Kindergarten tour

This week Alex, Art & I went to his soon-to-be elementary school for a tour. The tour went well. I was afraid we might have trouble because he thought it meant that he'd be starting school the next day. I told him we'd put the date on his calendar so he could keep up with it. August 17th seems like a long way off, but I'm sure it won't be.

There were about 20 of us in the group. It was funny - 8 boys, 2 girls. I wonder if all the groups were more boys. The principal told us about the school (775 kids in 4K - 5th grade) and showed us the cafeteria (Alex wanted to know why they had a stage in it), the gym, computer lab, science lab, music room, library and then the kindergarten wing. They have 6 kindergarten classrooms on one hall. They let us wander in and out of all the classrooms. It was very nice. They have "centers" or "stations" where they work on different things. There were groups doing art projects, math, reading and some computer stuff. They have the smart blackboards in all the rooms. We showed him that they have cubbies like at his school. He was excited to see a boy that he went to preschool with who is already in kindergarten.

At the end of the hall the door leads to a covered concrete area where they could add two more classrooms if they needed to. In the meantime they use it to do outdoor stuff when it's raining. It leads into the kindergarten playground. They also let us go through the first grade hall and see what they were working on. They were a little more business-like, everyone sitting at tables and working. We ended up in the school lobby where they had juice boxes and snacks. It was a nice mix, a lot of information for the parents but the kids were excited to see everything. It's a really nice school, just built in 2001. They have murals of local buildings on the walls and it's bright and airy. It's nice that all the grades have their own halls, too, so the kids don't really mix together with older ones too much.

When we left they handed out pinwheels and rubber ducks to match our nametags - "Kindergarten is just ducky". Alex refused the rubber duck on the grounds of babyish-ness. I took him back to preschool and left him telling all his compadres about kindergarten. I was hoping the rest of the day would go well and he wouldn't be too upset about being back at boring old preschool.

Unfortunately, he did tell some of the others that it was his last day and he wasn't coming back after Friday - he was going on to kindergarten. Two others in his class had gone for the tour and Gus was almost in tears, because they didn't say that HE could start kindergarten now. I have this picture in my head of Alex giving this "so long, suckers!" speech.

I got there to pick him up and while I was in the hall talking to the director I hear Ms. Sarah say, "Alex, go tell your mother how many time-outs you had today." Oh, crud. Turns out - ZERO! Not one all day. We're not sure why, but we didn't want to question him too closely. We celebrated by going to Waffle House. Alex told the waitress there that he'd had zero time-outs all day. "Oh," she said, "is that why you come in here, for days you don't have any time-outs?" (We go about every other week.) No, I explained, this had never happened before as far as I knew. Sigh.

Abbott and Costello update: We have now completed "Who Done It?," "In the Navy," "Pardon My Sarong" and "Keep 'Em Flying." We have three more to get through before the movie is due back at the library. Have no fear - Netflix delivered two more for us to watch when those are gone! And, as I suspected, there was no real ghost in the first one. Alex was a bit disappointed that there were no actual naval battles in "In the Navy." I explained it was more of a propaganda piece then history.