The First Day of Kindergarten

Joshua's first official day of Kindergarten was Wednesday, September 5. He woke up early as usual and got dressed right away. I made him french toast sticks for breakfast (at his request) and we took a few pictures before leaving to walk over to school.

It is a tight time schedule to walk Joshua to school and then get back to the house to drive Caleb to preschool. But, the doors are different for walkers vs. drivers, so I still need to figure how 1) where that is and 2) how it would work (as in which one is the quickest and most efficient). As we were walking, Ryan was SO squirmy that it made him hard to carry - he prefers to walk now, but it's too busy of a place to let him wander. The bell will ring at exactly 8:45, which is when they will open the doors to let the students in. While all walkers typically go in the far right-hand door where we were told to go, kindergarteners go in the main front entrance near the office. The door wasn't far away to walk him there instead. In the meantime, we saw several of our neighbors.

It was extra sad to me that I don't get to take Joshua right to his classroom. He goes inside the building and heads to class by himself. I watched him walk in the doors and then Caleb & a squirmy Ryan and I ran back to the minivan as fast as we could and flew to preschool where we were just on time. Whew! After a morning of cleaning (a stress reliever for this mama), I picked Caleb up first, butting in line to grab him since I had to race out to kindergarten. There are several of us moms who are doing the "kindergarten dash" this year. We got back and this time I was thankful that we walk instead of drive. The line to pick up was the entire length of the street and wrapped around. I grabbed Joshua's number and took the boys out of the minivan and walked back and was the second one to pick up my son while the cars hadn't moved an inch. I was SO happy to see my boys thrilled faces when they came out of school! Joshua skipped right over to me.

I asked him how his day was and he said good. I asked him what he did and he said "Well, we didn't do any art projects. In the art room we just listened to a lot of rules." I cracked up! Yes, indeed, the beginning of school is learning all the rules. Later that afternoon, I asked him to tell me more about his day. He told me he hung his backpack up, took out the yellow folder (which is the teacher's communication with parents and vice versa) and put his name tag on. He said that Mrs. Vogt does circle time different than how Mrs. Zimmerman did it last year, and he also noted that the pledge of allegiance was "so easy" (since he learned it last year in school). He said the teacher asked what the word "invincible" means and he said he knew the answer from "word girl" (whatever that is). I asked him what it means and he said "not easily destroyed." Then he added that he has to raise his hand in school.

That's where the conversation ended, but it sounded like an okay first day. He sounded a little bored, but hopefully as they start doing actual activities, he will enjoy it more.

As a special treat, we met Grandpa Georgia and Aunt Jen with her two boys for lunch at McDonald's. Daniel's first day of kindergarten was that afternoon, so we had a short time in between the two to enjoy lunch together. We saw two other kindergarteners there, including Shawn's (second?) cousin's wife and son and a little boy from Joshua's class that we had met at the kindergarten play date. :) :) :) A fun first day, all in all!