Kindergarten - settling in (part 2)

It's funny, I don't feel like I really settled into a solidly comfortable routine with school until toward the end of the year, perhaps because Daphne was changing so much each month, and I "went back to work" (more about that later) about half-way through the year but ironically pulled Elias from his two days of the after-school program at that time. I feel like every few weeks something shifted or changed with at least one member of the family. To that end, Neal traveled in one-week chunks for work for three weeks total over those first couple of months of school. Managing the shift from a long, leisurely, flexible preschool day to a slightly shorter day with specific drop-off and pick-up times, trying to get little sister down for two naps within those 5 to 6 hours, and realizing quickly on that Elias would need a solid block of burning off all that energy between the end of his school day and dinner time, and doing all this solo off and on, was, well, challenging. I didn't anticipate the Kindergarten learning curve for parents! Oh, and I volunteered to be co- room parent with another gal who is the mother of one of the kids who turned out to be one of Elias' best buddies this past year. So, yeah.

Anyway, here are a couple of images from those first couple of months of settling in:

Ah, construction. I'm not sure what the city of Oakland is up to, but they've been working on it for over a year now. When I drove to the school earlier this week to register Elias for the coming year and find out who his 1st grade teacher would be, the road I usually turn down was totally blocked off and half of the street parallel to school was filled with construction trucks, cones, etc. Awesome!

The first project on the hallway bulletin board. At this point, apparently, Elias liked library time best. Elias is wearing that same shirt in so many of the images from the first couple of months, as well as in this video where he's performing the goodbye song they sang at the end of each school day:



Elias' only homework this first year of school was to read or be read to each night for 15 to 20 minutes (something we do anyway) and, once each week, to draw a picture, preferably with a story to go along with it, in his "homework book" - one of the items in the backpack that was stolen from our car one afternoon outside martial arts practice toward the end of the school year.

Yep, I was pretty bummed. Fortunately I took pictures of several pages as we went along and he still had a towering pile of projects by June.

A cool community art project that lines the fence around the school's garden, one of the enrichment programs paid for by parents' donations to the school. In addition to garden (and reading/writing & math, of course), the school offers art, science, library, motor skills, and PE. PE is offered just once a week every other week which is insane to me. These kids need at least an hour of PE every day. But that's a topic for a whole 'nother blog post...

Bike day! Bike day is fuzzy because it was at the beginning of the year but there were a handful of weekend events like this at the school throughout the year. The school has a pretty active and yet fairly laidback parent/volunteer community, which is one thing I do really like about the school. Most people who go to this school love it. I haven't quite fallen in love with it but there are some pretty important things I appreciate about it and this is one of them.

Bathtime shenanigans. Neal typically handles 99% of Elias' bedtime routine ever since we added Daphne to the mix, but this must've been one of the nights he was out of town during those first few weeks of school. Ah, the final stretch of a long day of solo parenting...Up next, holiday shenanigans!