First Days of School

It wasn't until I started to write this post that I realized I didn't take any pictures of the kids on their first days of school! That's a sad commentary on how spotty my memory is lately. Which is all the more reason to write down the things I DO remember about the first days of school before I forget them all. :)

Haley started school last Wednesday. We had gone to back-to-school night on Tuesday where she met her teacher and saw her classroom, so on Wednesday morning she was excited and ready. She bounced out of bed the minute the alarm chirped and was ready to go in the blink of an eye. I'm sure Aaron wishes she would keep this up all year! (Since he gets the kids ready and drops them off in the mornings.)

She's been going to school for several days now and just loves first grade. She likes all the learning activities, she loves music and gym class. She's also a big fan of recess, where she gets to play on the big playground, not just the little kindergarten playground like last year. On her 2nd day of school she lost her 2nd tooth... right next to the other lost tooth so she has quite the gap in her smile now. She lost it during gym apparently, and was having so much fun running around that she never noticed it had gone until someone asked her about it. They never did find the tooth, so she agreed to take a quarter from Daddy instead of the Tooth Fairy.

Preston had a day of testing for preschool on Haley's first school day. I took him over and was impressed to see how well he did. They asked him to read a few words and he did it - I had no idea he could recognize those words! They also asked him to use some blocks to make a pattern. He started putting it together:

At this point I was thinking - 'hmmm... I guess he doesn't have the hang of patterns yet.' I could tell the teacher was thinking the same thing.

But then he finished his creation like this:

The teacher was pretty impressed. She told me - 'That's a really sophisticated pattern! How old is he again?' He's so tiny, everyone always thinks he's younger than he is. (We are often asked if he and Brekken - 2 years apart - are twins, and it's not because Brekken is so big for his age!)

He didn't do very well with the scissor-cutting tasks... he was using two hands to try and work the scissors. I guess that would be because we never let him have scissors at home! We should probably relax that rule a little and let him practice. It made me laugh though, when the teacher asked him - 'Could I show you another way to do that?' and he responded - 'No. I'm busy working.' He continued trying it his way for another minute or two before he allowed her to show him a one-handed scissor grip.

He had his first actual day of preschool yesterday. He was out of bed at 5:45 and asking me to help him find his backpack and his clothes for the day. Then he told me - 'I don't know if I want to go to school.' That was enough to make me stop my mad rush to get out the door to the bus and really listen to him. I reminded him that he had really liked his teacher Miss Patty and he had been really excited to go to school. After a minute or two, he decided it was all okay again.

I went off to work and I worried a little about how his first day would go. But it went just fine. When Aaron took him to preschool, he went right in without a minute's hesitation. When Michelle picked him up, he was happy and said he'd had fun. And when I got him from daycare and asked him about his first day, he couldn't actually recall any details of his day (other than 'we had a snack, it was Fruit Loops'), but he said he had lots of fun, he made some new friends (he does not know their names) and he wanted to go back tomorrow. Sounds successful to me!