first day of school 2009:

First day of school, Aug 27, 2009: If you’ll recall, we went to a Kindergarten Orientation back in May which gave the kids a chance to see the building and to walk through the classrooms. Over the summer we received a letter stating that both kids would be in Mrs Cornwall’s class and that Mon and Tue of this week the Kindergartener shouldn’t come to class because they have scheduled parent/teach conferences. Our appointments were on Tuesday so the kids got a chance to see the classroom again and to meet the teacher and drop of their school supplies before their first day. The rest of the week is dedicated to a “gradual entrance” such that on each of the 3 days 1/3 of the class comes for a full day class. Alex and Chloe’s day was Thursday. We’d done several dry-runs practicing getting up early enough to be dressed and fed in time to catch the bus at 8:01 so we didn’t have any time problems. I had the kids pick out their clothes the day before and Alex picked his favorite Star Wars Lego shirt, and Chloe picked a new floral top that we’d just bought at Old Navy. There are 2 other kids at their bus stop, a 2nd grade girl, and a 1st grade boy, so the kids had lots of distraction while we waited for the bus. When it arrived, they climbed right on without even giving me a hug goodbye. They were excited! The bus returned at 3:15 and dropped them off a little sweaty from recess, but no worse for wear. Chloe said school was “awesome” and Alex said something like it was “fine”. It turns out that he was the only boy of the 6 for Thursday and he would have preferred to have some other boys to play with. The kids each created a construction paper tree and brought home a small amount of red play dough with instructions to roll into apples and then press them flat onto the tree and then count how many apples they’d made. The kids got right to it when they got home. I noticed they both had some of their dessert left over in their lunch boxes. They said they didn’t have time to finish lunch. I also noticed that their thermoses were full of milk. Alex explained that the teacher had gotten their lunch boxes out, but not the thermoses (which were stored separately), and he felt too shy to ask her about it. After further interrogation I also gleaned that the teacher asked them to do some writing. They were to scribble in their journals and then tell her the story that they’d “written” and she then wrote it for them underneath their scribble. She told them they didn’t have to “write like grownups”. Chloe really liked that. I asked if the teacher read a story. Chloe said a girl from the class read the story. Wow! I thought Chloe was doing pretty well with her reading, but she’s not up to reading a whole story that she hasn’t read before. I asked if there were a lot of rules at school. They said no, and they got to vote on some of the rules. Chloe voted to make a “no taking” rule because she doesn’t like other kids taking stuff from her. What a great idea to let the kids feel as though the rules are their own idea as opposed to something imposed on them! As for me, I had a very quiet day. Eerily quiet. Just yesterday I set a timer and instructed the kids to not talk to me for 10 minutes until the timer beeped because I really needed to recharge. Then today I was really missing their company during lunch and listening to them play while I do housework. The grass is always greener…