Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Now that I am at home, I have thrown myself into Lucas' school life with as much eagerness, diligence and thoroughness as I did my work and I am sure working parents of school-age children know exactly the type I have become. Yes, I have become one of those...one of those with time on my hands. Lucas did a class project in Kindergarten where they mailed a paper boy (Flat Stanley) to different places to get pictures and to map where they were sent. When Lucas came home from school after we'd sent in the envelopes, he berated me - "Mom! Just how many of those did you do? I was coloring Flat Stanleys all day until my arm hurt!" Poor Lucas! You see, I had photocopied the Flat Stanley we got and sent it to friends and family in fun places, like Germany, Japan, Trinidad and more....Ooops! His teacher said she had to get a map of Europe and Asia because of Lucas. Now that he is in first grade and we are concerned about whether he is being challenged appropriately, you can ...

One of the main reasons I stayed home (besides getting our sick baby out of daycare), was so that I could spend more time with our older child and pay closer attention to his schoolwork. To provide some background, neither my husband nor I grew up in the US, and each of us is from a different country, so we have differing perspectives on education. Our older child is now in Grade 1 and one month into it, I am a little disturbed by some of what I see. He doesn't remember what work he did during the day- I understand that to mean he is not interested enough in what is going on. He says that he is still doing revision of Kindergarten work - ahhh...that could explain it, because he did Kinder in daycare and then again when we moved him to public school. One time he was not clear on what his homework was - I understand that to mean that the teacher didn't explain it fully or he was distracted. Usually if it is something new, Lucas is all over it. The first book he brought home t...