1st Day of School Pictures

Since we homeschool yearround and it seems silly to take a first day of school picture when we begin a new grade at the 'wrong' time of year (Jeb started 1st grade at the end of March) so we've started doing our 'first day of school' pictures on the first day of our homeschool enrichment hub classes. They meet on Fridays for 3 trimesters with all different kinds of classes for the kids to take.

This session, Jeb is taking Spanish, Solar system, and Folktales from around the world. He enjoyed all of his classes. I asked how Spanish went, and he said "It was good...the teacher sounds a little weird when she talks, but that's ok." His teacher is from Guatemala, so we had a nice conversation about accents. It made me chuckle because, while diminishing, Jeb still has some of his accent :) 2 friends from church are in his solar system class, and one of his buddies who has shared classes with him for the last couple of years was in his folktales class. It was fun for me too, meeting up with other moms I've gotten to know, my cousin, and a few friends from church who started homeschooling this year and joined the hub.

Vivi and Journey are taking a class called Math Arts, which was pretty fun. They sorted strings by length, then by color, then made them into a design and glued them on paper, and then used multigrain cheerios (some are light and some are dark) to make a pattern onto a necklace. Because we don't buy a lot of packaged foods, whenever there's a snack I always read the ingredients, even when it seems like there couldn't possibly be food dye in it. Sure enough, multigrain cheerios has 'color added' on its label. Such silliness...

Journey was signed up for a class called Broadway Babies, which is singing, dancing, and acting for little ones, and Vivi was sure she didn't want to take any other classes. But when we got up to Journey's class, Vivi suddenly wished she had signed up too. A quick trip downstairs to talk to the director got her into the class, and she was thrilled! Usually she's very clingy and shy and doesn't want to participate, but she was amazing in this class! We've been noticing in a lot of ways that she has been turning a corner as far as her anxiety and social issues, and this feels like one more big step in the right direction.

Here are the pictures, all of them looking so grown up! After not seeing our homeschool hub friends all summer, everyone was commenting on how much taller and older they look!

Journey, age 3 1/2


Vivi, age 4

Jeb, the day before turning 6