It's been a good first week of school. Jack's quality of life is directly tied to the length and quality of his recesses, which was going great until his teacher apparently decided to instate a daily class picnic for the first half of their second recess, making it much too short for Jack's wellbeing. (Jack's claims seem dubious, but I do believe that there just isn't and will never be enough recess in the day! Not for Jack Jared Lambert! He has the same amount of recess that I got during 3-hour kindergarten back in the day, and he's in school for 6.5 hours. It really isn't enough.) Luckily flag football started this week, so I'm hoping that will adequately fill in the gaps from not enough recess.
I've been surprised by how much of a life change going from preschool to kindergarten has been. I think I naively expected the kindergarten experience to be basically the exact same as the preschool experience, just longer. But there have been many logistical adjustments. For example:
1. Alarm clocking. For the first time in years, I am setting an alarm to wake up on weekday mornings instead of relying on my children to be my wakeup call. I mean, my children still end up being my actual wakeup call on most of those days, but I do have to set an alarm as backup just in case to be out the door by 8:15.
2. School pickup line. About half an hour before Jack's school lets out, it's time for me to head to his school to try and get a good spot in the pickup line. Unfortunately, Alice still hates sitting in a stagnant car so she ends up screaming for most of this time. The pickup line life is NOT the life for baby Alice Lark Lambert. We already filled out the official forms stating that we would be picking him up at the school before I realized how annoying the experience would be. So now I get to jump through some logistical hoops to see if we can switch to a different way:
3. Bus life. We do have the option of sending Jack on the school bus to and from school. It was an option we had written off for two reasons: (1) we never took a bus to school growing up, so I guess we didn't give it the consideration it deserves, and (2) our school district has a pretty rough reputation for bullying (oof). But we know lots of kids on the bus he would take and I think it would be ok. It's just a K-2 bus after all. Plus Jack's been begging me to let him take the bus home with his friends since he apparently doesn't get enough unstructured social time at school. I think we're going to give it a try if we're not too late.
4. Snack and lunchbox olympics. In preschool we sent Jack with a daily snack. He usually ate it right when he got there so I really didn't have to worry about keeping anything cold. Now that he's got 6 hours of school that includes a snack AND a lunch, there's a whole new sport of extreme lunchboxing I'm learning about. Ice packs, leakproof seals, easy-open, insulation--all top of mind this week. We ended up going with the popular "bentgo" brand for most of our lunchboxing needs. We got the boxes on sale at Costco and some cute dino ice packs on amazon. We also went on a bender of a Costco trip this weekend to stock up on healthy snacks.
Half of me wanted to have him get school lunches because that's what I did k-12 and it would make my life simpler. But hot lunches are kind of expensive in Washington, and on the first day of school Jack somehow accidentally ate his lunch during snack time and ended up being put in the hot lunch line later. When I picked him up he did the funniest lil' smirk when I asked him about his day and he said, "I got a cheeseburger for lunch. And a chocolate milk. And an apple." He was so pleased haha. At first I was like, "Cool, he knows how to do hot lunch now. Maybe that's the route for us after all." But upon further investigation it was revealed that he ran out of time after he finished his chocolate milk and threw away the cheeseburger untouched. So basically he ended up having a $3.50 chocolate milk for his lunch and I think we'll stick to home lunches this year haha
5. Papers and forms and homework, oh my! What am I supposed to do with all the papers being sent home daily?! In preschool Jack came home with a piece of "art" he had done pretty much every day. I just kept a big basket under our entryway table and put it all in there. But now (and maybe this is just a first week of school thing) I'm getting important documents sent home daily. Homework, too. Nothing crazy, but maybe a "Get to know Jack" bag to fill here, and an early reader book to practice and send back there. Perhaps a school calendar, or a "sick day policies" sheet. Things I have to actually keep track of. Plus art. I've decided to hang an enormous magnet board in our dining room with hanging baskets underneath to stay organized and have a designated spot for everything. We're going for function over form this year.
6. Online portals, message boards, text, and emails. The school and Jack's teacher are in communication with us daily (so far). I'm glad there are easy ways to stay informed and in touch, but the only contact we had with Jack's preschool teachers was seeing them in person during the in-person dropoff and pickup. Lots of new resources and messaging tools to juggle now.
7. The big-kid feelings of it all. In preschool Jack was happy as a clam playing with any/all of the other 15 kids in his preschool during outside time. Now there are so many more options, which is exciting to Jack, but he's entering the realm of friendship dynamics that he has feelings other than always just "happy!" about. He has preschool friends and church friends and flag football friends and new kindergarten friends, all of whom he sees at recess. In Jack's perfect world he would have time to play with all of them every day, doing some sort of game or tag probably. But it doesn't always pan out that way. He's resilient and social and it will be ok. Just different than preschool. Which is how it's supposed to be I suppose. Everything changes eventually.
It's going to be a great year! Jack is so excited whenever he has kindergarten the next morning. I love doing reading/homework with him. I've been a little worried that he might be bored this year since he's already mastered all the kindergarten skills, but his teacher seems excited to keep him challenged and is already sending home early readers for him to pass off so she can see where he's at (he's way past what she's been sending home so far but they'll figure it out). It's also fun to have some time with just Alice during the day. All good things. Here are some pictures from our week:
