First Day of School, 2007

Hank is a frustrating boy for a crazed photographer like me. I mean, really, look at his face. Looks at the expression he's giving the camera. And this was the best picture he gave me yesterday morning. Most of them were more like this:

And Madeleine. Oh, Madeleine. If she spots a camera within one hundred yards of her, that teeth barring, is-this-over-yet-Mom? smile is all you're going to get.

So the pictures weren't so good.

But school. Oh, well school is another story.

Hank's biggest complaint about Junior Kindergarten was that it was over too soon (they only went for an hour today so, really, it was very short). So comfortable was he in his new surroundings that he was waving his hand violently within moments of arrival as his new teacher asked for volunteers to compete various classroom chores. She did say she'd choose someone who raised their hand nicely, but apparently Hank's arm-thrashing did the trick and he and his friend T___ (who he'd met and played with prior to today) were the chosen students. Generally, success on that front.

Madeleine had a great first day too. I started assembling materials last spring and a few weeks ago I put together some general lesson ideas for the first few weeks. I am awed how quickly Madeleine and I whizzed through them together this morning. Granted, I didn't have a terribly ambitious agenda today, but we were easily done by noon, leaving plenty of time for the park and Madeleine's highly coveted "alone time."

During our spelling lesson Madeleine got the surprise of her academic life. We were taking a practice test and the words were clearly just too easy for her and she spelled them all correctly, no problem. I told her I thought we should just skip that unit.

"What Mom? You mean just skip it? Like, without doing any of the work for it?"

"Yes, Madeleine, exactly that."

We ended up skipping five other units as well, much to her surprise and glee.

The best surprise, to me anyway, was that Madeleine wasn't in full-on meltdown mode by six p.m., a common occurrence when she was in school full time. So, success on the home schooling front too.

One day down, two hundred eighty-three days to go. But hey, who's counting?