Beginning Kindergarten Series, Day 4

Last day of the first week! Everything went smoothly, minus the small morning meltdown over the stained shark shirt that could not be worn to school due to its huge stains. When I picked them up this afternoon, they were both crooning about how much they love school. They were yelling goodbye to new friends as we walked away from the school and stopping to go high-five them. They brought home coloring and writing they worked on this week and for the first time I didn't pack too much in their lunch boxes.

Clark: "Today was the best day. See, it went like this: The first day was ok, the second day was good, the third day was weird, and today was weird but the greatest ever."

Cal: "I love music the best. Our class sings the best, even me and Clark."

Here they're just bein' weird at the open house before they knew that school was fun.

Beginning Kindergarten Series, Day 3

Today the boys were more comfortable with everything school.

My brilliant idea of using the hanging,days-of-the-week shelves for school clothes has so far not worked well. On Monday I told them to help me pick clothes out for the week, but they were way too involved in their pretend underwater shark photography expedition than in clothing. (That needs to be a whole separate blog entry.) So I picked out their clothes myself.

This morning Cal saw the shirt I had picked out for him to wear today had a collar.

Cal: "No, you don't wear shirts with collars except on the first day. We don't want to walk in like a bunch of dummies."

Me: "Oh wow. Okay. So what should you wear instead?"

Cal: "Oh, I don't know...just a shirt with, like, a, I don't know, dinosaur or something on it."

So he wore a random bright yellow souvenir t-shirt with a moose on it from Montreal. Clearly way cooler than a red polo shirt. Clark did wear the blue polo shirt and shorts I had picked out, so maybe I was half way successful.

We walked to school with Margo and the boys navigated their way to their classroom perfectly. They hugged me. They showed me where their cubbies are and I helped them take their lunch boxes out. They hugged me again. They hugged Margo. They hugged Teddy. They went to their seats and as I was waving goodbye, Clark yelled, "Bye, Mom! I love you!" Love that kid. Feeling a little lost and fairly sweaty, I walked home.

At the end of the school day they both agreed that their favorite was P.E. today because they did more than learn how to sit like yesterday. Quotes from after school:

Clark: "The funnest was P.E. but I wanna run more...and when do we play a game? I want to beat another class."

Cal: "Yeah, when do we get to run more? I need to work out."

Clark: "There is this girl in school who speaks another language. She blew her nose and just threw the tissue on the floor. It was so gross. I almost told her, but she wouldn't know what I said anyway."

(NOTE: I'm glad he found that gross and not funny)

Cal: "I think the music teacher's name is Mrs. Jones or something. No. Mrs. Garcia? I don't know but we sang a song about a man in the moon with jellybean eyes. It was really weird. I think it was Mrs. Jones."

I had to tackle a question about divorce tonight, after they told me about one of their classmates' living situation.

After dinner we ran over to the library because all the Olivia books we had put on hold were there. They were so excited that the librarian loved it. (Ok, so did this English teacher) There is a girl in their class named Olivia and they've been discussing between the two of them how to tell Girl Olivia that there are books about a pig named Olivia without calling her a pig because they would never call her a pig. I'm not sure what they decided, but I agreed that calling her a pig was nothing they should ever do.

They carried the books home and we read a few before they were wiped out and fell into bed.

Fourth day coming up! They'll be pros in no time.

OLIVIA! 

Beginning Kindergarten Series, Day 2

Cal woke up earlier this morning and came and snuggled in bed with me and Teddy, who woke up WAY TOO early this morning. Cal said he got up early because he didn't want to be late for school and so he could spend more time with me. What a guy.

We walked to school with Gammy and they showed her their classroom. This week parents can walk the kindergartners to their rooms, but next week they have to start walking themselves. This fact caused a bit of anxiety for them this morning, but we talked about finding their way and it really could barely be any easier to get to their classroom, so that's helpful.

Ding! Round two

I told them I had an after school surprise for them. Honorary Aunt Margo came today so she walked with me to dismissal and they were surprised! They are trying to convince her to spend the night. Which she plans on, but they don't know it.

Margo!

Today they were more talkative on the way home, though I'm not sure I have a clear account about what actually happened today...

"P.E. was boring. All we learned was how to sit down." -Cal

"Our teacher was wrong, we had music, not art today. I don't know why she was wrong." -Clark

"It turns out I do like school." -Cal

"I liked yesterday better because everything was funner then." -Clark

"Guess what Dominick had in his lunch?! OREOS!" -Cal

Me: What did you do in music?

"All we did is just really talk." -Clark

"All we did was just sit. And she played music." -Cal

Me: Did you read a book?

"Yeah, we read a book. I don't know what it was about. I don't know what it was called." -Cal

"I don't remember what it was about it, either." - Clark

Good day! BEAR HUGS ALL AROUND!

Beginning Kindergarten Series, the Prequel

In order to help me cope with this first week of kindergarten, I'm going to do a few days of questions and comments and stories from the week. To start it off, I asked the boys a few questions about their expectations.

What do you think you will like about kindergarten?

Calvin: "I'll like to play, eat lunch, start off with easy math and then get to hard math."

Clark: "I'll like eating lunch, playing, snack time, and cutting stuff up into mountains of shreds with scissors. Will there be any tape?"

Are you excited?

Clark: "Um. Yeah."

Calvin: "Yeah."

Okay. Not very verbose, but I bet they'll have more to say over the next couple days. I'm going to try to hold myself together and not cry until the walk home. Maybe I'll wear sunglasses and pretend to be aloof and unaffected. Oh, my babies.

Let's do this thing.