Ready to take on the world with his cool new backpack!
Kindergarten started with a meet the teacher day, scheduled for 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon, because schools don't understand that some parents have to work. That day we waited on a very long line to get his teacher's name, then another line to get him his spirit day t-shirt, and then another long line to get his carpool number, which we probably will never even use. Then we all went to his classroom, where the kids scattered to check out the cool stuff in the room, and the parents sat in the tiny chairs and filled out a dozen different forms about allergies and emergency contacts and I don't even remember what else.
The next week was staggered entry based on alphabetical order, which meant that Chad and four other classmates all went in on Monday for a half day. The rest of the class was assigned to come in Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. On Friday they all went in together for their first full day, though there was no before or after school care for Kindergarten students.
I'm glad he started on Monday, because that's when all the older kids had their first day of school, and it was a much more festive atmosphere. For the first day, they all had to bring in a paper bag with four things about themselves to share. Chad brought a baseball, his trophy from last year's Turkey Trot, his library card and a test tube because he wants to be a scientist! After they shared their items, he and the other four beginning-of-the-alphabet friends went on a scavenger hunt through the school
I was a typical first time parent and had my camera ready to capture his every step.
Here is Chad sitting in his assigned seat.
Here is Chad smiling with his new teacher.
This is our teacher's first year teaching, but she did her student teaching at this school last year, so at least she has some experience with all the policies and Panda traditions. She is very enthusiastic and we get many emails from her. There is a Shutterfly class page where we can see all sorts of pictures from their busy days, and the class calendar, and parents could potentially post on a message board, but so far there have just been mass emails among parents. I can't decide if this makes us all super helicopter parents to be this keyed in to the classroom happenings, but it is nice to be somewhat in touch with what they are actually doing, because most days Chad doesn't want to give me details when I ask what he did all day. He will usually just tell me what they had for snack.
In addition to the Shutterfly page, we also used the Class Dojo app. Class Dojo is a way of rewarding good behavior with Dojo points, which get redeemed for "Warm fuzzies" to keep in a cup at school. When a student's cup overflows with Warm Fuzzies, they get either a prize from the treasure chest, or get to choose to do something special. So far, Chad's cup has gotten filled twice, and he's come home with a magnifying glass and a light-up ring. If he didn't want to choose a treasure, some of the "experience" rewards are things like, "Be first in line all day," or "Bring a stuffed animal to school to sit on your desk." We all know how I feel about clutter, so I'm really hoping the experience rewards start to be a little more appealing real soon.
Anyway, Class Dojo involves a little monster icon for each student. Chad had a very cute heterochromic-eyed, four-legged, purple monster avatar. Anytime he did something good, (like participate, stay on task, show persistence, etc.) his teacher could credit him with a Dojo point.
Behold Chad's little Dojo monster
I had the app on my phone, so each day I could check in and see how the behavior was doing for the day. Luckily, this app doesn't send push notifications, because I don't need to have my phone chiming at me every time Chad stays on task.
Dojo was also linked to the classroom sound system, so when Dojo points were given out, there would be a little ding played out loud, so students would get a reminder that Dojo points could be given out, and *someone* had just gotten some, and supposedly this would help encourage good behavior. Unfortunately, at some point the idea that monster avatars were associated Dojo points took over, and at least one girl in the class started getting scared of noise associated with points. So they became known as "Princess Points" instead. Now, at first, Chad was getting 5-9 Dojo points a day! Some you could see were just for him, some were for the whole class at once. But the Dojo point awarding slowed to a trickle, and I would get worried when I saw Chad only got maybe 1 or 2 points a day. Finally, we got an email that keeping up with recording Dojo points through the app was too crazy when the students were doing their activities, so now they'll just get warm fuzzies without it being recorded through Dojo. Sad face. I liked that little purple monster, but I can see how one teacher trying to give out Dojo points in real-time to 22 students while also teaching them would be a bit crazy. But along those lines, the class only had a part-time TA in the afternoons, which wasn't enough help, so starting Monday there will be a new full-time TA in the room! I hope this mean Dojo will return at some point.
