how much to do, and also discussed that they get to decide which rabbit trails they choose to go down. Some are using textbooks for their topic and we discussed how textbooks are a tool. Everyone is going to try their first chapters in the traditional way (read text, answer questions in back) and we can see how useful they each find it, changing if necessary. I was also able to find some Great Courses classes for them to work through. (Great Courses switched to Wondrium and is now back to Great Courses; we have their streaming service because I find it useful for homeschooling high school.) Each child has an assigned day each week where we'll meet together to talk about what they've been learning. 

And not to rub salt in a wound of any parent still reeling from purchasing their child's school supply list, but I did my back to school supply shopping on Tuesday to get ready for out start of school. I spent $15, which I'll admit, is pretty low even for me. But we're using resources we already had, so didn't have to buy those and I was good on most general supplies. That $15 went towards ten spiral notebooks and some tape... because I can't find out tape dispenser and I was at the office supply store. I'm sure there will be other things that need to be purchased throughout the year, for instance the library book G. is currently using for learning about American history between 1880 and 1910. And Y. has a crochet coral reef planned as she studies oceanography. That kind of thing. 

So the short version is that we're back to our school year routine. So far, so good.