Back to School

Abbie has been back to school for a month now, and I am finally getting around to posting the "back to school" photos. She seems somewhat subdued, and I think that there were lots of things that she was concerned about, but the meeting with the teacher the day before classes started helped with some of it, I think.

As we arrived at school, she was very concerned about getting to her classroom on time (which we did). Because she is now in Upper Elementary, which includes grades 4-6 all in the same room, Chad and I were surprised at how big some of the kids looked. As you can imagine, there can be a big difference between a 9 year old girl and a 12 year old boy, for example.

As you can see from the photo below that appeared in the school newsletter, she clearly settled in and returned to energetic Abbie mode later in the day.

Now that we are a month in, we have settled into a good routine. She has much more homework in Upper El, but she has been able to get it all done on the weekends, which makes the week much easier. She is also enjoying all of the books that she can check out of the classroom. They have a selection that is geared towards older kids, and that definitely works for her.

She is definitely getting a feel for her teachers, too. There are three main teachers and then a fourth teacher that is there to help with creative writing. She is really enjoying her interactions with the creative writing teacher. Apparently, he gives her really helpful feedback on her work. She also really likes two of the three main teachers. The remaining main teacher, however, is pretty rigid and generally isn't really interested in putting thought into anything, so her questions, etc. are often met with a giant "no." So, she has learned not to ask him for much and to focus on the other teachers instead. She cracked me up this weekend when she said, "I need to keep myself from correcting my teachers' grammar at school." I agreed that was probably a smart approach, but I also asked her for an example of something that she had to resist correcting. She said, "The other day, Mr. Chesmer (this is the rigid teacher) told one of the boys that he was 'doing good.'" Apparently it took a bit of will power for her to not say, "You mean, 'doing well.'" Ha!

Also fun stuff from the past month, we finally took the girls to their first ever TCU football game. All the kids at the game received free t-shirts, and the girls got their faces painted, did a little tailgating, and I think overall had a good time.