It's almost time!

We're starting school on Monday. After a long trip to Bermuda, several visits to Busch Gardens, many playdates, and a week of sports camp, it's time to get started on 3rd grade.

I can't wait.


I've been spending time in the school room during Asa's naps, organizing and reorganizing everything. I've done three weeks' worth of lesson plans. Next week's worksheets are filed into the appropriate days of the week. Photocopies have been made. Pencils are sharpened. My pocket-chart calendar has been updated.

Once the "First Day of School" marker goes onto the calendar, you KNOW it's on, baby!

Here are a few things I'm super excited about:

My dad refinished an old school desk, which I absolutely love and immediately put in the back corner of the school room. It's just what that corner needed.

I hate to call it an "old" school desk because it's exactly the kind of desk I used when I was in school.

I'll start doing a little bit of preschool with Asa a little later this year, so I had to unpack all my preschool things. It has been a while since Asher used them. Now I've got them all on shelves and somewhat organized.

I also decided to make this for my obsessive-planner of a son (Where does he get that tendency??):

Every single school day - all 180 of them - Asher asks what subjects we have to do. Every day I think he will remember, but every day he doesn't, and then he's shocked when there's more to do than he thought. I can't really blame him. I like my to-do lists, I like knowing what's expected of me, and I like to check things off after completion. So, I wrote a list (I even used pretty colors to make it as appealing as possible) of all our subjects, then slipped it into a clear folder. Asher can use a dry-erase marker to check off each subject as he finishes the work daily. I realize this list looks pretty intimidating, but I'll just remind him that we do not study all of these subjects every day (and he can cross out the subjects we're not doing that day). Now he'll know exactly what he has done and what is left to do. At the end of the day, we'll erase it to start fresh the next day.

I also reorganized the bulletin board over my desk with things I like to see.

Starting from the bottom left and moving clockwise:

• A map of our favorite place to stay at Disney World, Disney's Beach Club Resort
• A printed photo of Asa at Chuck E. Cheese last year
• A bookmark Asher made during our church's mission conference one year when he was little
• A handmade pumpkin ornament Asher made at Awanas last year
• Three mouse ears key chains from Disney World
• A newspaper clipping showing our local homeschool group
• A photo of my two firstborn "children", Molly & Lola
• One of my all time favorite pictures of Asher, age 2, wearing a tuxedo
• Family photo taken at Kings Dominion earlier this year
• A love note from Asher
• Two photo booth print-outs from the Disney Boardwalk (are you seeing a theme here??)
• A clipping from a homeschool book that I'm trying to internalize
• And in the middle, our subject list and plan for the year

I'm excited about Asher's first assigned reading. We're going back to Disney next month, so what's better than a kid-friendly biography of the big guy?

We'll be participating in a homeschool book report club this year, and I'm thinking a report on Walt Disney may be in order. I'll keep you posted.

I'm also excited about this year's memory work. Asher isn't as excited about this, but I have really been enjoying going through poetry books, literature, and speeches to find beautiful things for him to memorize. I started him off easy with this fun, light poem:

And finally, I'm super excited that I'm having Asher write a blog. It'll be good typing practice for him, and also an exercise in creative thinking. He's already got great plans for what he's going to write about. 

So there we have it. Tomorrow is Asher's last day of camp, and then on Friday we'll spend the morning at Busch Gardens for one last hoorah.

It is time.