Tag: school (Page 11 of 13)

The alarm went off at 6:20. Ten minutes later I was up and rousing the girls. They stumbled downstairs, shoveled some breakfast in, and made their lunch requests. We brushed teeth, put on uniforms, and fixed hair. We loaded backpacks and grabbed bags of school supplies. And then we were off.

The 2012-13 school year has begun.

The morning went surprisingly well. C. was quick to get out of bed, which is often a problem for her, and seemed full of energy and excited. M. was busy telling C. everything she knew about everything that happens at St. P’s.

“ISTEP is a test you won’t take until third grade, but if you don’t pass it, you won’t get to go to fourth grade.”

Timely information there, M..

The school allows parents to walk kids in the first day, so amidst the crowded, boisterous hallways, we escorted both girls to their rooms and helped C. get situated in hers. She was a little quiet when we left her, but I think it had more to do with being in a loud room full of kids she doesn’t know yet. She’s never had a problem with school, so I’m sure she warmed up quickly once things calmed down. I’m eager to hear her talk about the boy that was sitting next to her, who was African-American. She loves to tell us about people who were “born with brown skin.”

The school dismisses at 1:05 today, instead of the usual 3:05, so we’ll see if everyone is as fresh and energetic then as they were when we dropped them off.

So our Best Summer Ever has come to its symbolic end. We still have a few summer activities scheduled for the next month, but the big sisters are back in school and have their first soccer games this Saturday. It sure went quick.
L. doesn’t start her 3’s class until after Labor Day. Since she was the odd one out this morning, and did a great job waking up and going to St. P’s with us, she got a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts. I think she sees that as a pretty fair trade.

This week’s list of things my daughters did that made me smile.

M.: Her class has been busy sending Flat Stanleys all over the place this year. Among other places, they exchanged them with children at a school in Derby, UK. Her friend there returned a package last week that was loaded with cool stuff. British coins, postcards from the Derby area, a sticker of the local soccer team, some Royal Wedding stickers, a British flag, and some plain, universal, girlie stickers.

The best part, though, was that M.’s friend in the UK sent her home address and said she wanted to be pen pals. M. doesn’t really know what a pen pal is, but was excited at the chance to keep sending letters to her friend. On the ride home that day, she planned out all the things she could send back in her next reply. She claimed, in wonder, that she was the only one in her class whose UK friend wanted to be pen pals. And she realized that one day she might go to England and meet her friend! She was giddy. It was quite cute to watch.

C.: The five-year-old is beginning to put all the pieces from her first year of kindergarten together. She’s sounding out unfamiliar words. She’s working through books. And she’s writing down whatever is on her mind. Every couple of days we’ll find a pile of papers with drawings and notes on them. Last week I found a stack that listed her favorite things of the moment.

I luv skul.
I luv ester.
I luv my famile.

I love how these little notes reveal a kid’s character. Way back on President’s Day, her class had to write down what they would do if they were president. Her response was Help people who aren’t as lucky as me. Seriously, from a five-year-old!

L: L. was the best two-year-old ever. She was pleasant, rarely talked back or threw tantrums, and just wanted to snuggle. She’s been developing a bit of an attitude lately, which is disappointing.

On the fun side, she’s also in the ‘repeating things she’s heard’ phase. The other night S. got home from running some errands and when she opened the door, L. was there to greet her by saying, Why do I have to deal with this? Not sure what she was so exasperated about.

One evening the girls came running up from the basement with the news our decorative tree thing had a bent limb. L. marched to the middle of the room, put her finger in the air, and said, I know who da cuwpwit is!

Those are just two that I remember. She busts out about two or three of them a day that break us up.

ↁ

M.: Each morning when I drop M. off at school, she mumbles a goodbye to me as she scans the sidewalk between the van and the front door. She’s looking for friends who may be walking in. On the mornings she does run into someone she knows, I love the way they both light up, run to each other, start talking and laughing, and then walk inside together. It’s nice to be 7 and get along with everyone. It won’t be all that much longer before she’s trying to avoid certain people in the hallways.

