Home

Helen's first day of Kindergarten

Thu, 2009-08-27 22:11 — Ross

Helen made the jump to public school today.

Her day started off in the Kindergarten play yard (with its new playground structure). When the bell rings, she's supposed to line up with her class. When it did, the whole mass of hundreds of kindergarteners and their parents goes into motion, and Helen darts off. She's usually pretty good about this stuff and I assume she's made a bee-line for her class line, so I mosey over to find Rachel and Arthur. However, as the lined-up kids are about to head off to their classes, I don't see Helen in her class line. Turns out she dashed off to where she had lined up three months ago at the open house we attended here. I found her around the corner, and got her into her line before it left for her room. By all accounts she had a great half-day. When we picked her up she was sporting a festive hat and sticker. We let her pick where we went for lunch, she chose shabu-shabu (we're sure her Uncle is proud). We were going to follow up with the gelato place on Castro street (a short walk from shabu-shabu), but it was closed, so we drove across town to a Cold Stone instead. She also asked if we could go play mini-golf, but we figured that was a little much for one day.

Comments

Mon, 2009-08-31 09:09 — Rachel

Two Things

On the first day, parents are allowed to stay outside the classroom for 10 minutes. We all crowded outside the windows and waved at our respective kids. When I got to the window, the kids were already sitting in their places and her teacher was working the room. Helen was reading the book that had been sitting at her place. She finally looked up and noticed that all of the parents were waving in the window. For the first time, she looked a little panicked as she searched for us in the crowd. She spotted me, smiled, waved, and went right back to her book. She then went to the bathroom, and when I waved to her again, I got the dismissive, "I already said goodbye!" wave. I figured she was fine and we left.

On Saturday, we went to a party for one of Helen's preschool friends (technically her friend's little sister, but it was all kids of Helen's age.) One of the other kids parents asked Helen how Kindergarten and then related the story to me. It went something like this.

Parent: "Hi, Helen! How is Kindergarten?"
Helen: "Great! But it's only half an hour." (Read: 3 hr, 20 min)
Parent: "So then you go to daycare?"
Helen: "No, I go home with Mommy and Daddy."
Parent: "Oh, that must be fun. You get to play with your Mom and Dad."
Helen: "No, it's horrible."