Open House

The boys headed over to the 'Burg's Middle School for Open House at 6:00 this evening. They came home with Cap'n D's and piles of instructions, schedules, and lunch menus. Woah!

Orion moves up to 6th Grade this year. He is officially a Middle Schooler. Before he went off to Camp Subi this summer he participated in three of the four weeks of summer school at the Middle School. This helped him out tremendously. According to J, Orion just marched in as if he owned the school and visited with his summer school teachers and introduced himself to his new teachers. Go Orion, go!

I've spent the past thirty minutes deciphering and copying his class schedule. Over the next nine months Orion will have 17 different classes and 12 different teachers. His core classes are Language Arts, Reading, Social Studies, Math, Science and Band. These classes will meet for an entire year. Then he has single semester classes (18 weeks) and hex classes (6 weeks). He will have one semester of Boys P.E. He also has nine (9) hex, or six week, classes. These classes will meet for six weeks and then he will move on to the next hex class. His hex classes are Technology, Art, Music, Study Skills, Keyboarding, Math Art, Nutrition, Communication, and Whizitivities (Science stuff he thinks!).

I will admit that I am wary of these six week courses. I watch college students take these one and two hour courses. They may end up with six or seven different classes in a semester. That's six or seven different professors, syllabi, assignments, etc. Too much busy work. I hope the same is not true for middle school hex classes.

I just completed writing Orion's schedule down for him. Like many middle school, Orion's school will meet on a block schedule. That means he will have Math, Reading, Science, and a hex class or two on one day for about 90 minutes and Language Arts, Band, Social Studies, and another hex class or two on the following day for about 90 minutes. The one exception is Life Skills 101 which meets daily for 25 minutes.

To make matters more interesting the schedule they handed him had all 17 classes listed, beginning with first period classes and ending with fifth period classes; this included red days and white days. It took me quite a bit of time to figure out where he was supposed to go and when! Even better his lunch period lands smack dab in the middle his Social Studies class and his Reading class. How weird!

Well, it's all straighted out! I created a list of only the essentials: locker number, combination, and class schedule.

Tomorrow is nearly here! It's time for bed! Wish us ALL luck!