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For a man tasked with changing the world and the way we see it, Barack Obama is making an effort to maintain a semblance of normality in his family life in the week after his historic election victory.

Although he is due to make his first visit to the White House as President-elect later today to meet George W Bush Mr Obama still found time this morning to make the school-run with daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, at their school in Chicago.

Pictured in the dark blue joggers and cap in which he has made his security-flanked trips to the gym this week, Mr Obama was seen helping his girls out of the car, before giving them a kiss and sending them on their way to school.

Whether they can concentrate on their classes with questions remaining over the future First Puppy remains to be seen.

In between choosing his administration and planning to avert economic armageddon, Mr Obama found time to spend three hours at dinner with wife Michelle in their favourite restaurant in Chicago on Saturday night, as a couple who have made no secret of their tenderness and closeness throughout the election campaign.

The future First Lady will accompany her husband today for a tour of their future home, when the Bushes show them round the White House and discuss plans for the transition of power which will take place officially at noon on January 20.

For more than a century – since Theodore Roosevelt was condemned for “inviting a nigger to his table” by inviting African-American educational reformer Booker T.Washington to the White House in 1901 – America has struggled with the concept of black people in the whitest of houses. So the image of the first black First Family crossing the threshold of the White House will be of greater import for its symbolism than for any political discussions within.

Mr Obama and Mr Bush will have much to discuss. John Podesta, head of Mr Obama's transition team, suggested that the new President will be quick to overturn some of Mr Bush's most controversial orders – the stance against stem cell research and in support of drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive areas.

“As a candidate, Senator Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders reviewed, and decide which ones should be kept, and which ones should be repealed, and which ones should be amended. And that process is going on. It’s been undertaken,” Mr Podesta said last night.

But George "Dubya" Bush, politically worlds apart from his successor, has been gracious in his praise of the young Chicago Senator, and quick to invite him to the White House, saying that his “journey represents a triumph of the American story”.

He added: “It will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House."

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