Yesterday was the first day of school. This year I have a 10th grader, an 8th grader, a 5th grader, and a kindergartner. Yep, the baby had his first day of kindergarten yesterday!
It was all very exciting. And it seemed to go pretty well. There were a few adjustments on the food front — the 5th grader has a very early lunch, so he was starving by the end of the day, and the kindergartner has a very late lunch, so we needed to make sure he knew where his snack was in his backpack. But he managed to buy lunch in the cafeteria, and then make it onto his bus home. People were happy with the number of friends in their classes and the 15-year-old enjoyed his cross country practice after school (though apparently his PE class is “pilates” — which I thought sounded fun, but he does not, so we shall see how that goes).
Today is a little anti-climactic for the kindergartner as the school is doing phased in scheduling. Only half his class went Tuesday, and the other half goes today, then they all go Thursday. And the 15-year-old didn’t go in this morning because I’m about to take him to go get his braces off. But the 5-year-old does start piano lessons this afternoon, so that’s pretty exciting. And the 10-year-old has his first parkour class tonight.
Schedules tend to shift in September (or whenever you go back to school). If you’re interested in tracking your time, and brushing up on some good scheduling habits, please consider joining my September Reset project. From Sept 8-24, we’ll do a week of time tracking, and then learn some of my favorite time management strategies. Participants can also use my September Reset Online Portal to work through how these strategies work in real life. Answers will be kept confidential but may be used in future projects as I try to figure out how people spend their time. Please join us! I know several hundred people are already signed up.
I’m glad the first day went well for all of your kids! I hated gym when I was a kid (I’m terribly unathletic/terrible at ball sports) but I would have liked something like pilates! I guess you can’t please everyone!
My 2nd grader started yesterday. Our 4yo starts preschool on Thursday. The Kindergarteners and PK kids all start 2 days after everyone else. I do not love this approach but oh well. Our kids have been in long hours of child care for many years so we don’t need a short first week. My MIL is coming over today to help w/ the 4yo as it’s hard to work and care for him. Yesterday he got unlimited tv/screen time and it was not great for his behavior…
@Lisa – yep, kid #1 loved having pilates as an option, and then another semester he had racquet sports. Kid #2 would probably prefer to have it be straight up weight lifting or something as that is what he does over lunch anyway (since they have a longer lunch break at the high school). I am glad there are lots of PE options if PE is going to be required. And yeah, the phase in is funny, given that even kids with SAHMs go to preschool around here. But I think it was because they were worried about the kindergartners getting lost in the shuffle or some sort of chaos, so one way to reduce that is to change the adult-to-kid ratio to twice what it would have been…
I laughed out loud at this “though apparently his PE class is “pilates” — which I thought sounded fun, but he does not.”
I bet I would have scoffed at pilates for PE back in high school, but it sounds WONDERFUL now. A free pilates class? Sign me up!
@Elisabeth – I know! But all his friends are in “team sports” – another section that meets at the same time, so he is hoping to transfer.
The random PE classes is a rite of passage. My senior year I was told that despite having multiple college credits, I would not graduate if I didn’t take a PE class. And that’s how my five foot female self ended up in weight lifting with most of the football team. It builds character right?
@Adrienne – weight lifting sounds better to me than team sports!