Schultüten 2011

Look what I did!  I was actually able to complete a craft project!

These are Schultüten — German “school cones,” given to kids in honor of the first day of school.  I’ve made them before, but this year I was able to do it properly.  With no heed taken to how many bitsy pieces of paper I littered on the kitchen floor.  We even found school-themed scrapbook paper for these — Wimmy’s says “preschool,” Ella’s says “First grade,” and Jeff’s says “Third grade.”  This kind of stuff is usually out of my depth.

The children received them the night before school, as part of Family Home Evening.  Jeffrey and Eleanor had spent time that afternoon selling vegetables at the farmer’s market with other kids from their farm-based summer camp . . . okay, anyway that’s the long explanation as to why they are both wearing the tie-dye shirts they made at camp; and why I was so exhausted that evening.  We had Chinese food for dinner instead of cooking.  It was quite the celebration.

These were inside the schultüten.  Look what the internet inspired me to do — I LABELED something.

We also spent time choosing a scripture to be our inspiring educational theme of the year.  I looked up “knowledge” in the Topical Guide and read likely candidates out loud, and then everyone voted.

Jeffrey really wanted to use Daniel 12:4, which includes the phrase “run to and fro, and knowledge will be increased.”  He gave us a demonstration on how this is done.

But what we ended up with was Isaiah 33:6:

And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure.

Brian and I like everything in this verse except that “fear of the Lord is his treasure” part, which we had a difficult time explaining to the kids.  (“Obeying God means being afraid of Him?  Something about treasure??”)

And here’s Jeff and Ella, all ready for 3rd and 1st grade, respectively:

They are so good at looking out for one another.

The whole family was able to come along for the first day.  Jeff has Ella’s old kindergarten teacher for third grade this year, and Ella has his old first grade teacher.  It was great to see so many familiar faces on the first day of school.