Reality is Sinking in!!

I am feeling really down today as reality sinks in that we are not homeschooling anymore. I am glad that the kids are loving school and are doing well. They each say they are finding the work fairly easy so I am very pleased about that. I guess I am just mourning the life we had homeschooling. We were free to wake when we please, start and finish when we please, take the day off, go out for the day without being ruled by school start and finish times and school holidays.

I am so proud of how well they have settled in. Ellie especially has lots of friends and is planning who to invite to her birthday party at the end of May. She is so excited to actually be having one. She has never had anything other than family parties before as she has never had friends of her own but now she has so many we are having to put a limit on the numbers or it will break the bank.

Josh is enjoying school too and despite my worries about how he would cope having to go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up in the mornings he is proving me wrong and wakes up as soon as I call him in the morning.

He has admitted that he had hoped to make more friends than he has. He has 2 good friends who he says he hangs out with. I do still worry a little about him though as in the mornings when we get there he just wanders round the junior playground on his own whilst I wait with Ellie in the infant playground and she runs round with her friends. Also at breaktimes I don't think he plays much with his 2 friends. Apparantly Ellie and all her friends like to chase after him and he loves it. He says its because he doesn't want to play football with the others as he hates football.

I have spoke to his teacher about him and she says he is doing well, getting all his work done and correct. He is in the top group for spellings which surprised me as at home he had always struggled with spellings but in the two spelling tests they have had he had to learn the harder set of words and was one of only a few who got 10 out of 10. I have my reservations about learning to the test as they do in school but so far he has retained both sets of spellings. It will be interesting to see if this continues.

Today is the first whole day on my own since they have started school. Dh has gone to work and the kids are both in school. I feel completely lost today to be honest and can't wait to go and fetch them again at 3.20pm. I miss them so much. Part of me hopes that they will turn round and say they don't want to go back after the summer holidays but I know in reality that this is extremely unlikely to happen as they both seem to be enjoying it so much.

Ellie is doing her SAT's assessments this week. I have no idea how she will do in them but I am glad that she does not seem to realise that they are being tested which was a big worry about them. It will be interesting to see if she says anything when I pick her up.

I am so proud of how confident she has become though. I never imagined that she would settle in and make so many friends as quickly as she has. I never even thought she would ever go to school as she was so anti-school and loved being home educated. How quickly she has changed her opinion.

I had been really looking forward to starting British History with them both in September and am gutted that I can't make plans for their work. I loved making plans even if we hardly ever followed them through I used them more as a guide to what I'd like us to do. I was looking forward to doing a volcanoes project with them and learning about the Romans and what happened to Pompeii. I miss them so much and hate being here on my own but will have to start getting used to it.

I am really annoyed with the LEA too as they were supposed to be supplying bus passes for the kids to help get them to school as there wasn't one they could both go to within walking distance. I put them forms in over 2 weeks ago and I phoned on Friday and was told that they would not discuss it over the phone with me but that there was a letter in the post on its way to me. There has been no letter Saturday or today so am fuming with them. It is costing me £32 a week at the moment to get the kids to school. I knew I would have to pay for my bus pass and I don't grumble about that at £12 a week as it should be £8 a day so it works out cheaper to buy a weekly pass but the kids bus fare is £20 for the pair of them a week and the cost is adding up fast. I desperately need to get sorted with a car but as we have invested most of our finances into dh's business he is reluctant to spend money on a car for the next month or so. I think I will phone them again in a moment and see if I can get an answer out of them as to when they will actually get their bus passes. Grrr!!