First Projects of School

The boys both seemed to have a really good first week of school. No one came home upset. Grady went so far as to say "School is Awesome", but I don't know how much I believe it. They've taken the bus to and from school some of the time. Yesterday, Grady took the bus by himself because Peter had a dentist appointment. I asked him afterwards if he was scared and he said "no, I had my friends with me". He doesn't really care for taking the bus to school because the kindergarteners are required to stand in a designated area until a teacher can walk them over to the playground, but he's having fun and feeling very grown up.

Grady comes home with all these exclamations of awesomeness, but he's completely silent in class. In fact, the whole class is really quiet. He's got 16 other kids in his class, predominately girls, and the whole group (including Grady) is more likely to be spaced out than interrupting and noisy. Maybe everyone is still just getting used to the teacher, but we'll see. I've worked in the class a couple days already and Grady's just fine getting his work done without having to run over and hang on me.

The boys took the gymnastics van after school on Friday, so I didn't have to drive the from school to gymnastics. I remembered to email Peter's teacher but I must have forgotten about Grady's teacher. She stopped me on Monday to check in about gymnastics and said I never wrote it down or told her. Luckily, she knows all the gymnastics people too, so she felt comfortable checking and letting him get on the van. The funny thing is, I wrote "Tumbleweeds" across Grady's arm to remind him where to go. I can't believe he was too shy or something to just show her his arm.

For Peter, the whole school thing is old news. He's happy to see his friends, he likes the projects his class is working on, he's got cool things to look forward to now that he's in a higher grade.

Peter's class made portraits of themselves to hang up outside the classroom. When I walked down the hall yesterday, I looked on the wall for his picture. At the start of the line of pictures, I noticed that none of the pictures had names. So I was really concerned that I wouldn't be able to find Peter's. All the pictures looked really similar so I couldn't have picked out one kid over another. And then I saw Peter's...

There's really just no way to miss it. I smiled so much when I saw it, because it's exactly him. He really does find a way to be original every time. And his essay...also totally him.

Grady's class got to make portraits too. One of the sixth grade classes came in and buddied up with the Kindergartners to make the portraits. Grady made sure to tell me that HE put bottom eye lashes on himself, even if most of the other kids didn't. And he gave himself white teeth.

It seems like both of the boys' teachers are really good - calm, nice, and planning lots of fun stuff. Grady's class got to see if a coconut floats yesterday. Peter's class gets an extra half hour of recess every Friday. They both have homework, but so far it's nothing too difficult. I have to get my brain back in the mode to help Grady with his homework each week.