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Teacher of the Year



We are officially a home school family.  It wasn't what we planned, but I don't think anyone planned for 2020, so here we are.  

I decided to start on September 1st.  Ross was already back at work, we needed some structure in our day, and it also meant our first week would only be four days long.  That seemed like a bonus.  

We spent the week prior talking to Sawyer about school and trying to pump him up about getting started.  I wanted to make it feel like a first day of school.  We bought supplies, talked about things we'd be doing, and I let him choose the dinner menu for his first day.  

He picked cougar.  

I SAID cougar.  

One of Ross' friends gifted him a cougar roast and some stew meat.  We're so lucky.  And I got to figure out how to cook it.  I'm so lucky.  I cooked it to its second death.  Cougar leather.  We called it brain food, and the boys demolished it.  I hope it works. 

Day 1: I got up at 5:45 so I could get breakfast started, lunches made and a shower....I got up at 5:45 so I could have coffee before the house erupted.  

I had created a lesson plan the night before and had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the rhythm of the day to go.  I thought Sawyer would be excited to use his new supplies and work in his new workbooks.  He wasn't.  I thought I had enough planned out to take us through to lunch time.  I didn't.  We were both relieved.   

Day 2: I hit the snooze once, but was still up before the kids came out of their room.  We started "school" after spending a couple of morning hours at Grammy and Papa's house.  Turns out, Mama needed to run a few miles.  

Day 3: I'm not sure how many times we hit snooze, but the kids were up.   I decided showers were overrated.  The boys were lucky I brushed my teeth. We got to work on the lesson plans I had created the night before.  Mid-way through, I decided art was more fun than handwriting so we went ahead and made some adjustments to said lesson plan.  I think I'm getting the hang of this kindergarten thing.    

Day 4: School got cancelled.    

This week we learned that it is essential to lesson plan the night before each school day.  Sawyer prefers to pay attention to anything but what is in front of him.  Fischer wants ALL the school work.  Learning new things can be hard and that's okay.  If glue can be involved, it should be.  Vowels are "sooooo boring."  Sawyer already "knows all of this stuff" even before he knows what this stuff is.  Everything is a race.    

We are going to be spending a lot of money on teacher gifts this year.  Sawyer's teacher is very excited.  

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