The First Week of School

The kids are now 4 days into the school year, and it is going smoothly!  Phew!  Mommy can sleep again.  Christian is in second grade, Samantha is in kindergarten, and Alex just started in the toddler room at a new daycare.  This is the first time that Christian has actually enjoyed school, so I am thrilled!  Samantha was disappointed on the first Saturday, so I think that is a pretty good indicator that she likes school!  And Alex doesn't give Jeff a second look when he drops her off, much to his dismay.

Second grade has not yet proven to be a challenge, which I think is partly why Christian likes school!  He had his first spelling pretest on Thursday, and he spelled 10 of the 15 words correctly without any advance practice.  He breezes through his math homework (which consists of word problems with single digit addition - the kid can multiply, so this is nothing to him!).  And he was thrilled to find an old classmate from kindergarten in his 2nd grade class (a surprise, since we moved and he switched schools this year).  His best friend Tyler is not in his class, but they play together at recess.

Samantha, my little social butterfly, enjoys kindergarten more than I thought was possible.  It is the first thing she asks about in the morning ("Is it time to go to kindergarten?") and the last thing she says before bed ("In the morning, I get to go back to kindergarten!!").  There is a little girl down the street who is also in morning kindergarten, and they have become fast friends.  The curriculum is not challenging for her yet, either.  They are introducing letters and numbers next week.  By the end of kindergarten, she is expected to count to 31 (she can already count to 100), and recognize all her letters plus a 28 sight words.  She already knows her letters and the sounds that they all make, so the sight words shouldn't be a problem.  But kindergarten is more about learning how school works than academics, so it is still useful for her.  I do think that our excellent preschool program did wonders for Samantha, and gave her a head start.

Alex, who I was most worried about, is also doing great.  She is in a room with 2 other toddlers, but they are both part time.  So on Tuesdays and Thursdays she is the only child there until 1:00.  She is really bonding with her teacher, Jeanne, and is protective of her when the other kids are there.  She is also having a hard time sharing the toys.  But she is a good listener when the teacher corrects her behavior, and the other two kids are pretty good about appropriately standing up for themselves.  Even though she is the youngest, she is also the biggest, which is not a good combination at 20 months.  I have to pack her a lunch every day, which is harder than with the other 2 kids, since I have to pick things that she can feed to herself (no yogurt, pudding, applesauce, etc).  However, she is being a good eater.  She has also discovered that she really likes drinking out of an open cup and sleeping on a cot!  When I pick her up in the afternoons, she is hardly even happy to see me, which I suppose is a good thing.  Although a hug would be nice!

Here are some pictures of their first day.