Finally!

As I mentioned on Monday, I waited a FULL WEEK to open our box from Sonlight. The box has been sitting here in the school room just staring at me. Beckoning me. By Tuesday afternoon we just couldn’t wait any longer.

Some of you might not quite understand how absolutely wonderful a box from Sonlight can be. You see, it’s not just school books. I don’t think plain ole school books would instill such excitement, although anything new is more fun than the old. But, the thing about Sonlight for us (it’s not this way for everyone, and that’s okay!!!) is that even when we’re ready to be done with a core, so many of the books remain treasured friends. A new box means new treasures.

The kids have had trouble waiting, too. In fact, they were getting rather impatient with me as I finished up a couple of tasks, knowing that we were about to open the box! They were poised like this for about five minutes, just dying to rip the tape off and dive in!

And dive in they did!

Packing paper went flying and books came pouring out accompanied by exclamations of great excitement!

Once the books were pulled out, sorted through, and checked off the packing list, Steven decided he had looked through them enough, but Olivia and Angela weren’t done.

Liv grabbed one of her science books, and then found an origami book to drool over.

Angie, on the other hand, went straight for the readers! (I know how shocked you all are! ) She gave me one of her cute, innocent looks when I caught her getting ready to run off with one of the readers to devour it.

And now my fun job begins! It’s time to clear these two middle shelves of everything we’re done with (which will be all but about a third of one shelf) and pack them away in their waiting tubs.

Then I get to refill the shelves with these…

…and these…

…and the two tubs of books we already have waiting for us in the hall closet!

We will have about twice the number of books this year that we have in past years because I’ll be teaching two cores this year instead of one. Fortunately, we were able to free up another bookshelf to move into the school room to accommodate the increase.

Once I get the books sorted, labeled, and shelved, my next job will be to go through the new Instructor’s Guides (although I’m already familiar with one of them, so that helps!) and plan our new daily schedule. And yes, I’m excited about it all! I love every part of teaching the kids, but the planning phase really energizes me! It’s a good thing, too, because we’ll be starting the new cores a week from Monday. I think we’ll be ready!