School Begins

One of my blogger and homeschool friends came up with a great way to start off her school year.  Seeing that I was lacking a great way to start mine, I borrowed some of her ideas 

Tomorrow, our oldest heads off for public school for the first time.  We are very excited for him.  So today, we officially kicked off our school year, for homeschool and public school, together. 

We started with the borrowed idea of having a time capsule.  So, as the boys sat at our round table for nearly two hours, they filled out four blank pages with the following information:

What are three things you are good at?
A self-portrait.
What do you dream about doing?
What will you do this year to improve in one area?

The answers were varied in thoughtfulness and creativity.  Some were completed with words and some with pictures.  You just never know what you're going to get with an assignment like this.  I decided not to interfere with their creative processes and was pleasantly surprised by most of their ideas (and as you will see, a little concerned about a few!)  So, in random order (to keep their anonymity) here are the answers I got to the above questions:

What are three things you are good at?  Soccer, climbing, thinking up ideas, art, reading, math, sports, camping.
A self-portrait.  Oh, I wish I could show you these.  The boys had so much fun and really worked hard on them.
What do you dream about doing?  Designing things for the Army, Becoming a Regional Service Manager, Being a Wizard (What?), Making Shoes, and Racing Cars. 
What will you do this year to improve in one area?  read more (YAY, he thought this up on his own!!), riting (boy, did he hit the nail on the head with that one!), brotherly love (Thank you, Jesus!), laying on the floor to do my math (hmm, maybe that will make all the difference!  Pun intended.)

After completing all the answers, we rolled up the papers and stuck them in our "time capsule"--a modified cardboard Sensodyne toothpaste box--to be opened on our last day of school.

Oh, yes, and during this process two of my boys decided to change their names.  Brenner would like to be called by his middle name, Isaiah.  Parker would like to be called Bubba--which is the name of a friend I had in high school.  (After my high school reunion last year, the boys asked me lots of questions about who I saw.  I mentioned seeing Bubba--who no longer goes by that name, but it's hard to think of him as anything else.  Well, apparently the boys loved the name and have debated for awhile as to who among them should be called Bubba.  I guess Parker won).   We'll see how long that lasts. 

We wrapped up our morning by brainstorming ideas for our daily schedule, our classroom rules, our chore rotation, quick lunch/snack ideas, and field trips.  During the field trip discussion, ideas like "a trip to Disney World, to the Grand Canyon, and to Kansas to see their cousins," kept coming up. I had to remind them that a field trip is a day trip, not a destination vacation.

May God's hand continue to be upon us this school year.  Teaching us, prodding us, growing us, speaking to us, and showing us how to live this life for Him!