Back To School

Today is Brian's first day of Kindergarten. This blog has come full circle in the past year. Exactly one year ago I was very pregnant with Danielle, sending my "baby" to pre-kindergarten. Today was actually not too bad, I think last year was great training for both moms and kids. It is probably easier since daddy does drop-off duty most of the time.

Last night was back to school. We met Brian's new teacher at Pulaski Heights Elementary, Mrs. Shelly Halter. Brian dropped off his school supplies, found his desk, met some of his classmates, and put his nap mat away. We also learned the drop off and pick up procedures.

One big change this year for Brian and I is the no backpack policy. I am kinda upset about this, but trying not to show it too much so Brian is not bothered by it. They claim lack of space for this rule, I am not convinced. As you can see from the first day picture that there is no uniform policy for this school. He did choose to wear his new school shirt today.

He had a good first day, he stayed on green, got two stamps, and a sticker on his shirt. I am not sure what all this means yet, but I am sure that I will gain more information each day. I also plan to volunteer in the classroom so I can become more familiar with the daily routine. I like his teacher so far and I think he does to. She has been teaching for 15 years and is married and her only "child" is a dog.

Brian said that he went to music and P.E today, and his favorite part was recess, of course! He got to play with his friend Drew from Fair Park on the playground. In Mrs. Halter's letter that we received on back to school night, it had instructions for the first day of school, at the end it said "ask your child about their day, and go and do something fun to celebrate this special day." So I took the kids downtown to the water fountain park.

The letter from his teacher indicated that there would be homework every night, in addition to having to read at least one book every night. We are accountable to this by writing the title of the book and signing the sheet to be turned in every week. This is something that we have tried to do, but we get out of the habit easily. So I guess this year we will have to make time for this every night since it is one of the best things we can do to instill the love of reading into our children.