Prepping For Kindergarten

One week ago today was "meet the teacher" day for all new Kindergartners. It is my intention to write this everyday to help other mothers who's children will be going to kindergarten, or who's children also started this year. It has been such a crazy week that I'm already a week behind...so here goes!

Meet the teacher has become a "drop off your supplies to the teacher" day and grab your mountain of forms to fill out & leave day. Nothing against my son's teacher, she seemed nice enough, but I remember growing up in a small-ish town outside of Orlando and my teacher got to meet every parent and child. Now it has become to impersonal. My child is Aidan and she called hm Jake, already a bad sign. I couldn't ask her very many questions, she was too busy handing out paperwork & instructing the parents on how to fill them out properly because "protocol" is very important to them. I looked around and wondered if I was the only sane parent there. My son Aidan is 5 and has never been in Pre-K, and was in daycare for about 6 months when he was 2. I've been home with him and his 2 year old sister since she was born.

I think Aidan had to have been the only "first timer" to Kindergarten because no one asked any questions. On his school supplies list was 4 specific color "plastic" thin folder with prongs. I of course bought paper. She instructed me that they do not last as long and need to replace them with plastic. Apparently Super Target does not carry these & Walgreens sold out, so this will be continued this Saturday when I scour Wal-mart, CVS, K-mart maybe even Home Depot until these mysterious folders are found. Heaven forbid he just uses $.07 paper folders.

My largest concern was how does he find his bus in the afternoon? I was assured a billion times by his teacher that bus riders are dismissed first, and taken to the outside bus area where he is paired up with another child from the same bus. Also he will be wearing a bright yellow wrist band with his name, address, phone number, teacher, & bus "animal" (we'll get to that later). Every bus driver will be checking wrist bands to make sure the children make it on the right buses. I'm not convinced. She passes over me to hand out more papers to parents still walking in. I ask about cubby holes and what time is lunch (10:30am), is there a bathroom in the classroom & where is it, what is their day like? Do they have P.E. or play ground time everyday? Where are the water fountains? What happens if he has a potty accident (my child is a picky eater & therefore prone to constipation)-we will also address this later. I looked like the typical first time worried mother who was letting her baby go for the first time and needed reassurance. An hour and 1/2 flew by and I still have at least 10 more questions that I was still trying to remember. We were the last family to leave. Aidan was playing with some children in the corner with all of the cool toys and he was happy so I let everything else go, this could work and I'm worrying for nothing. This is a school that has been open for awhile, His teacher had been teacher for 10 years, I'm worrying too much. So we leave after getting a car pass just in case we want to pick him up one day with all of the other car riders, we walk around the school showing Aidan where the cafeteria is, the library, his classroom, & why he is not allowed to go wondering up the stairs. (this is a 2 story elementary school!) Aidan seems REALLY interested in these stairs and what is up them. I now have a new concern. He's a boy. He's 5. Is anyone going to be patrolling the stairs to make sure curious Kindergartners don't go wandering around the school?

SO we leave anxious and terrified that Monday morning will be that tearful crazy morning when I walk him to his classroom and watch him find his desk/chair at a table, Meet & greet all of these other children in his class. Peeping in through a sliver of glass window on the door so he doesn't see me. I'm going to try hard not to cry Monday, Or Puke.