First Day of School (redux)

School started today, this time for my younger child. While I fully expect that tomorrow I will be cajoling and coaxing kids out of bed, this morning, it was no problem.

It also poured rain all day today. In one way that was good, since new clothes always seem to be fall clothes, and it is rarely cool on the first day of school. But rain on the first day of school means juggling raincoats and umbrellas and damp feet and damp backpacks.

This is the last year of elementary school for us. We are so fortunate to have a wonderful elementary school. I am already feeling nostalgic for it. This is a school where people who attended it as children are now sending their children there, who have the same teachers they had. It is a community (one we only borrow for school, since we live 8 miles away) that supports the school -- residents who haven't had a child in elementary school in decades will attend the concerts and the spaghetti dinner and the ice cream social.

 

The middle school, an excellent school, is in the same community, and receives some of the same support, but doesn't have as many of those social opportunities. The kids are older, so they aren't as interested in having parents look at their work hanging on a wall. They have moved on to other, more esoteric, things for which they seek praise and approval. I will give it, but I will miss seeing the 1 page reports with a half page drawing. So school is on again. My older one is already into the routine, for, of high school, and it won't be long before my younger one is, too. And all too quickly we will be attending the little 5th grade "graduation" ceremony, and elementary school will be a memory.