Tonight was Olive Chapel’s open house. It was announced for 6:30pm, so I got the girls fed and they, Joseph and I walked from our house to the school. It was a nice evening (about 84 degrees), so the walk to school was nice and warm, but not hot. Abby stayed awake the entire trip and Emily napped. Joseph scootered the whole way.
When we finally reached the school, the sign in the entrance indicated that from 6:30 – 7:15(!) the entire group would meet in the gym. Well, the gym was FULL and I wasn’t about to try and fit a double stroller in there! I really wish they’d published the schedule too, because the part I really needed to participate in didn’t start until 7:15, which meant another 45 minutes of distracting the girls *and* Joseph.
So, we walked around the school. I fed Emily in the library and Joseph read the first page of a rather wordy book. Did a good job of it too. 🙂 Finally, it was 7:10, so we made our way to the classroom and just hung out until things started.
The girls, of course, got way too much attention. And, stupid me, left blue onsies out for Ron in the morning, so the girls were basically boys throughout the evening. Oops! These onsies, btw, are the ONLY thing in blue that they own!
Mr. Durham (Joseph’s teacher) explained about their schedule and how he’s going to have the kids work in teams/pairs throughout the year. They’ll work on math, spelling and reading this way. They’ll even have to write a book report (which means reading a book!) and present it to the class.
Another neat thing is that the student-of-the-day will get to “be” the teacher, getting in front of the class and helping structure the class, ask the questions of the class, etc. I can’t wait to hear when it’s Joseph’s turn. It’ll be interesting to know if he actually does it without hesitating.
As part of the open house, the kids wrote letters to their parents. Joseph’s was very sweet. He wrote the he loves his Mom and Dad more than anything in the world. He had lots of spelling errors, but basically got things right. His handwriting is atrocious though! He’s just too impatient to write neatly. He blames it on being left-handed. 🙂
His journal was available too and I read his two entries. More about loving his Mom and Dad. 🙂 I was impressed with his sentence structure, but man(!), his handwriting is icky! Mr. Durham did say that in the journals, he’s not going to correct the kids grammer, spelling, etc. That’s their place to just write and write and write. On other homework though, he will.
During the entire presentation by the teacher, Abby was standing on my lap. Em was napping again. But, by about 7:45, Abby was showing true hunger signs and Em had woken up, and I didn’t really feel like nursing in the classroom, so we packed up and left.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear the end of his message, so I’ll check in with him later to get any missed details. But, from what I gathered, it’s going to be an interesting year!
Oh… and what’s so neat about Mr. Durham… this is his 2nd career. Until becoming a teacher, he was a radio DJ! On-air!