MOSES LAKE - There are certain procedures and traditions on the first day of school.

Moms and dads took first-day-of-school pictures. Jorden Hert didn't want just any old first-day picture - he wanted to jump, jump high, he said. So his mom Ailene tried, and tried, and tried, to get that jump just right. (Mom mostly got it.) Parents lined their kids up under the sign at Sage Point Elementary School, snapped first-day pictures outside classrooms, even took a few on the playground.

Backpacks lined the hall outside every classroom. Out on the playground each teacher had a sign; each class lined up behind the proper sign and walked into the building.

The second graders had the drill down. They had attendance taken, the lunch count done and were working on their first writing assignment by 9:20 a.m.

It was a little different for the first graders. For one thing, the whole bathroom situation is totally different from kindergarten, as their teachers explained. They got a tour of the school, how to find the bathrooms and the lunchroom.

And Mrs. Sandhop (first grade teacher Dawn Sandhop) had to explain hot and cold lunches, and the whole lunch count thing. Only then could they settle down to their first assignment, detailing how they spent their summer.

School started Wednesday for most students in the Moses Lake School District; most high school students and some students at Chief Moses Middle School started school Thursday. The exception is kindergarten, where classes for all students start next week.