For kids and parents new to high school.  Here is the beamish boy as he got ready to leave…

Not sure I’m ready for this!

Well, we did it… we managed to get ourselves up last night and — this is the tricky part — the kids(!) and watched the eclipse. Not start-to-finish since it started about 2 am our time and would have gone on until about 3:30… but enough of it to see the moon go from a cookie with a bite out of it to a glowing, pale orange disk. We saw the milky way. One boy saw a shooting star… and all the stars were brilliant.

We heard coyotes howl. We heard the wind rustling the branches and leaves.

We had some light pollution around the edges, in every direction except north-northwest; and the constant hum of cars on the highway (miles from us) and an occasional car on the main road about a mile away interrupted the peace of the night.

It was a cool night, a light breeze sighed now and again… we wrapped up in extra blankets and leaned against the car — and each other.

We talked about the life cycles of stars, planets in other galaxies, galaxies of various shapes and sizes.

And finally, we retired again to dream of space travel, dark nights with bright stars, and coming home again.

At least, that is what I dreamed…

One of the things we try to do for our children is model appropriate behavior. Another is showing and encouraging them to help others and facilitating their helping. Yesterday was a chance for them to spend time with their grandmother, to help her get her classroom ready for school — and simultaneously to help at least 25 children.

Of course I took pictures:

Here they are, working on collating some of the worksheets for the first week.

Here is Mother and one kid looking for something in the many boxes…

In the Reading Corner:

The Calendar Corner (learning to tell time and the passage of the year is important for first graders!):

And finally a picture of me, with my my mother, just before she starts her last year of teaching. Just think! after more than 20 years she will soon be done with First Grade!

I will be helping my mother three days a week, it looks like — to help her have a good year, and to maybe give some children a slightly better start in their academic lives. Thirty-plus years ago I started my own career as a helper working with my mother in a literacy project at a local library… and now I can help again, using some of the same skills I learned way back then. I like it when a story comes around full circle!