Important Family Update

This is important to me.  As in, it is a BIG DEAL around here. I think Joe will write about it and include pictures, since he's the more tech savvy one around these parts.

But...For anyone who has not yet heard the news, we have enrolled all of our school aged children, except Louisa in the local public schools, Red Lake County Central-Plummer and Oklee. I can't believe I didn't write about this earlier, but I've been too swamped to even think about blogging until today. OK, I did squeeze in a few book reviews and a few just for fun things.

But I really wanted to give this topic a nice post all of its own to present the things that lead to our decision. But I've decided they are to many to list and a few  are somewhat private matters.

Suffice it to say that maternal overload was a big factor. As was our positive experience with the Oklee school, the teachers and administrators with our older two last year.

It's all been very exciting and somewhat overwhelming. But we had a good week for the most part. We managed to get to bed on time and get up on time. I made hot breakfast all four mornings.

The kids mostly like school. They love seeing friends each day and having structured things to do. For the most part, they like the classes, too, but some things are difficult compared to how we did them here.

Sophie is pretty tired at the end of the day. She's is a bit frustrated by her reading level compared to the other kids in her grade. I've been in touch with the teachers and principle about this and we are sitting on it for now.

The Plummer school has a very nice program in place that combines the kids in third and fourth grades; and then again the fifth and sixth graders. Each of the two pools of kids is then divided into ability levels so that the kids can be taught closer to their ability level than a simple grade division would accomplish. The children are given brief assessments several times during the year to determine that they are still working at the correct level; and also to look for red flag areas in which the child might need that little bit of extra help.

I'm pleased with how things are going and I look forward to hearing from the teachers this week on whether they think Sophie would benefit from bumping down a level.  I'm touched by the amount of care and personal interest the teachers are able to give.

I spent my time at home this week well and have begun the arduous task of reclaiming my domicile from it's years of neglect.    I just keep saying to myself, as in What About Bob?, "Baby steps with the laundry, baby steps with the kids' rooms, baby steps around the house."