Today was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten with her full class. We’ve been hoping for a positive experience but we know children don’t always respond the way you hope they will, even if you’ve prepared them for it in the best manner you can. This morning my husband took my daughter to school and dropped her off so he could get some administration things completed at the office. As he left her she seemed happy.
Immediately after school, which is a long day of new things, we had a play therapy session scheduled. Dhruti was worried it would be too much for one day but when my daughter got in the car the first thing she said was, “Dhruti!” so I texted Dhruti to say we were a go and we’d be there shortly. Then, for the rest of the ride home, my daughter told me all about her day. And it was all positive.
The first thing she told me about were the “tomato drills” they were going to have. I didn’t know what she was talking about until she explained further there were also fire drills and lockdown drills. I asked her if she thought they might have meant tornado drills to which she said, “oh, yeah, tornado drills”. With that cleared up she told me about the envelopes.
In her backpack there was a red envelope. That one “goes home straight”. The green folder she said goes home every day and comes back to school (parent communications and student work). They have a rest time each day for the first track of nine weeks on a towel but my daughter doesn’t nap and hasn’t for over four years now with rare exception. She said, “everyone was just lying on their bed talking”.
She told me during that time she got to work directly with her teacher on two braille books. She, and the other visually impaired student, Aditi, took turns with the teacher with my daughter getting to have more time (which she was pretty happy about). Then she said, “do you want to hear about the specials we had?” She told me the special from last week was P.E. but that today they had art as their special.
I asked her about her lunch, which she was looking forward to. This morning we had the lunch menu for the month printed out and she picked out what she wanted for the first three days. Today she told me she had pizza, warm carrots (cooked), mandarin oranges, an apple and chocolate milk. She explained how she didn’t eat all of it and decided to bring home the partially eaten apple in her backpack.
I asked her how she ordered the food. She told me they got to have a tray and one of the helpers, “Miss Redwine” helped her. Folks, I’ve looked over the teacher and assistant list and I didn’t see anyone named Miss Redwine but she seemed pretty confident about her name.
Tomorrow she’s looking forward to meeting Ali, her bus (or van) driver, who will be taking her to and from school. I hope she likes him and the ride just as much. He does not speak English well so we’ll see how he fares with her wanting to play word-based games with him in the car all the way to and from school.
The Big Boy Update: After my daughter went to school I took my cousin and her family to the airport. They’d spent the night with us and were leaving for a big swim meet in New York. My son sat in the third row with one seat folded down to accommodate luggage. As we were half-way out of the neighborhood we heard my son say in a muffled voice from the back, “suitcase!” We looked back to see a large hard-case suitcase completely covering him. He wasn’t alarmed and probably because of that we all started laughing. He was so great about it, realizing it was a funny situation not that we were laughing at him. Uncle Dale rearranged the bags and put a pillow between him and the luggage for protection and we were on our way. We hope Olivia swims well in the meet in New York this week!
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was making up a game in the car as we rode home today. She was trying to help me with a mental image so she said, “imagine we’re in a huge, huge garden where the only thing is grass…”
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