First Day

I knew when we chose this path that it would be a HUGE adjustment for us, but our first day at Connections Academy was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.  In fact, even with constant interruptions from my toddlers, we still got through it with fewer problems than we ever did in traditional brick/mortar school.

First and foremost, there were no fights.  Alex got up at a decent hour, took his time with breakfast, brushed his teeth and got dressed without me having to ask him (or scream at him, as usually happens) to do anything.  In fact, I fully expected him to stay in his pajamas all morning while he did his work, but he wanted to put on clean clothes.  Even taking his time, he was still able to start school by 9:15 AM.  I had fully expected to have to wait until at least 10 to get him going.  I guess he was excited.  :-)

We had a little bit of a rough start with his language arts lesson.  Our toddlers are both whiny with colds, and they were constantly begging my attention, even with their daddy here for the morning.  I had to get Alex going, though, so I closed the office door to muffle the screams and left them to be consoled by Daddy.  Once I was able to help Alex figure out how to navigate the Learning Management System, he was able to do a lot of work on his own.  Except for the occasional distraction of noise from his brothers, he was able to get through it just fine.  It helps that most of the work was review from things he learned last year.  So I guess today was more about learning how to function in a virtual school.

Some of his courses had a lot of writing activities.  Before lunch, Alex was complaining of writing cramps.  I guess tomorrow we'll do his classes in a different order so that he doesn't have to do so much writing all at once.  Live and learn, I guess.

I noticed that my boy's work gets done a lot faster while the little ones are napping.  When we figure out what his more challenging courses are going to be, we'll do those at that time to hopefully help him focus better.  I LOVE being able to choose when and what to have him work on.

A couple new courses are on the schedule for tomorrow.  Can't wait!