Their daily schedule includes a "morning meeting", then math, then one of six rotating specials, then lunch and recess, then reading, social studies and science in the afternoon. There is an afternoon sometime in there too. The specials are Gym, Music, Art, Library/Media, Computers, and then a special bonus Math. I don't really hear too much about what goes on in those specials, except that the math teacher gives them silly bandz on days when they do a good job. Math and Computers are Chad's favorites. For social studies, they are learning about what it means to be a good citizen. I think science has been about different states of matter. There is a class hamster, who is tentatively scheduled to come live with us for a weekend in November and each month there is a birthday celebration day for all the birthday kids that month. (Of course, my first thought was for the poor kids with summer birthdays who won't get a celebration, but then I remembered it's year-round, and they will be there in the summer as well, haha.) Friday's there are sometimes pep rallies, which is when they either wear their spirit day shirts, or whatever else the school decides to do. (Last Friday was football jersey day.)
Now the bane of my existence: homework! Their first big assignment was to make an "All About Me!" poster. We had a week to get this together. Then they each had to give an oral presentation on their poster and take questions from the class. Here is Chad's!
See the three Roald Dahl books? They can actually be opened and Chad drew pictures of his favorite parts from each book inside them.
So that went OK, but now there are nightly assignments, which should really not be a big deal, but Chad thinks they are absolute torture. One night he told me, "Just put me out in the trash can. I'll live on the street. I'm not your kid anymore." Which seems like a serious overreaction to being asked to write the word "cat". I think we have an understanding now though- since the homework doesn't get collected, he doesn't have to do exactly what is asked, and instead he likes me to make up a homework assignment based on what he should be doing. For example, last week he was supposed to write his sight words and use different colors for the consonants and the vowels. This was impossible. I was the meanest mommy ever for even suggesting it. The end of the world was nigh! He asked me to give him something else to do: I made him write all the ingredients in the salad I was making, using different colors for vowels vs. consonants, and after each word, write out a math equation for it, saying, "X vowels + Y consonants = Z letters" and THEN he also had to write three sight words at the bottom for me to color and then he had to check my work. He did all this with a smile, even though it was about 5 times the amount of work he was supposed to be doing. But he was very happy with the finished product. He propped the paper up all during dinner, and made sure we all knew that "Cucumber" has three vowels.
Since we work, Chad goes to both before and after school care. They are separated by grade level here, so he has met many other Kindergarteners already who aren't in his class. For Before school care, they start off in the AIG classroom, playing games or doing worksheets. Then they move to the gym to run around and play basketball or whatever else is available that day. Then they all go to breakfast. Every student at this school gets free breakfast every day! There are some good hot options, sometimes including Chocolate Chip French Toast or Banana Pancakes, but Chad has simple tastes and just gets a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch every morning. At After School, they get a snack, then either go to the gym or the playground for a bit, and then head to the library for story time, coloring, and then some computer games at the very end. As he gets older, there is also a homework option, which means that parent can request their kids complete all their homework before doing the fun stuff.
At this point, we area already halfway through the first quarter. (Meanwhile, those slacker New York kids haven't even started school yet!) Progress Reports came home on Friday. Chad is doing very well already, and he know what we have to work on before Report Cards come home next month. Most importantly, he got perfect scores in all behavior and attitude categories. We have a conference with his teacher set up for early Tuesday morning to get further insight on his progress. (These conferences were completely optional, but as soon as the schedule went out, most of the parents immediately signed up. It is a school of tiger moms. Probably because it was so hard to even get into this school, that only parents who really really care about education would even bother jumping through all the hoops to apply.)
Even though Chad was sad to leave his KPA friends, he tells me he likes Kindergarten a lot more. He already has a little posse he hangs out with all day. His handwriting has already improved a lot, even just in the past week. I still can't believe we were lucky enough to get into this school!
Of course, with school comes fundraisers. Stay tuned for that....
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