C.: Thursday night was Dads’ Night at C.’s school. She was so excited about it! All week she had been counting down the days. “Only two more days until Dads’ Night!” After school on Thursday she kept asking me for updates on how long until we would head back to her classroom. When we arrived, she was giddy. She clung to me and gave me hugs and giggled the entire time. They sang some songs. We made a craft. We listened to a story. We ate a snack. The entire time she was almost shaking in her excitement.

She has lots of ebbs and flows in her moods, but when she’s sweet, she’s about as sweet as can be.

L.: Her funny phrase of the week: “That is so surprising!”

Many of the other parents out there are aware of Platypus Day, in honor of Perry the Platypus, and the walk that goes along with it. Each time the commercial appears on Disney, L. runs to the TV, and makes her version of the Perry sound, “RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.” She proud of how well she can roll her R’s.

ↁ

M. made her on-stage debut Thursday. The two kindergarten classes at her school offered a performance of The Bear Went Over the Mountain for family, friends, and classmates.

M. nabbed the plum part of Owl, who was the opening narrator of the program and had several lines in the dramatic closing act. She had been practicing diligently for weeks, both at school and at home. She continues to suffer from fatigue-induced moodiness when she gets home from school each day, so her home practice was often a challenge. She would be tired, cranky, uninterested and either mumble her lines, talk like a three-year-old, or pretend to not be able to read them. The feedback we were getting from school was positive, but we did have some concerns about how she would perform when she had to stand in front of a room full of adults.

Turns out we had no reason to worry. She kicked off the play nicely, marching to the front of the stage, turning on the microphone, and setting the scene for the audience. Her voice was a little soft, she spoke a little too quickly, and she could have used more inflection in her delivery, but it was a pretty impressive performance for a kid that still gets weirdly quiet when around adults she doesn’t know well.

She also handled her other three parts flawlessly.

The play itself was quite cute. Funny songs, some fine performances mixed in with some funny flubs.1 I think it’s safe to say that among kindergarteners at Catholic schools on Indianapolis’ Northside, the performance has not been matched.

Afterwards M. was rather pleased with herself, and got many accolades from her teachers, her eighth-grade buddy, and other parents. Many told her how impressed they were that she had all her lines memorized. Some of the kids only had a word or two to say. Other than the Bear, M. had the most.

After some evenings of exasperation when she refused to rehearse in a normal manner, everything turned out great. I asked her if she wanted to be an actor when she grew up, and she quickly shot that down. “NO!!!!” No addiction to the sound of applause, at least not yet.

❖

The music teacher smartly gave the line “Are you serious?!?!” to a kid that can’t say his R’s. So it came out as “Aww you sewious?!?!” I think this is the last year that will still be cute. ↩

Some good stories never go away.

A few of you may recall that two years ago, there was a boy in C.’s preschool class that she constantly insisted had hit her. She talked about it every day. “DJ hit me.”¹ The way she made it sound, DJ beat her up every Monday. We never heard a thing about it from the teachers, so we figured it was probably a benign, one-time event.

C. and DJ were in different classes last year, but the mere mention of his name brought back those memories for her. “Remember that one time when DJ used to hit me?” This year, they are classmates again and after some rough moments early in the year, C. and DJ seem to have become friends.

Last week C. told me that DJ wasn’t in class on Monday. Then again on Wednesday. And still on Friday. When I picked her up this Monday, she had news for me.

“Mrs. W said the DJ is at another school now.”

No reasons were given, and I’m not going to speculate, but her old nemesis seems to be gone.

Last night at dinner, C. was telling M. about DJ’s departure. M. had this genius theory about why he may have left.

“Maybe he’s going to a school where he won’t get in trouble for punching people,” she said completely seriously.

Solid reasoning. I’ll admit it made me laugh, too.