first day of school

First Day of School 2022

Today marks the start of my 15th year as a home educator!

We started the day with the Schultüte, as is our tradition:

I think they were a hit!

And of course I took pictures of my students…it’s still a little hard for me to believe that I’m down to two, and one of them is in her second year of high school!

We did some light schoolwork…religion, math, a read-aloud, and a bit of language arts. We’ll get into the rest of the subjects tomorrow, but the first day of school is mostly about fun, including building a new Lego set. I got something really different this year…an art set of Mickey Mouse, which was the perfect way to bridge summer school and our vacation to the new school year! And since we started school before everybody else, the rest of the children were still here to help!

It was (I think) a really fun build!

Here’s a closer look…I think I may get a second copy of this set for our last day of school, because there are alternate building instructions to make Minnie Mouse, and I would love to have a matching pair!

I think we got the school year off to the right start!

Schultüte 2022

Time for a look at my favorite first day of school tradition…the Schultüte! I enjoyed putting them together even more this year since I’ve been putting so much work into making our German/Austrian heritage a bigger part of our daily lives. I included all of the items you would expect…candies, school supplies, and a few fun things:

I wanted the fun items to reflect our vacation, so I added some Goofy blind bag pins, and some Lego Muppets minifigs:

This is always a fun beginning to the school year!

First Day of Tenth Grade

Ladybug is a sophomore now! She’s especially looking forward to the second of year of the history cycle (the medieval period), and doing more cooking (this year’s cooking theme is The Lord of the Rings).

Off to College

The day I’ve been dreading waiting for is finally here…Turkey and Bunny started college!

I’m not going to lie…I’m relieved that they’re staying local and starting at the community college, and not just for financial reasons…I’m not ready to say good-bye yet!

This is a very exciting step for them, and a new experience for our whole family, and I can’t wait to hear all about it!

First Day of High School, In Person

For the first time in almost 18 months, I dropped Moose off at school this morning!

Even though he’s a sophomore (I can’t believe it!), this is his first year in the high school building. It’s a strange way to experience the (continued) transition to high school, but I’m sure he’s up to the task, and he’s already excited about some of the things he’ll get to do this year!

First Day of School 2021

Just like that, our 14th year of homeschooling has begun!

Ironically, while the roster of my homeschool has changed dramatically, with Turkey and Bunny starting college next week, and Moose returning to in-person learning later this week after almost 18 months of distance learning here at home, the school room looks pretty much the same as it did last year…this may be the least it has ever changed between school years!

It is pretty strange having only two students, though!

The number of students may have changed, but our traditions didn’t:

And we did have a few guests, which made things feel a little more normal:

I wanted to make our first day of school extra special, so we made lemon-poppyseed waffles and lemon-blueberry sauce for lunch:

And of course we built a Lego set…this time, the Taj Mahal:

Our “Farewell to Summer” dinner had a local theme, so I decided to also go with a theme for our “First Day of School” dinner…Chicago-style hot dogs and Portillo’s chocolate cake for a Windy City theme!

It was a very different first day of school in some ways, but there were also familiar moments, and it was nice to get started while everyone was still at home before they go their separate ways!

Schultüte 2021

Just because our little homeschool is down to two students doesn’t mean we’d give up our favorite first day of school tradition! As it turns out, my college students (as well as Moose, who starts back to school in person later this week) mentioned to me that they hoped they’d still qualify, so I put together five schultüte just like I always do. In addition to the standard school supplies and candies, I added a Kirby pin to each, as well as a minifig from the Lego Looney Tunes collection:

It makes me happy that this tradition has become so well-loved that no one wanted to miss out!