D did great getting on the bus today and was in a fantastic mood when he got home. Whew! What a relief that is. And I had 3 whole hours all to myself today. How weird. In a good way.

G and I sat down this morning to take a look at her first bit of homework for the year. It was the Chinese workbook. It opens backwards. I knew this. But I still opened it my way first anyway and I opened it to the last page. So they seriously do read backwards. Or we read backwards, however you want to look at it. So we talked about that for a minute--the idea that Chinese books open backwards is not insignificant!

And then I looked at the pages she was to complete in the workbook. I was underwhelmed. The page was a grid of squares (their equivalent to that wide lined paper that a grade schooler would use to write sentences) so she can begin to practice character writing. In the example square was a dash centered in the middle of the box. - Just like that. That was it? Seemed a bit juvenile... but then I decided to be grateful it was simple! G tends to use Chinese words when she does her Chinese homework. She was counting and saying numbers--I know that much by now. And a few minutes later it dawned on me!

- is the number 1 in Chinese.

Oh my goodness--it's not juvenile, it just happens to be a very simple Chinese character and a very good place to start.

When she got home this afternoon I checked out her assignment that we'll do in the morning. It's the English numbers workbook. Tomorrow morning we practice writing 1.

This is going to be a neat year! I am so interested to see how she does!