Kepler starts 5th grade in a couple of weeks. Our school system has two grades per school, except for the high school, so he moves up to the Intermediate school this year. The Elementary school wasn’t far from our home, but involved a very steep hill, so where we might have been able to walk TO school, walking home would have proved challenging for my little buddy. But the Intermediate school is just right down the street from us. No hills, no major traffic considerations, no big distance to cover.

I’ve been pondering walking him to and from school each day. There is a bus available, and we may avail ourselves of it when it gets really cold, but I believe we are going to start out the year walking.

He happened to be at school this morning for something and when it was time to pick him up, I decided to try out the walk. I timed myself and it took ten minutes for me to walk there. I wasn’t sure how he would feel about walking home, since I didn’t prepare him ahead of time, but he was VERY excited!

We laughed. We told our silly knock-knock jokes. We stopped to look at things, including a spider web that was covered with dewdrops. I was so engrossed that I forgot to take a photo, but this photo looks very much like the web we saw. When we reached our street, he wanted to race, so we ran down the street. He won.

The walk home was a good example of single-tasking. I was able to focus on the walk and on Kepler, and I didn’t have to ask him to wait until I could look. I was able to be in the moment with him. AND we got in a walk, and a run, too!