1st grade starts...today?

Anna Grace came home for church yesterday and informed us that she would like to go ahead and begin first grade now...not wait another week.  Neal and I gave it a thought and decided:  Why not?  What have we got to lose here?  We are crazy enough to home school this year anyway so might as well begin so we can have a longer spring or more "school holidays."

So, wow!  Here we are.  The 2012-2013 school year has begun for the Hatchett family...well for Anna Grace that is.  Dean declared last night that he was fine to wait another week before starting K4.  I hear ya, Dean.  Let's not get too excited and all start at one time; not sure Mama can handle that.

You may be asking yourself why in the world have we made such a decision.  The answer is simple and complex, for this post we will stick to the simple...I got tired of telling Anna Grace we (more specifically she) could not spend time with our grandparents (specifically grandmothers, sorry guys) because we had to go to school.  In the big scheme of things how long is she going to want to drop her friends to spend time with her family.  Probably not too much longer.  I decided we needed to spend some time making those memories while we could.  So for us we don't think this is a long-term decision.  Dean has actually said that he will have Mrs. Whisenhunt as his Kindergarten teacher next year and Anna Grace has said that 2nd grade is too much fun so she only wants to do this for a year...even though she asked us if she could home school.

Anna Grace has even gone so far as to customize a curriculum she would like to follow (and it is always listed in this order):
1.  Learn to shoot a gun.
2.  Garden with Peanut.
3.  Do fun stuff with Honey and Juju.
4.  Learn about make-up with Aunt Tina.
5.  Use her Hello Kitty folder.

I bet not many 1st graders have such high expectations!  I have much lower expectations...like reading and math.

So here we go.  I will do my best to give a week 1 recap on Friday, that is assuming that I am still functioning.  I will say though that even though I was all organized with my lesson plans and what not I still had to apologize to Anna Grace about half-way through this morning and tell her that I was still learning too and that we would both get better at home schooling as time went on.  Today she loved math (I thought in the past it was her least favorite subject) and recess...a trip to Gold's.  Ha!