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While most kids in our county are enjoying one last week of summer vacation, Calvin and I have embarked on a "soft start" for our school year. Why? Because this year brings something new for us that will take some getting used to. That something is middle school, after a fashion.

Calvin has been taking band at the local public school for two years now. The first year it was a twice weekly class, last year it was a thrice weekly class, now this year it is daily, and not the same time daily throughout the year, but, thanks to a middle school block schedule, it jumps, hops, and skips back and forth from one elective hour to the next every quarter. Now, if you drop your kid off at school every morning and pick him up at the end of the day you don't much care how the day to day, or quarter to quarter, schedule varies, but for our purposes this was going to be a lot to manage, so Calvin decided he was interested in taking the other elective as well. Since the two elective hours are the last in the day, that means I don't have to know which class is when, I just drop him off for the elective block every day. 

That also means that school is getting in the way of our schooling! We've always been pretty loose about our day to day schedule. Some days we did school from sunrise to sunset, other days we took almost entirely off. We had standing weekly dates with his grandparents and our homeschooling group, we took extended lunch breaks, we went for impromptu hikes or field trips. Most of that will now probably come to a screeching halt, a sudden change that will take some adjustment. So we are taking this week to see how our full homeschool day fits in around the public school day when we still have the freedom to make mistakes because there isn't a class bell ringing and a teacher marking him late.

Pictures here from middle school orientation night. (OMG he has a locker!)