Grace loves school. She loves it. I worried and stressed and fretted and freaked myself out about school. I was so happy homeschooling and it was hard to let her go. But, the adjustment has definitely been harder for me than for her. And, now that I see how happy she is with school, I am so glad that we did it.

I think the independence of it is really good for her. I hate to even bring up the "S" word, but there is better socialization going to school than not (for us, in our situation - that is not a blanket statement). She was probably more social when we lived in California because we had so many homeschooled friends (and plenty of public school friends in the neighborhood, too). But, in Idaho not as many people homeschool and the homeschool groups meet less often and seem harder to integrate into (more than likely, it's just because we were part of our California groups for so long we knew everyone).

I volunteer at her school once a week and I am so impressed with her teacher and her class. They work a lot. They have very little wasted time, but the teacher makes it fun. And, the weirdest thing is, there are no problem children. None. All the kids are well behaved.

Grace loves all the incentives. She is always part of the homework club and has earned coupons to waive homework (she loves that!) and has been Citizen of the Week twice and Student of the Month. She eats that kind of stuff up. She loves to do her homework and she loves learning (that's nothing new) and she loves Mad Minutes. She's excited about writing. She wrote her first paper at school and was so excited about it (she's written papers for homeschool, but this was a much bigger deal for her). Writing was the one area I felt like we weren't strong enough on when we were homeschooling, so it is neat to see.

Grace is friendly with all the girls in her class and she has a good group of friends. She went to her first sleepover with a group of girls from her class and had a great time.

I still think that homeschool is a fabulous option. I am very glad that Lillie and I are still homeschooling. There are different things you can pursue in homeschool and in public schools. But, I'm glad we have choices. That we can pick what works for us and our children.

Right now I am just so grateful that everything is working.