School Daze

Tonight as I was tucking her in, Sophie sighed and said, "I can't wait for school to start. Most kids want summer to keep going, but I'm like yay learning!"

School starts in three weeks. Sophie may be ready, but I'm not. I don't think I'm ever really ready to start a new school year, even though I do love new school supplies and the excitement of new classes. I just love the freedom of summer. And I love the extra time we have to spend as a family. The last two years have been easier in that regard for me since the kids were doing school from home. They had so much more flexibility in how they spent their time and we definitely had more opportunities to do things all together. There were aspects of it that were significantly harder on me as the school facilitator having them all home, but the time together has been worth the exhaustion. (If you had asked me about this in the middle of the schoolyear I probably would have felt differently, but I'm viewing it through the rose colored glasses of summer break.)

Even though we have three weeks until the first day of school, we still don't have a proper plan. Topher's vaccine will be fully effective about three weeks into the school year. A major topic of discussion at our house this summer has been about what we'll do for school. Do we stay virtual? Do we send the kids back at the beginning of the year with masks firmly in place? They don't want to take those masks off for lunch, so do they just skip that meal for those first three weeks? Or do we start virtual and then switch to in-person a few weeks into the year?

Yes, I realize that at three weeks out we should have a plan, I really wish we did. But we're still figuring it out. Well, Phoebe's not, she has a plan. She applied to and was accepted into the advanced program at the virtual school, so she'll be hanging out with me and Topher for another year. The other three want to be in-person at some point this school year, we just don't know when.

I asked Sophie about it during bedtime. She wants to start virtually, then move to in-person because she's always thought it would be cool to be the new kid who comes into school part way through the year. 

Well, I think we can arrange that.