First Day of School

Well Folks, we survived our first day of school! :) Yay! The kids did great and sat well in their seats the whole time. Jude had two meltdowns, both out of frustration for small imperfections. Poor kid, I wonder who he got that from? Hmmm....

I spent a year journaling about "living a freer life" and asking God to take away my perfectionism, and He helped me to grow so much - lots of humbling. :) This will be a great year/opportunity for Jude to learn each day at school that things don't always have to be perfect, but doing our best is good enough. He cried today when he was using scissors and didn't cut perfectly on the black line. He wanted to give up after that one error. Then later, when he was drawing a picture of a sun, one line wasn't straight enough and he melted down, and then crumpled up the whole paper because that one sun ray wasn't perfect. We talked through each frustration and just tried again. One of Jude's strengths is that he has great attention to detail and order, but I also want him to understand that it's okay to not do everything perfectly. Life is full of imperfections. Josh and I often say that Jude will one day make a great "quality control manager". :) Other than those two little bumps in the road, he had a great time and did so well! I love getting to work with him!

Instead of putting Selah in preschool I decided to keep her home this year too, to learn along side Jude's Kindergarten curriculum. So whatever I give Jude to do, I'm giving Selah to do also. And today she didn't miss a beat. I know there will be things that will be a little challenging for her, but she's a smart little cookie, so I have a feeling she'll keep up just fine.

Here are some pics from our first day:

Official "school picture" in front of door. :)

Benjamin played happily in the living room with some toys while we worked for an hour at the table. (The first two weeks of school are on a shorter schedule. Normally we'll work for 1 1/2 hrs or so.)

Jude opening his new folder of work for today...

Working on day one of Creation... God said, "Let there be light".

Drawing a picture while listening to music...

Group photo at the end of our first day...


We listened to this song (about 5 times, per Selah's request) :) while working on some art :

I'm already looking forward to tomorrow!