It’s the first day of school.
I love the first day of school. Like LOVE.
It is a day full of excitement and fear. Often when those things come together, you know something special is about to happen.
It is a day when community is built. A bunch of kids are thrown into a room with a stranger and are forced to create a family. Asked to think about what that even means.
It’s a day of new beginnings. What will this year bring? A fresh start.
It’s my favorite.
Actually, I could deal without the whole bus drama. Nothing fun about getting 600+ kids home safely. Nothing fun about that at all.
School – bus = favorite.
This year’s start of school is bittersweet. I took Benno to school. I am so happy for Benno. He will have “normal” days. He will have normal issues with friends over blocks. He will complain about the food and he will run at recess. I delight in his normalcy.
Today is also the day that Jacob learns that he is not normal. He does not return to school. He does not join his friends. He spends his day at the hospital.
But I was determined to not allow him to be robbed of this day special day, a day of firsts. So school we had! As Jacob will tell you. “I’m being home schooled for the whoooole year.”
Today we did word study, playing loads of games that exposed him to high frequency words. We even had our first fieldtrip. He clapped his hands with excitement over that. Fieldtrip the first day! We are studying the hospital and creating a book for the kids on his floor. We started by exploring the first floor where Jacob was tasked with finding something interesting that kids would want to know. Vending machines! Yes this is important stuff. I added some math too. He was also on the hunt for purell stations. We counted them by making tally marks (the precursor to skip counting by 5’s, that’s on the schedule later this week). “12 purell machines on the first floor!” he shared with his doctor later in the day. We had story time and then listened to some books in Spanish. We even practiced some lower case letters.
Beyond the complaining about missing REAL school. We did it. Not easy to learn when you are being pumped with blood all day, but we did it!
He had his first day of school and I got to play school too. Win win! We both had a first day.
And my student of one is already getting an “A” as he got released from the hospital an hour ago.
His counts are going up. This means we get to ENJOY him soon. We will have DAYS at home with Jacob before his surgery.
And I’m going to take a bath. Yep. A bath. I will take breath and bathe as I know BOTH my kids are home.
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