Back to School

We made it through summer vacation! Both kids are officially back to school. Jack entered the second grade this year and Emilie is in Kindergarten. With a few weeks under our belts both seem to be having a good time.

Jack is my “old pro”he knows where to go and what to do. He’s got several friends in his class, enjoys his teacher, and is determined to do his best in class. I get detailed accounts of the day’s goings-ons from accounts of in class learning (Rocket Math is fun! Hadley made it to B side…I’m going to get to B-side soon) to accounts of other notable events (Carter C. threw up on his desk and his grammar page!). The biggest hitch for him was that he moved to the “other side” of the school building this year. That means you use then 2nd/3rd playground and you walk yourself to wherever you met Mom/Dad for pickup after school. Parent help in the classroom isn’t regular for this grade either. They’ll call if they need it, but it isn’t a weekly scheduled thing. Kinda bummed about that, but I still have Kindergarten.

I started volunteering in the Kindergarten class last week on Tuesday mornings. It has been very helpful to meet miss Emilie’s classmates and learn their names. I kept asking if she’d played with anyone new and she’d say, “Yes!”

“What’s his/her name?” I’d then ask.

“I forget…” would be the reply.

Now that I’ve met the kids I can help with specific names and that helps. Still, she’s harder to get information out of at this point. In fact, some days she’s tells me she’s “saving up” the recount of her day until Daddy gets home. Mom is a skilled interrogator though. Now that I know classmate names, and a basic idea of her daily routine I can usually ask the right questions and figure out what she did.

Fingers crossed we have the foundations of a great school year laid for both kids. It will be exciting to watch them grow this year and see what progress has been made come May.